THE spending cuts of Chancellor George Osborne – above – are indeed cuts, but not as we know it.

The Government is actually reducing the rate of increase in public expenditure compared to the June Budget.

Current financial year expenditure is £696.8bn. By 2014-15, projected expenditure was to rise to £757.5bn, but now – after the review – it will be £739.8bn. This becomes a 17.7 per cent “cut” despite expenditure still increasing by £43bn.

How does the Chancellor get away with this?

To disguise the fact that in most of the public sector, such as defence, spending is to increase (mainly to service debt and unfunded pensions), officials are going through the charade of cutting highly visible public services.

With the connivance of most of the media and the unions, the public is thus gulled into believing expenditure is being cut. By this means, they hope to divert complaints about progressive deterioration in public services.

There are no “cuts”. They are a deception typical of modern-day politics.

The damage that these so-called “cuts”, or more accurately the culture of cuts, does to the morale of the average consumer is huge.

The reality is that confidence levels are cut much more than Government spending.

The coalition Government is achieving austerity in our time, not an actual reduction in public expenditure.

Peter Troy, Sedgefield, Co Durham.