Monthly Archives: June 2010

CGT

There are four pieces of welcome news on the new CGT proposals. The first is that savers with modest incomes will still only pay 18% on modest gains over the tax free allowance. The second is the substantial increase in the entrepreneurs allowance as an encouragement to people to establish and grow businesses. The third [...]

Posted in Blog | 46 Comments

Reply from the Communities and Local Government Secretary

Dear John Abolition of Regional Strategies Thank you for your letter of the 17 May 2010 and for your congratulations on my appointment as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government; it is a post I am pleased to hold so that I can implement the Coalition Government’s radical policies on devolving power from [...]

Posted in Wokingham and West Berkshire Issues | Leave a comment

The race to the bottom – currency management in the Credit Crunch

Yesterday the yuan edged higher against the dollar as the first installment in China’s new approach to its currency after a period of pegging it to the dollar. Although the move was small, it was important. There are no guarantees of a big revaluation, and no suggestion that China will move to an unmanaged rate. [...]

Posted in Blog | 9 Comments

Pain and hurt?

We do make heavy weather of controlling public spending in this country. The £6 billion of cuts which caused such anguish in the Election debates represented less than 1% of total public spending. Tomorrow’s budget will probably be proposing cuts of less than 10% over the lifetime of this Parliament. Sensibly managed, this need not [...]

Posted in Blog | 31 Comments

The great haul of China

Good news – China will revalue the yuan. The huge imbalances in the world stem from supercompetitive China knocking the rest into a cocked hat. Gradual increaes in the value of yuan will help rebalance a bit, and will mean China is nearer to the end of her period of slowing her economy by restricting [...]

Posted in Blog | 10 Comments

Budget prospects

I was pleased to hear yesterday through the media that the budget will include measures to boost a private sector recovery at the same time as taking action to control the public deficit. As I have been arguing, the country needs hope and budget control needs the prospects of many more private sector jobs. Curbing [...]

Posted in Blog | 17 Comments

How do you score a goal?

Some bloggers advise me to keep away from football commentary. Last night I returned home in time for the highlights of the England game. That didn’t take long to watch. England have now played around three hours of match football wthout scoring a goal after their stylish opener against the USA. Perhaps our football experts [...]

Posted in Blog | 30 Comments

Inflation: time for the Bank of England to get out more

The government needs an MPC which gets it right. Unfortunately, for the last five years, the MPC has been well behind the plot, lurching from too easy to too tight to printing money. Today their rationale for believing inflation is not a problem is that our economy enjoys a lot of unused capacity. So, they [...]

Posted in Blog | 12 Comments

Another bad day for BP

BP’s decision to go to the White House on Mr Obama’s terms was strange enough. I would have thought they should have offered to go in conjunction with their main American sub contractors, saying “We are all in this together. We need all to be available to answer the President’s questions and to show how [...]

Posted in Blog | 20 Comments

Well done Mr Alexander

It was good to learn yesterday that projects announced shortly before the election which Labour could not afford are to be cancelled. I am surprised in many cases that people think it worthwhile arguing against such cuts, when there is no money to pay for these new commitments. The BBC chose to give time to [...]

Posted in Blog | 14 Comments
  • About John Redwood

    John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College, and has a DPhil from All Souls, Oxford. A businessman by background, he has been a director of NM Rothschild merchant bank and chairman of a quoted industrial PLC.
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