There’s something unbelievably childish about the 'cuts' debate, and the refusal to be heard on-the-record using the 'C' word. It’s akin to not stepping on the cracks in the pavement, or that daft superstition held by actors never to call 'Macbeth' by its title but refer to 'The Scottish Play', lest they trip and fall down some stage trapdoor. Apparently the Prime Minister is actually going to allow the word to be heard passing his lips later today. Well, hey wow.

When you’re in hock to the tune of £175bn, there are going to have to be cuts. And like most cuts made by knives, paper or chainsaws, they are going to hurt. Cuts in public spending will take great chunks of cash out of the economy. And in some areas of this country, government cash forms getting on for 65% of the money sloshing around in what remains of the economic system. You can be sure taking some of this away will prove especially painful.

So how do you cut? With a pragmatic or an ideological scalpel? That’s the most interesting question. The message from the Conservatives is that government has run riot over the last twelve years and it’s going to take much more than tinkering at the edges to put things right. Everyone has his own hobby horse - an example of a dreadful waste of public funds. There is likely to be a good deal of blood-letting at the quangoes, which may not be entirely a bad thing. Beer at the House of Commons is going up in price.

But it’s the real big spenders that present the true challenge. Far tougher is trying to establish what on earth one can do with the appallingly swollen benefits budget, which now stands at £170bn. It is an intractable problem and was of a ghastly size even when the economy was motoring along. Now it has stalled, more are going to be reliant on the safety net provided by the state. So, it’s got to be done - but anyone who pretends that the process can be easy or painless is kidding themselves. 

If I had my way I’d start with identity cards – a nonsense from the start - and then start looking very seriously at Trident. The days of believing that it’s vital we own nuclear warheads capable of being lobbed at an enemy and wiping out hundreds of thousands of people in one fell swoop are long gone. It’ll be a cheap radio-controlled drone that nails Bin Laden’s mates, not a billion pound ICBM.

Nor do I think the NHS should be sacrosanct. There is no logic whatsoever to the argument that an organisation with an annual budget of £120bn cannot do some belt-tightening without the need to fire any nurses or doctors. It now carries a spare tyre bureaucracy that would make weight-watchers swoon. Less nip/tuck, more gastric band...   

In today's bulletin:
Inflation down again - as high street delivers mixed results
Banks failing to heed the lessons of Lehman
Editor's blog: The childishness of the cuts debate
Can offsetting help SMEs avoid redundancies?
Books Special: The colossal failure of Lehman Brothers