On Mon, 16 Feb 2015 17:48:39 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

As of Q1 2013 UK government debt amounted to £1.377 trillion, or 88.1%
of total GDP, at which time the annual cost of servicing (paying the
interest) the public debt amounted to around £43bn, or roughly 3% of
GDP."

Net debt is a more useful metric, because other people also owe us money.

As a measure of how useful it is as a metric of financial health,
Russia sits at 10%, close to such shiningly healthy economies as
Uzbekistan and Paraguay, with Haiti at 15%.

In my example, we're the "spendaholic", they'd be the "heroin addled
drug users". Fine, we're better than that - but not a hugely useful
comparison.

Perhaps you missed the subtle point that they have very low debt...

If the UK really were near-bankrupt, we wouldn't be one of just twelve
countries to have S&P's highest possible credit rating - AAA - nor one
of twelve to have top tier by DBRS, nor one of thirteen top-tier by
JCR.

Ah - S&P the reliable and unbiased credit assessment agency...

Are all the others equally so-much-wronger-than-random-bloke-on-
t'internet? Makes you wonder how they stay in business, doesn't it?