The Office of Budget responsibility is a recent invention. George Osborne wanted a body that was said toĀ be independent that could assess government economic policy and set out in forecasts what the results were likely to be. To do this he transferred the Treasury model for forecasting the economy and some Treasury officials to this new body. It was given the privilege no other forecaster has of getting prior access to budget measures so when the budget is published the OBR can publish a set of forecasts that include the impact of the latest budget measures. Other independent forecasters can then catch up, putting the new budget measures into their models and running them to see what change results. The OBR forecasts and the average of private sector forecasts are often quite close to each other, with the old Treasury model still having some sway with a range of external economists.Ā Treasury officials clearly work closely with OBR ones, as they used to do when they were all part of the same organisation.
The main problem with this system is the failure of the POBR to come up with reliable and accurate forecasts of the budget deficit. This matters hugely because their wrong forecasts unlike other people’s are used to mark the government’s homework. The main economic policy control is a derivative of the old Maastricht debt and deficit controls. The government aims to have debt falling as a proportion of GDP by the end of the five year forecast period if not before. This relies on the OBR forecasts of the difference between two large numbers, total spending and total revenue, five years hence.
In recent years the OBR has been Ā£100bn or more out in its same year forecasts, let alone in its five year forecasts. The OBR presumes to say the government needs to raise an extra Ā£10 to say Ā£30bn in taxes, when its deficit forecasts swing by far more than these sums year by year. Observing the pattern they tend to greatly exaggerate the deficit when the economy is growing and underestimate it when the economy is slowing or shrinking. The main errors occur on the revenue side. Their model does not seem to take much account of the behavioural effects of higher tax rates which may depress tax take, or the way in which lower tax rates may boost tax take. It certainly doe snot seem to recognise the great sensitivity of revenues to gr9wth rates.
The independent OBR should follow what the Bank has decided. faced with its own failure to forecast inflation, crucial to its task, the Bank has announced a review of its models. The OBR needs to do the same, as it models cannot forecast deficits sensibly, leaving no sound basis for their advice on tax levels.
July 11, 2023
The Bank and the OBR need to submit their models to the more successful financial industry (chosen based on the accuracy of their own models) and Parliament (based on their accurate critical analysis – so you) to āmarkā.
Perhaps you could put together a Group and train some of the more promising MPs, people like Kwarteng.
July 11, 2023
Another pointless QUANGO that needs scrapping.
Every forecast is spectacularly wrong so what is its use.
Jobs for the boys and girls.
July 11, 2023
Correct
July 11, 2023
More Tax Payers money wasted! We need a form of punishment for these scoundrels !
July 13, 2023
Its use is to prolong the policies of Gordon Brown. Even though Osborne created it, it was quickly colonised by the Brownites, as were the Bank and the Treasury.
July 11, 2023
The OBR needs to be abolished. I have been saying this for years. It has NEVER got a single prediction right. Given that government budgetary decisions are based on OBR forecasts, this means that the system itself inevitably means that government policy will ALWAYS be wrong. This is so absurdly stupid that I can’t believe that any serious politician could accept it. We have a system that can ONLY lead to bad government economic policies. For Christ’s sake just abolish this moronic organisation!
July 11, 2023
Absolutely. It just reinforces continuous failure.
July 11, 2023
Good morning.
And right there is the problem. Rather than start afresh he just copied and pasted.
And in all these years since not one model has successfully stated that, the government must learn to live within its means.
July 11, 2023
MB,
BIG chuckle from your last para. The problem with that seemingly achievable condition, is that to do so no UK political party could win, or keep, power. The other guy keeps promising more benefits and handouts. Why? we voters, a majority at least, still believe government knows better how to spend our money than we do.
July 11, 2023
+++
and how did Osbourne perceive this would be independent, with as you say a cut and paste job.
