The problem with eye-catching government initiatives to save cash is that they often – um – cost money. Big money.

Bureaucrats charged with shifting thousands of civil servants out of London (the Lyons Review) soon found that it was not so easy to move staff out of their offices. Getting out of leases can involve multi-million pound payments to landlords, for example.
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–>And so it is with the Gershon Review, where ministers agreed to wave the scythe over the civil service’s enormous workforce. The plan is to remove 84,000 posts in four years. This would reverse the huge growth in the public sector payroll under the Labour government. Read more

These are dangerous times for the government. Alistair Darling, chancellor, is in serious political trouble and the sound of muttering about his performance can be heard swelling around Whitehall.

Gordon Brown’s spokesman on Tuesday repeated the view that it was "total garbage" that the prime minister had any doubts about the performance of his neighbour. Read more