A month ago I wrote about the weird world of Student Loans and how they are accounted for by the Government.

/https://jon-chadwick.com/2018/11/17/the-great-student-loans-swindle-its-a-swindle-a-swindle/

Today the Office of National Statistics published their review of Student Loans accounting, which makes some big changes to how the Government calculates the deficit (but not national debt)

https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2018/12/17/accounting-for-student-loans-how-we-are-improving-the-recording-of-student-loans-in-government-accounts/

In short an extra £12bn will be added to the deficit, increasing it from £40bn to £52bn.   After 8 years of austerity to discover that we have calculated the deficit wrong, and that a huge chunk of the deficit reduction was just accounting measures is a huge disappointment.  

Adding up all of the other wriggles and wheezes the Government has used to make the numbers look better my guess is that the actual deficit reduction was only about half the Governments claims.

Just think of all of the hardship caused for such a piss poor return.