Monthly Archives: January 2010

Today Parliament debates the Budget Deficit Reduction Bill. Don’t expect much light to be shed on how this government would cut spending on the scale needed to halve the deficit as promised. Ministers use every opportunity to turn the spotlight on the Tories, avoiding any comment on their own black holes and redaction. Public spending [...]

Between 1992 and 1997 Labour spokesmen and women made all sorts of suggestions and proposals which would have increased public spending. Just before the election Gordon Brown as Shadow Chancellor announced that most of these were unaffordable or were not serious. He only permitted a short list of pledges to add to the fairly tight [...]

One of the worst political cop outs I have to listen too is “We have to accept the scientific advice”. “We did this because the scientists told us we had to”. Ministers all too readily resort to this line of argument on vexatious matters like genetically modified food, global warming and moral matters superimposed on [...]

New battle lines have been drawn. Mr Brown says the difference between the two main parties is between Labour’s Age of Opportunity and the Conservatives’ Age of Austerity. The true battle lines are between a Conservative party which grasps that there can be no sustained recovery without controlling the deficit, and a Labour party which [...]

Dear Shareholder, I hope you had a great Hogmanay, and have now forgotten New Year’s Day when sensible people sleep it all off.I wanted to write to you in the spirit of this great festival to tell you how your company has added to the joys of this old and formerly Scottish custom. I left [...]

New Year’s resolutions are often made to be broken. They may be said to satisfy a friend, or indulged in to make us feel better about ourselves. Later in January the New Year does not seem that different to the old. It can seem like too much effort to follow the good intentions of the [...]