It’s the census next year and there’s always some debate about what religions should be monitored. In 2001, of course, thousands of people described their religion as Jedi Knight. But after listening to Mark Littlewood, the Director of the Institute for Economic Affairs on the Today programme, this morning, I’m thinking it’s time to start…
Download the 3rd Economic Report The TUC’s latest Economic Report contains the usual round-up of the latest data plus a detailed briefing on public deficits, debt and what the cuts could mean for individual departments and welfare.
The Chancellor has just announced in the Commons that the OBR will have new terms of reference to ensure its independence. It will also be located outside the Treasury and the Treasury Select Committee will have a veto over the appointment of the three members of the OBR. This body might become a serious organisation with…
According to the Office for National Statistics, public sector pay rose in line with private sector pay over the past year. The appearance of much faster rises in the public sector – so noisily protested by the right-wing tabloids and think-tanks – is almost entirely due to the nationalisation of Lloyds and RBS and distortions in the…
It is very widely assumed that the cuts will be the issue that makes the political weather for the lifetime of this Parliament. But could this be overlooking one of the other major effects of the Crash ? The FT is reporting tonight that an intensification of the current “currency war ” looks likely as a…
I feel I’ve been sorely misled. I thought the aim of reforming public sector pensions was to end the brutal “pensions apartheid” that so unjustly stains our nation. Instead it turns out, according to uber-Thatcherite think-tank reform, that it’s all designed to let private companies grab lucrative bits of the public sector for themselves while…
The news from Ireland just keeps getting worse. It has just been announced that the Irish economy shrunk by a full 1.2% in the second quarter of this year. All the things that very tough austerity was supposed to bring – market credibility, lower interest rates, economic growth – have proved illusory. The UK’s position…
Andrew Rawnsley has a great piece in yesterday’s Observer about how ministers are just becoming aware of the massive political risks associated with their cuts programme. But it was the passage below that struck me as the most interesting – ministers suddenly realising that all the think-tank talk of excessive waste in the public sector…
Is this Clegg’s “green shoots of recovery” moment? I’m sure he will not be allowed now to forget Norman Lamont’s infamous phrase nor the fact that the Conservatives laid in to Shriti Vadera when she used the phrase herself. It does look rather odd following so closely on the heels of a very worrying Nationwide…
So common has it become for the White House to blame all bad news on the last administration that a Washington joke claims that Obama is planning to name a newly discovered trench deep under the US, “Bush’s Fault”. Much more of this sort of stuff from the Coalition and maybe we’ll soon see Gordon’s Fault opening up somewhere…