July 11, 2023
Osborne basically had no idea – like most of them and successive Chancellors he just wanted to experiment, with us paying the bill. They all do it, Chancellors, Health, Education etc. Hence a national debt of under one trillion when they started to now nearly 3 trillion and just about all public services worse than ever.
July 11, 2023
I don’t see what they’re spending all our money on ?
July 11, 2023
Why would they when the Government and B of E can just create Ā£billions of “funny money” whenever they want?
These Socialists don’t think they are ever going to run out of other people’s money.
July 11, 2023
Donna
You can never run out of Fiat Currency. However. You can run out of people willing to hold it and maintain its value.
July 11, 2023
By the way, I heard on GB News yesterday, staff are being hired for CBDC and that a trial run is to be run in 2030. When are the results of the consultation on digital currency due?
This seems a repeat of Khan’s installation of the ULEZ cameras before it was even agreed to go ahead with the scheme. Not very diplomatic is it?
July 11, 2023
There’s no other word for it ….”Corruption”
July 11, 2023
Sharon
I think I may have found out more about what āyou will own nothingā means.
Apparently, digital currency is not enough for the globalists because people would still have custody of their (digital) money.
What they are after is ā unified ledgerāwhich sounds a bit like The Doomsday Book.
Every asset worldwide would be recorded and controlled and you have custody of nothing.
The āHappyā bit I believe is that as a slave you will SAY you are happyā¦or else!
Conspiracy theory? Which ones havenāt turned out to be fact?
July 11, 2023
@Mark B – ” must learn to live within its means.” theres a thought, not going to happen all the time the magic money tree(taxpayer) keeps giving. Although they, this Conservative Government is doing its best to destroy it.
July 11, 2023
Independent assessment of political parties’ manifestos and programs is, apparently quite rare. Australia is one of the seven countries that require it according to a 2020 paper:
Costing and Analysis of Political Party Electoral Platforms (Manifestos) by Geoff Dubrow published in WFD Financial Accountability Series, Briefing Paper 6
Apparently the Institute for Fiscal Studies in UK does or used to perform a similar role.
Not sure this helps but there are, clearly, alternatives to the OBR.
July 11, 2023
It has not prevented Australia from building up colossal debts.
July 11, 2023
Perhaps you could save time and simply re-post the exact same message every day – “things are terrible, it’s the BoE’s fault, it’s the OBR’s fault, it’s not at all the fault of the Conservative government that’s been in power thirteen years”. O hang on …. that is what you are doing!
July 11, 2023
The main people to blame are the PMs and Chancellors Cameron/Osborne, May/Hammond, Boris/Sunak especially and now Sunak/Hunt.
Did the OBR advise Osborne and subsequent chancellors of the damage done by his double taxation of bank interest on landlords? Damage done to landlords, investment and thus to tenants? Did the OBR advise that the current absurdly high and complex taxation would obviously kill investment and growth and export businesses as it is doing? As is the net zero rip off intermittent energy lunacy.
So Biden arrives on Airforce one with a fleet of 30+ huge cars (these flown over on another plane I assume) to discuss āclimate changeā with that other deluded hypocrite King Charles for a few minutes. Do as we say not as we do you plebs! The King can at least afford heat pumps and EVs given his vast income from offshore wind farm rents and having saved Ā£200 million or so on IHT due to Major giving the royal family exemptions. While others all have to pay it at 40% over a mere Ā£325k. A figure now worth more like Ā£200k as it has not increases for many years.
July 11, 2023
He is not going to defecate on his own doorstep. Think of it like this. You are not going to tell your work colleagues and your boss that they are bad at their jobs, are you ? That is best left to us who have nothing to lose.
But you are right, the Tories have been in ‘office’ for 13 years and should not be just blaming others.
July 11, 2023
JR is not āblaming othersā. He is the one who points out regularly that the BOE is not independent, therefore its mistakes are the Treasuryās mistakes. Obviously the OBR is not independent but as JR calls it, a branch of the Treasury.
JR is laying the blame squarely at the feet of the government that purports to be Tory.
