100 Years of UK Public Sector Debt

You know the UK's public spending deficit? The one we're saddled with because Brown and Darling used buckets of taxpayers' cash to bail the banks out, thereby transforming a financial crisis into a public spending crisis? The very deficit the Tories and LibDems think is going to eat babies once it's finished breakfasting on the economy? It kinda looks very small when placed in historical perspective:

Now read this post on Boffy's evergreen Marxian economics blog. Don't let the coalition fool you: there is nothing unprecedented about this debt.