Adam Lent
If reports are correct, Monday’s Pre-Budget Report could prove a major political moment. Not only will it signal the Government’s appeal to the electorate ahead of a General Election in 2009 or 2010, it will also confirm the developing chasm between the Tories and Labour on how to respond to the recession. But, and maybe most interestingly, it could mark a turning point in the debate about tax in the UK.
Adam Lent
Repossession has always struck me as a barbaric way of treating someone who may already be facing financial problems brought about by family breakdown, illness or unemployment. But it is also clear that fear of losing the family home is so deep seated in the British psyche that the continuing rise in repossessions is one of those things, like growing unemployment, that will create the profound sense of insecurity that leads to more saving, less spending and ultimately a deeper recession.
Paul Sellers
On 17 December there will be a key vote in the European Parliament on the future of the opt-outs from the 48 hour week. I’ve just heard that the ETUC has called a demonstration at the Parliament in Strasbourg on the eve of this vote (16 Dec), starting at 1.30.
Thus its time to check that the UK could manage OK if the opt-outs ended. Here are some key facts:
Nigel Stanley
Unite have got the Labour Research Department to add up the salaries of bonuses of the top UK banks for the five years betwen 2003 and 2007.
Here’s the press release. (though I can’t find the full dossier online).
Adam Lent
At last, what the web has been crying out for: a site that gives the awful Taxpayers Alliance a good going over. One remarkable thing about this site is that it has the domain name www.taxpayersalliance.org. So much for the ultra media savvy TPA who never bothered to register the domain for themselves. By the way the same people are behind bubblewrapped which takes a satirical but informative look at the politics of the credit crunch.
Adam Lent
A lot of people I speak to are expressing some bemusement at the Conservative Party’s increasingly hard line on Brown’s fiscal stimulus policy and are trying to come up with explanations. Many wonder if Osborne’s and Cameron’s recent statements represent some irresistible pressure for a return to full-blooded Thatcherism demanded by the Tory grassroots and The Daily Mail. I myself have wondered whether Tory backbenchers’ tolerance for Cameron’s dalliance with progressive social policies would not extend to progressive economics leaving him no choice but to stake out a clear opposition. How else to explain an approach that is doing nothing for their poll ratings?
Nicola Smith
Today we launched our first Recession Report. This monthly series will provide ongoing analysis of labour market trends and forecasts, and provide some of the facts behind the headlines. It will also consider how the recession is impacting upon particular policy areas, and in the November edition we provide a focus on vulnerable employment.
Adam Lent
I have heard it said that in a crisis, one’s true nature shows through. In this economic crisis, Brown is revealing the Keynesian he kept under wraps so well for a decade. While Osborne is revealing the Thatcherite that the Tories have been so keen to hide since Cameron took over. As a result, the dividing lines in British party politics are becoming ever starker. And everyone, of course, tries to paint their analysis as somehow absolute and indisputable. The truth is that everything is in flux and getting increasingly difficult to control and predict. However, I still think Brown’s approach is preferable even with such high levels of uncertainty.
Owen Tudor
As activists, campaigners and most people in the global south demand a new global economic and financial settlement, the west’s business media are alive with the sound of staggering complacency and self-centredness and nowhere is that clearer than in Friday’s blogs from the FT’s Brussels and Foreign affairs editors, Tony Barber and Gideon Rachman.