Give credit where itās due.
July 12, 2023
and yet he sticks to the support of the Government line when challenged.
Reply I have been busy trying to get substantial policy change!
July 12, 2023
Join another Party Sir John, or get your 40 kindred souls to start one! By the way, I hope they all have decent current majorities – they will need it.
July 11, 2023
@Lemming sort of agree, but as the PM said he is in charge, and the collective ‘Blob’ is carrying out his wishes. The PM is the BoE’s Boss, so unfortuantly the fault line is with this Conservative Government, no one else is ending our money to these people.
July 11, 2023
@ Lemming – we all know fault lies with this government and Sir John does not shy away from that (being a most effective real Leader of the Opposition by explaining what it is doing wrong, especially the Chancellor). Yet culpability does not end with the government, there is ample blame to mean there is no need to ration it rather it can be spread to all of the guilty.
July 11, 2023
Too much faith and reliance is placed on modelling.
It is after all guesstimating and that is dependent on the information going in and where it originated.
Never heard of a OBR report dedicated to government waste for example.
A return to the days where there were physical feet on the ground internal audits running 24/7 to ensure waste, future planning budgets were achievable by information gathered from.the people working on the coal face. So is it too much reliance on computers and models they create maybe?
July 11, 2023
It is just Guesstimating using a computer. You can model some simpler things quite well – air flows over an aircraft wing for example but even then there are problems.
But you cannot for example model lottery outcome even if you do know the starting positions and speeds of all the lottery ball. Modelling absurdly complex things like climate, where most of the information you need is not even available, (sunspot and volcanic activity for example for 100 years+) and expect them to be remotely correct. This especially as they have already been proven to be totally inaccurate time and again.
July 11, 2023
I wonder of the OBR thinks of Hunts plan to half inflation (his only plan) ie ton keep increasing interest rates; I bet they love it
July 11, 2023
Like the OBR, erroneous forecasts serve no useful purpose. The Romans used to analyse animal intestines to tell the future. That would be a cheaper way of arriving at the wrong answer, certainly at less cost than the OBR causes in consequential chaos and waste.
July 11, 2023
@Bloke
“That would be a cheaper way of arriving at the wrong answer …”
Made me smile.
Thank you.
July 11, 2023
I very much doubt it was Osborne who wanted an OBR. Why did we “need” it? We’d survived for centuries without one: the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor managed the country’s finances. The B of E operated under their control.
Now the B of E is (supposedly) independent of Government (it isn’t) and appears to be deliberately wrecking the economy. And the OBR’s predictions are as reliable as Mystic Meg. And we’re supposed to believe that the destruction of our economy is all an unfortunate mistake and not the fault of the Establishment, when we can all see that the causes were the Lockdowns, the Nut Zero lunacy and our enthusiastic participation in the USA’s proxy war in Ukraine.
What has become abundantly clear over the past couple of decades is that the entire panoply of the British State is bloated, ineffective, incompetent – and controlled by globalist organisations.
This country isn’t being run for the benefit of the British people. We, the taxpayers/citizens of the UK, come last in the concerns of the Globalists who infest the Establishment.
July 11, 2023
He wanted it to add weight to the treasuries generally duff prediction and help him have cheaper borrowing by helping to con some lenders.
He also gave us the Office for Tax Simplification costing millions – since when tax complexity has, at least, doubled.
July 11, 2023
Still, I think we can deduce from Bilderberger/Remainer Ken Clarke’s article in the DT yesterday, calling for a watered-down version of the Rwanda Plan to reluctantly be accepted, that the Establishment is getting very scared that there is a real prospect of the Blue-Green branch of the Westminster Uni-Party being utterly destroyed in 2024.
And that would make a genuine conservative alternative, putting the interests of the UK first, a real possibility.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/09/mps-must-give-the-rwanda-plan-a-chance/
July 11, 2023
We are just being farmed
July 11, 2023
fleeced
July 11, 2023
OBR = Jobs for the boys. They all do it as soon as they get their hands on the levers of power.
