OBR: Dead Duck Waddling?

The Financial Times has now established that OBR “massaged” the employment figures it so helpfully produced for David Cameron last week… see here. By inserting some completely invented assumptions about possible future government policy, OBR trimmed 175,000 public sector job losses from the total, enabling Cameron to claim their job losses would be less than Labour’s. So OBR’s forecasts, which were barely credible to start with, are now shown to have been manipulated in quite outrageous ways. Maybe it’s because I’m in Beijing, but I can’t help thinking of dead ducks.