Everyone agrees that this is a crucial year for international development. The Millennium Development Goals expire this year, and will be replaced at the UN General Assembly in September with 17 sustainable development goals, aiming to eradicate global poverty. In addition, there is a big UN Financing for Development conference in Addis Abbaba this summer,…
The Council of Mortgage Lenders have released figures for February 2015. Its bad news for would-be home-owners as the number of mortgages approved continues to decline (see CML chart below). The latest figure of 40,600 approvals is 1 per cent lower than January but a whopping 16 per cent lower than Februarys 2014. First-time buyers are being locked out of the…
The British Bankers Association said today that there were “signs that the mortgage market is recovering”. This view is based on the fact that in February bank mortgage approvals reached a five-month high. whilst any morsel of good news is always welcome,it is certainly not time to open the champagne yet. In fact, fair-minded observers would focus more…
In a week when the government is claiming credit for getting hundreds of disabled people a day into employment and global corporation Maximus is about to take over running the Work Capability Assessment from discredited ATOS, why should the TUC bother with publishing a guide explaining the difference between the social and medical “models of…
Question: In deciding not to shortlist the Don Valley Power Project for the UK’s £1bn Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) competition, is the government’s intent on pushing any major financial commitment to carbon capture into the next Parliament? Certainly, Don Valley, Yorkshire, the top ranked project in a parallel process run by the European Commission,…
Green is good for growth. That’s the central message emerging from two weeks of political debate in Brighton and Manchester where energy prices and green jobs have moved centre stage. Caroline Flint, who is speaking at the TUC’s green jobs conference on 23 October, argued in her address to the Labour Party conference that Britain needs…
With Labour and LibDems showing a new found enthusiasm to cut consumers’ energy bills, what’s needed is a new green tariff in the Government’s Energy Bill that does just that: a consumers’ incentive not to use electricity. A new study from the Green Alliance shows that persuading consumers to reduce their energy demand is cheaper…
Both Ed Balls and Danny Alexander have come out as strong champions of the green economy. Yesterday, the Shadow Chancellor announced the launch of an independent infrastructure commission to explore how to drive long-term investment in new clean energy capacity and a low carbon transport network. Balls left Osborne looking “increasingly isolated” as he pursues…
This autumn’s Energy Bill looks set to be a fight between “past and future”, between those for whom climate change is a high risk demanding action and a sizeable hard core of climate change deniers. In Parliament, this means around 100 MPs and a Lords’ “caucus” – Ed Davey’s “Tea Party tendency” within the Conservative Party. Ed…
Consumer groups (including the TUC) and the government disagree about what to do about the many small DC pension pots that will multiply once automatic enrolment starts. But is there room for a compromise that can meet the concerns that both sides have about the other’s position? I think there might be.