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Sarkozy has fired the starting pistol for a year long race to get a Financial Transactions Tax either globally, among a coalition of the willing, or at EU level
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Martin Wolf sets out the threat facing Goerge Osborne if he ignores this week’s GDP figures
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The BMJ speaks out against NHS reforms
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In America, just like the UK, men were hit harder during the recession but women have done worse during the recovery.
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Richard Exell
Today the DWP opened the first “Enterprise Clubs” and publicised a trailblazer for the “New Enterprise Allowance”, due soon. (A ‘trailblazer’ is what the Labour government called a ‘pathfinder’ – launching a new programme or policy on a limited number of places to see if there are any problems.) The idea is that unemployed people who want to become self-employed will get help through the clubs from existing businesses.
This is one of those government initiatives – like the National Insurance holiday – that isn’t actually evil. In fact, it’ll probably do some good – there’s quite a few people who dream of being their own boss and self-employment may be the best option for some people who face serious discrimination by employers.
But you’ve got to say that the tail end of a rather weak recovery isn’t the best time to be starting off in business.
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Philip Pearson
A packed meeting in Nottingham (27 January) is just one of many local campaigns springing up against the sale of our forests. “Sherwood Forest matters”, the Sherwood campaign reports. “ It is something that is too vital and deeply rooted in the people of Nottinghamshire to be simply sold off by the Government in response to the ravages of the banking crisis.” The meeting was convened by Nottinghamshire Save Our Services and the Climate Alliance .
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Richard Exell
The evidence that the household sector of the economy is in a very bad way has been building up up for months. The latest is the GfK NOP Consumer Confidence Index; the January figure showed an 8 point fall to -29. This is the worst result since March 2009, when when we were just coming out of recession.
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Economics
Bankers at Davos: whingers of the world unite – which politicians are brave enough to bite back?
Owen Tudor
There’s something sick-making about the richest people in the world complaining that they’re unloved and hard done by. But that’s what we’re getting on a regular basis from fat cat bankers. From Bob Diamond of Barclays’ appeal to the Finance Select Committee to ‘let it go’ with the demands for contrition from the finance sector for bringing the world to its knees just a year or two ago, to JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon’s tirade against banker bashing in Davos, and Friday’s meeting between the world’s top bankers and various Finance Ministers at Davos, financiers barely have enough time to count their bonus payments what with all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. As Howard Davies, once head of the CBI and now head of the London School of Economics put it on his FT blog, “Bankers and creatures of that ilk rather go for austerity, as long as it’s not theirs.”
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Owen Tudor
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC has produced a useful six-page paper looking at the lessons for the US of the UK’s stamp duty on share transactions, which, before the crisis, raised 0.3% of UK GDP for the exchequer. He uses that figure to estimate the impact of a financial speculation tax in the US, if such a tax also covered options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivatives. He comes up with a total tax take of 1% of US GDP, or $150 billion (stamp duty on shares alone, at the UK rate, would produce $40 billion). And the figure could in fact be more (see below). But even at that conservative estimate, over the next decade, an FST would raise twice as much as the cost of the 2009 stimulus package, thus having a huge impact on the US deficit (on top of the impact of the growth that the stimulus package is having). Yet another piece of evidence that a Robin Hood Tax (basically an FST plus a currency transation levy) would be enormously beneficial to the campaign to preserve and extend public goods, fight climate change and reduce global poverty.
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Richard Exell
The government believes that, when the state steps back from running services, civil society will step in to take its place – the Big Society. But the evidence is mounting that state provision is the enabler of voluntary action, not a barrier.
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Anjum Klair
Children and Young People Now report that Hampshire is set to slash it’s children’s services workforce. A total of 376 posts in children’s services are planned to be axed at Hampshire County Council as the authority prepares to make savings of £55m this year. The jobs, which represent 11 per cent of the children’s services workforce of 3,492, are part of a 7.1 per cent reduction in the council’s overall workforce for 2011/12. Council chiefs have said a similar reduction will have to be made in 2012/13.
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Anjum Klair
The Guardian reports that five Birmingham Citizens Advice offices are to close and 900 debt advisers are to be made redundant across the country, as council cuts start to hit charities.
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Anjum Klair
Both Children and Young People and Community Care report today that a survey has revealed that up to seven per cent (250) Sure Start children’s centres could close within a year, while thousands are cutting back services and issuing redundancy risk notices.