While slimming public spending by a fifth, that government trimmed the prison population by 11%, based on a strategic decision to reduce what it saw as the unnecessary use of custody and to invest in community interventions.
The party's policy ideas, drawn up with the help of Luis Garicano, an economist, include a slimmer public administration and a single labour contract not the sorts of things to get protesters' pulses racing.The experience of Valencia provides a clue.
Of the bodies that remain, around 175 are due to be substantially reformed, helping to create a landscape of fewer, slimmer public bodies that allows for the most efficient and effective delivery of public services.
And with advertising possibilities slim on public television, attracting backers can be difficult.
Among Mexico's philanthropic movement, there is hope that others will follow Mr. Slim's public commitment.
Why doesn't Labour tackle that health problem and slim the public schools down to nothing by severe taxation?
Voters "doubt that a soda ban would do much to slim down public obesity," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in a statement.
Even more important will be measures to slim the public sector and encourage new start-ups at home.Unionists and nationalists make common cause on broad economic measures at least for now but their unity will be tested in other areas.
These IMF programmes to slim overgrown public sectors in problem countries are usually balanced by a devaluation of the currency to make private sector exporters more competitive and capable of winning extra work, and with a programme of suitable money relaxation to foster a general private sector-led recovery.
Some scientists say that even when the probability of a quake increases, the chances remain so slim that public warnings might be counterproductive.