July 11, 2023
@Donna – you could also reason that the OBR and the BoE in today’s form was because the Government of the day thought the Treasury was failing and that was a direct reflection on Government. Lets create new entities, give them access to taxpayer funding then call them independent. Hang on, Governments are 100% responsible and accountable for all taxpayer spend. So it was either a fudge, a sleight of hand, jobs-for-the-boys, or I am useless at my job, in probability it was all of the above.
People forget the system worked before they were created, they are in relative terms very recent ego trips stroking personal egos and self gratification. Governments previously took on their shoulder to be responsible and accountable. We have a grotty Parliament in fear of ādutyā
July 11, 2023
Donna, +++++++
July 11, 2023
@ Donna “This country isnāt being run for the benefit of the British people” – +1
July 11, 2023
Donna, I think you’re not far off the mark. Whenever you see links or look at the UN website, they are sounding more and more like the EU – they’ve agreed amongst themselves that we are to have a world government; and that’s what they’re building!
Mayor Khan is a member of C40, the global association of mayors, working together as a united force. When did we vote for this?
If the populations of enough countries get their act together there should be an agreement to disband the UN, WHO and WEF!
July 11, 2023
The OBR is just another predictable and tiresome act of political deceit by a smart arsed Oxbridge grifter whose only concern is self-aggrandisement and self-enrichment
July 11, 2023
Ohā¦it was all just a game!
Never mind our unimportant little lives.
I tell youā¦that Bullingdon Club photo ( prob disappeared now).
So propheticā¦.all very New Romanticā¦they were all thereā¦
Look on my works and despair ( to slightly misquote Shelley).
July 11, 2023
@DOM +1 exactly
July 11, 2023
Blinking āduplicate postā thing playing up again.
Try again. Here goesā¦.
I think he said that it was just a game!
No care for our little lives.
The famous but probably now vanished Burlington Club photo.
Now that REALLY foretold the future.
They were all looking out at the landscape they would createā¦
A nightmare of chaos and ruin!
July 11, 2023
Aaaaargh!
Now the other one has appeared!!
July 11, 2023
So, neither the BoE or the Treasury know how much money GB actually has! Let alone be able to track correctly the revenue to spend. So we could be more bankrupt than we actually are?
With the high chances of Labour winning the next election. The British people are doomed………
July 11, 2023
@Jude – would a Socialist WEF indoctrinated Government be any different from this Socialist WEF indoctrinated Government? They are both there to serve an external Globalist view and not those people that elect, pay and empower them. You could reason that 70-80% of those in the HoC are deceitful and duplicitous. As suggested so many time on this site, the HoC is a single UniParty
July 11, 2023
The OBR should be immidiately abolished, closed down.
July 11, 2023
The OBR, like so many areas of the public sector, faces no sanction or review when it gets things wrong. Thus is continues to cause mayhem unchecked, like much of the public sector.
There are consequences for the rest of us, why not the public sector? The opening lines of the budget should reference performance against forecast as it would in the private sector.
Based on what you write, there was no point in Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng seeking an OBR report for their financial statement as the model would not have considered the positive measures as positive measures.
It really does seem more and more like a bloodless coup every day as the interest rates rise and inflation remains entrenched.
July 11, 2023
Iāve been following a really entertaining series about life in the Forbidden City of Imperial China.
I donāt much fancy the chances of the OBR there!
The Emperor was most exacting.
July 11, 2023
The problem appears to be that few Mp’s have any real financial, commercial, banking, and economic experience, unlike yourself.
For most it is all theory, so they believe what they are being told, by those who have the levers of control, and therein is the problem, the blind are leading the blind !
The captain of the ship wants to go North, but has not recognised that someone has put a metal object close to the compass on the bridge, thus they think they are heading North as planned because that is where the needle is pointing, but they are in fact going in the wrong direction, because no one is actually looking or taking notice of the stars or the Sun.
