2:45pm Tuesday 16th March 2010
JOHN Shipp’s letter (SA Mar 8) relating to this country’s gross debt level and quoting a figure of 460 as a percentage of GDP is preposterous!
An article in the New York Times on February 10, 2010 contained a table of debt levels of western countries as a percentage of GDP. Italy 116, USA 85, Germany 79, France 77 and Britain 69, two Asian countries Japan 219 and India 80, China was only 20.
The Office of National Statistics said the gross National Debt level at the end of 2009 rose to £845billion which was equivalent to 60.2 per cent of GDP. If you excluded the bank bailouts from the balance sheet the National Debt is nearer to a more respectable 50 per cent of GDP.
As for his “we should have held on to France when we owned it” weren’t we conquered by the Normans in 1066 and William Duke of Normandy became King of England and Normandy.
In 1154 when Henry 11 became King he married Eleanor of Aquitaine which extended England’s border from Normandy to the Pyrenees. France as it was then never came into it nor the Mediterranean coast so you would have to sip your wine in Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast, now in bankrupt France!
M J WARNER Groundwell Road Swindon
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