In a bid to appear serious, the Coalition Government, with the Lib Dems centre-stage, last week announced some "surprise" spending cuts – a kind of warm-up act for the Budget. These "cuts to planned spending" amounted to around £10bn, we were told. But it transpires the bulk of the "scrapped" projects – around £8bn – were in fact only "suspended". Of the remaining £2bn, around £1bn of the commitments were unfunded anyway – so removing those won't affect the numbers. And another £0.4bn of the "cuts" were included within efficiency savings already announced. I kid you not.