July 11, 2023
As the OBR is stuffed full of Labour-supporting economists they are predisposed to put out pessimistic forecasts which will damage the government. When Starmer is PM then the OBR forecasts will magically become more positive.
July 11, 2023
Where taxpayer money is handed out, those in receipt can not be classed or even seen as independent. The Government of the Day is always 100% responsible and accountable for the āproductā produced by all those in receipt of Taxpayer Funding.
Time to drop the pretence, and act like a Democracy.
July 11, 2023
Would an FUAI ( Forcasting Using Artificial Intelligence) be a better bet than the interbreeding of OBR, Treasury and Government. However even AI is dependant on what it is fed on.
July 11, 2023
Sir John ā with respect, you cannot keep blaming these taxpayer supported entities that work for the State, when the PM himself says they are doing his bidding.
āRishi Sunak said there was no such thing as a Whitehall āBlobā blocking ministers from achieving their policy objectives.Ā
The Prime Minister said in his experience civil servants have been āincredibly hard working and diligentā in helping to ādeliver what I wantedā.Ā
Mr Sunak made the comments after William Wragg, the Tory chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committeeā.
In essence these repeated failures are the PMās and this Conservative Governments wishes and directions.
July 11, 2023
Today’s Media – “Voters trust Starmer over Sunak on economy and foreign policy”
Logic the Unions would never allow him to trash UK jobs therefore the UK economy
July 11, 2023
………………….Logic the Unions would never allow him to trash UK jobs therefore the UK economy……………
but they are allowing the DESTRUCTION of our manufacturing industry on the alter of Nut Zero/non existent climate change. Increasing energy costs and importing fossil fuels rather than exploit our own. Aided by a 25% increase in corporation tax and stealth increases in all of our income, inheritance and capital gains taxes by not increasing allowances. The Tory’s have blown it. They can’t recover any credibility in 12 months. Especially as (Sunak ed)had solved the boat crisis………………………………oh, but he hasn’t. Still no deportations to anywhere. Effective amnesty for criminals at English taxpayers expense. Where’s my free 4* hotel, free food, health, education, clothes, pocket money? Where can I go elsewhere on Earth and get this?……………No where. We have a bunch of treasonous morons in Westminster who need removing.
July 11, 2023
Do you think? Ian B
Na! They are all in the same nest!
July 11, 2023
The OBR seems saleable, especially so if private forecasters like its old Treasury model. Invitations to tender could be sent out next week, no?
July 11, 2023
This quango achieves nothing …it needs to be closed down
July 11, 2023
Not just that quango but most could do with significant hair cuts. Starting with the useless Home Office, then the Foreign supporting Office and the EU loving Treasury etc etc. We wouldn’t notice if they were gone or if we cut Westminster and the Lords by 80%. Time to rid ourselves of the self serving Lords with elected non politician experts.
July 11, 2023
Mark B, the second comment today, said it all.
Who has been sacked at the OBR for their appalling forecasts? Answer, No One!
That’s the root of the problem!
Has Andrew Bailey been sacked for his total failure to do his job? No, of course not & there again is the problem!
This government not only tolerates mediocrity but encourages it!
July 12, 2023
OBR – what does the third letter stand for? Isn’t it about time for someone to take it?
July 11, 2023
The models are part of the problem – but a review of the hiring practises in the OBR is also needed. This ‘independent’ body has an enormous amount of power. Incidentally, I’m currently reading Newt Gingrich’s ‘Understanding Trump’. He is scathing about the impartiality of Congress’s OBR-equivalent.
July 11, 2023
Given its links, past and present, to the Treasury, it is hard to see how the OBR can be independent in any real sense. It is just an addition to the smoke and mirrors, like the so called ‘Independence’ of the BOE, to enable the Chancellor and PM of the day, to say it’s not their fault when things go wrong. Truss and Kwarteng had the right ideas; it remains a tragedy that the lacked to political skill to implement them.
