The empty stadium is filled with the sound of seagulls, there are donkeys being herded on to a lorry in a car park outside, but the dominant cliche about Blackpool these past nine months is how their football team, with an expansive style and restrained budget, have breathed fresh air into a cynical league.
Increasingly crowded infant vaccination schedules and restrained national budgets highlight the importance of cost-effectiveness analyses in the decision-making process on which vaccines should be included in national immunisation programmes.
On this side of the pond, the Congressional Budget Office announced that, with the economy expanding, tax revenues rising, and federal spending being restrained, the budget deficit is set to fall to about four per cent of Gross Domestic Product this year, and to 3.4 per cent next year.
This could strain the budget and force Mr. Koizumi to reverse his pledge to restrain the budget deficit just ahead of general elections expected this autumn.
Which was fair enough: the only new policy was Mr Bush's pledge not to release $5.1 billion of authorised spending on homeland security, as a token of his seriousness about restraining the budget deficit.But one thing did emerge from Waco.
"In fiscal terms, there is no doubt in my mind that this has been the most irresponsible year ever," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan watchdog organization that favors restraining the budget deficit.
The military is facing intensifying political and economic pressures to restrain its budget, and Mr. Gates has sought to contain the demands by ending troubled weapons systems and squeezing more efficiency out of the Pentagon's bureaucracy to pay for other programs.
WASHINGTON — After nearly a decade of rapid increases in military spending, the Pentagon is facing intensifying political and economic pressures to restrain its budget, setting up the first serious debate since the terrorist attacks of 2001 about the size and cost of the armed services.
It even had to drop its attempt to sell on the stockmarket a 10% stake in Bharat Heavy Electricals, a government-owned power-equipment maker.Besides any other benefits privatisation may bring, the government will miss the lost revenue as it struggles to restrain its budget deficit.
