Monthly Archives: July 2010

The Coalition started well. Their cancellation of ID cards, HIPs, and lots of regional government was just what many wanted to hear. Yesterday’s papers contained a few warnings that the civil service empire may strike back. Mr. Lansley’s wish to streamline the bureaucracy in health has led to claims that Health Authority and PCT chiefs [...]

During the Labour years London grew fastest, Scotland, Wales and the North slowest. The more public money Labour threw at the poorer and slower growing areas, the more the gap grew in favour of London and the South east. (1998-Q3 2006 London grew 41%, Scotland 16% – from “Freeing Britain to compete”) The new governemnt [...]

Around the world, led by President Obama and the EU, governments are busily making the recovery slower and more difficult. It is fashionable to urge and welcome recovery, and even more fashionable to sand bag it at the same time. In vogue are policies to cut bank lending and credit expansion, to tax enterprise, investment [...]

The bus pass saga shows us that some people in government still in some cases do not get it. The Conservatives – rightly or wrongly – fought the last election on defending the bus pass. So did Labour, and I guess so did the Lib Dems. So why did the Transport Department propose cutting Bus [...]

Labour’s latest campaign is to close the tax gap. With the help of Richard Murphy they reckon there is £120 billion of unpaid tax, tax evasion and tax avoidance. The last Labour government put the figure at a more modest £40 billion but was never able to close the gap. This morning I wish to [...]

This week at Westminster Conservative MPs have had to do a lot of sitting around waiting for votes on the Finance Bill. The government has rightly allowed the Opposition as much time as they want to debate it, and that has led to late nights by the last Labour government’s standards.As Labour have dictated the [...]

This site has long argued that public debt and liabilities amount to £3-4 trillion, thanks to the last government. Yesterday ONS produced its paper seeking to expose the true state of the public accounts. They think we can add to the £890 billion net debt the last government owned up to the following figures: Banking [...]

On Monday a group of MPs were reviewing the government’s progress with a couple of Ministers. In the discussion time and again issues came up about how local government would respond to their new freedoms. MPs are very conscious that many a new government has set out planning to grant more freedoms to Councils and [...]