July 11, 2023
Do you really think that āpolitical skillsā would have held out against the blatant coup by the unspeakables?
I, for one, donāt think so.
July 11, 2023
We would probably be better off if the UK didn’t have an “Independent” OBR or an “Independent” Bank of England and made the Treasury accountable for its forecasts. Economics is not a science but a way of thinking about Economics. We need The Treasury staffed with economists that favour growth to pay the UK’s debt rather than taxes, that favour exporting over importing. However instead we have people with jobs for life regardless of their failings who want to work from home and even work from abroad.
July 11, 2023
“Their model does not seem to take much account of the behavioural effects …”
According to Wikipedia:
“Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by classical economic theory.
Behavioral economics is primarily concerned with the bounds of rationality of economic agents. Behavioral models typically integrate insights from psychology, neuroscience and microeconomic theory. The study of behavioral economics includes how market decisions are made and the mechanisms that drive public opinion.”
All of this seems to have been too difficult for public sector people ?
July 11, 2023
As a result of Robert Conquestās second and third laws of politics the OBR has become yet another left wing lobbying outfit who fix their models to achieve their desired political outcomes, just as the fake and equally erroneous climate models of the IPCC.
We are told to āfollow the scienceā which, through the need for funding, now follows the politics.
The Government and the country should be analysing a whole series of different forecasts and models from all sides of the political spectrum and not just those of the left wing Treasury and the OBR.
BTW, the way to curb inflation is to ensure that politicians and civil servants who work for the Treasury and the OBR do not have inflation related pensions.
July 11, 2023
Isn’t it the case that the OBR is used to lead the government astray and far from the path of good economics?
With such collusion between the Treasury and OBR there is really no excuse to why OBR forecasts should be so appallingly inaccurate, unless it was made so, deliberately.
July 11, 2023
We mustn’t forget Jeremy Hunt has created another new department with taxpayer funding manned by outside advisors to basically to tell him what the OBR is saying.
13 years of prolific Conservative Government taxpayer spending, with no concern of how can the State live within the means that the economy allows.
July 11, 2023
They care about welfare recipient’s and not tax payers. Take a look at all the money/grants/allowances they give them for being idle at inflation rates. No time limits!!!!!!!! Shame I can’t put off my self assessment timeframe for a few……….decades. English tax payers should go on strike until Westminster reformed welfare in all its forms and maximum timeframes based on contributions.
July 11, 2023
A change is certainly a necessity right now as far as economic forecasting is concerned . Errors by both the BoE and the OBR have created such a dismal outlook that I and most of the public have ever known . One of the outcomes has driven investment and key industrial activities elsewhere ; this situation must be stopped . Accurate judgement requires the employment of the best of individuals – clearly they are not there at the moment .
July 11, 2023
This Tory government is about to grant amnesty to 10,000 illegal immigrants ā¦.we as a nation are lost
July 11, 2023
@glen cullen – commit a criminal act as a foreign criminal and get a free pass. Get caught in the deceitful web of traffic violations and get consigned to purgatory.
July 11, 2023
With a majority of 75ish, why is this government accepting ANY of the Lords amendments ref the Illegal Migration Bill
July 11, 2023
Unaccompanied Children ā Between the ages of 0-16yrs thereās no way on earth I would have left my family, trek across my country, paid (Ā£thousands) for a illegal Mediterranean sea crossing, trek across five countries, settled in France for a year, than paid (another few Ā£thousands) for an illegal English Channel crossing ā¦.THEY ARE NOT UNACCOMPANIED ā¦Theyāre just told to say that using a woke loophole to bypass english law
July 11, 2023
For the most part they aren’t children either, even by the standards of Western countries, but it would be a ‘violation of their rights’ to perform any medical tests. Remember the farce of bearded 40-y-o men being placed in schools with parents and pupils threatened with sanctions if they protested. Next wheeze will be to ‘self-identify’ as a pregnant woman with dissenters branded ‘transphobes’.
