Monthly Archives: June 2011

             One of the biggest disappointments of the last fourteen years has been the growing divide between the North and the South of the UK.           Labour in office promised their policies would reduce inequalities, and start to put right the big gap between living standards and economic success in London and the Southeast of [...]

            When I went to Huddersfield on Thursday for Question Time the BBC proposed using the train. That was fine for the outward journey, but it turned out there were no trains after 10pm, about the time I needed one to get back home. It was also obvious there would be no connecting train from [...]

            Mr Andrew Cooper’s arrival at Downing Street has brought an admirable wish to speak truth to power to the centre of the government.Tthe results of some of the polling lies behind  the recent decisions to change policy. The polls did not just do for some of the more hotly contested changes to the NHS, but also have [...]

                The UK government is about to ask Parliament’s permission to subscribe for £9.5 billion of new capital to the IMF. I expect we will be told we have to do this, there is no alternative, it’s part of the price of our memebrship of this international club.               So let me begin by [...]

               Friday’s first report of the Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England was an important event. This is the new body charged with regulating the banks and main financial institutions. To the tabloids, it is the Bank’s committee to prevent another Credit Crunch. It will absorb and take over many of the [...]

                 Yesterday we saw the first Financial Policy Committee Report from the Bank of England, as the new regulator of banks awaiting full hand over from the FSA.               Their first instruction to the FSA is: “The Committee advises the FSA  to ensure that  improved disclosure of sovereign and banking sector exposures by major UK [...]

            Yesterday was a day when Parliament asserted itself against the executive. Nellie is saying Good bye to the circus, if Parliament has its way.           Conservative MPs had been placed on a  three line whip to vote down Mark Pritchard’s motion. The government favoured better regulation of circus animals. Mr Pritchard favoured a [...]

             When some of us opposed early and wide monetary union within the EU we said joining the Euro was joining an Exchange Rate Mechanism you could not get out of. Some went further, and said the danger of joining the Euro was locking yourself into a common European house  and throwing away the [...]