Nicola Smith
NCVO has published results of a survey of senior voluntary sector staff – finding that 63 per cent of those surveyed thought that their balance sheets would worsen over the next year, and 91 per cent thought that economic conditions in the voluntary sector would be negative over the period.
Richard Exell
Today’s Quarterly National Accounts from the Office for National Statistics show that GDP grew by 1.2 per cent in the second quarter of the year. This strong growth is unchanged from the estimate published last month, but government expenditure was revised upwards from 0.3 per cent to 1.0 per cent, as Bloomberg put it in their headline:
U.K. Growth Fuelled by Jump in Government Spending
Bloomberg also reported something that was missed in most other stories about the IMF’s report on the UK:
Nicola Smith
Channel 4′s Cuts Check has picked up on the Government’s recent cut to the rate at which Support with Mortgage Interest will be paid.
Anjum Klair
Local news of how education cuts are affecting schools and education services keeps building. It was reported last week that Perry Street School in Billericay, which had been granted £800,000 by Essex County Council’s Early Years scheme to construct a new building, has had the new development put on hold.
Anjum Klair
The Coalition Government claim that the most vulnerable will be protected by the cuts they are announcing; however the reality is that the cuts are impacting hard on vulnerable groups.
Richard Exell
Charles Bean’s interview with Channel 4’s Faisal Islam has attracted a lot of attention for what he said about savers and shoppers. The Bank’s Deputy Governor said that interest rates had been held at 0.5 per cent for 18 months to encourage people to spend more and thus boost demand. He felt he had to apologise to savers for the low rates, but also warned them that they shouldn’t “expect to be able to live just off their income.”
But there are implications for the government too.
Owen Tudor
Gideon Rachman’s comment column in the Financial Times today repeats the common conception that there is only one way to view international relations. Lula’s approach to Cuba, Iran and Venezuela is portrayed as perverse – or as Rachman puts it, “cynical or naive”. It is suggested that he cannot be a true democrat when he does not publicly excoriate such countries for their democratic failings. A subtle distinction is drawn between Lula and the other southern saint, Nelson Mandela (although in truth, Mandela’s approach to international relations was pretty indistinguishable from Lula’s, especially where Cuba was concerned).
Although there are elements of outright hypocrisy in this sort of approach (see below), the worst feature of it is the complete failure to consider that Lula might be right, and the western consensus wrong – or indeed that there are simply two understandable points of view, neither of which holds the whole truth.
Richard Exell
Richard Kemp, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the Local Government Association, has written to Danny Alexander, calling for the ‘localisation’ of the benefit system. Cllr Kemp, who represents an inner-city ward in Liverpool, argues that making Councils responsible for benefit levels and eligibility would be an improvement because:
We would be able to use money effectively by applying appropriate levels to people and linking benefit packages to training and regeneration resources. This will get people back into temporary work in the short term but re-energise communities in the long term.
Richard Exell
Community Care reports that new Labour leader Ed Miliband supports the creation of a National Care Service, free at point of need for older and disabled people, as advocated by the TUC.