July 12, 2023
Like the real refugees from Ukraine, maybe we should only accept women & childen under 10 ….with documentation
July 11, 2023
How else did you think Sunak was going to “clear the backlog.” They’re deporting at the rate of about 30 a year!
July 11, 2023
… and the politicians refuse to take notice of the nationwide attacks against France a week ago.
July 11, 2023
GC Our nation – I thought the number was higher but hey ho! We all know it will be anyway. Maybe I’m confusing it with the proposed 17.000 Republic of Ireland was talking about a few months back. But, Britons should open up their homes ! Perhaps we should all consider the call today for ‘the galvanisation of voluntary spirit’ – for a Ukrainian refugees style sponsorship scheme for people from other nations, which we are told should be adopted – a think tank study backed by Brandon Lewis (today D/Tel) Unbelievable. How about our budget responsibility for the now reported Ā£500.000 daily expenditure as a buffer to cover the empty bed bank cost in hotels for the just in case scenarios where numbers may exceed what might be expected ( To avoid Manston chaos where we are not permitted to hold on to these incomers beyond holding time rules & regs, as happened last year, by necessity, and for which the UKG was slapped heavily on the wrist.) Our responsibility too for the Ā£ millions to councils to buy homes for those invited in. Just one example today – Harrogate, N. Yorkshire ( Ā£ millions of funding / match funding 2022/2023 – Yorkshire Post – for the purchase homes )
July 11, 2023
A totally wasted night of sops to Cerberus then?
What in Godās name makes them think that they can just keep giving away what is not their to give?
July 11, 2023
… and yet, in spite of the evident repeated failures of the Treasury model, people believe the Climate Change model with religious zeal … Both are gross simplifications of the real world.
July 11, 2023
+many and for ‘people’ replace with ‘politicians’
July 11, 2023
A shame there isn’t a fit for purpose ‘Office of Budget Responsibility’ within Wokingham Borough Council.
For years the Lib Dems peddled their propaganda of blame with ‘Tories this, Tories that’ in their political garbage shoved through the front door.
Yet two years into a Lib Dem controlled Wokingham Borough, the council is now facing bankruptcy.
Bins likely to be emptied less often, public open spaces maintained less frequently, increased parking within the Borough – including the highly unpopular decision to nearly double parking charges in Woodley. Not to mention other cuts coming down the road, whilst expecting increasing receipts every year from struggling households.
Wokingham Borough Council now has a record number of homes within its boundary, resulting in the highest income of Council tax. It refuses to adopt streets in new build areas (meaning residents have to pay a service charge to a private company for things the council should be doing), yet the Council still can’t make ends meet.
Something is seriously wrong with their office of Budget Responsibility.
The Lib Dems for years in opposition were shouting from the rooftops at how bad the Tories were at running Wokingham. They have done a far worse job of it after just two years in power.
July 11, 2023
@Mark J – yet they are on top of double talk and miss direction. Come the GE the knives will be out again, with innuendo to try and stab Sir JR in the back.
Gone from the one of the UKās best performing cost effective Councils to one of the worst and most expensive in less than a decade.
July 11, 2023
Office of Budget Responsibility? You’re joking. ?
Not fit for independence like many other unaccountable agencies.
Who audits and does critical appraisals of it apart from SJR?
It has become another “useful idiot” and side show / distraction to fog up and stir up the cloudy muddy economic mess created by the government while it merrily goes on to fool the shallow media who treat it as gospel who then shower it into the Public.
Time is up for OBR to be given the “Order of the Boot” as the boot is now on the other foot. They need investigating themselves.
The have more in common with Russian military planning and forecasting.
Disastrous for both.
July 11, 2023
Neither the OBR or BoE need new models; the first should be abolished and the second should have the power to set interest rates removed and returned to the Chancellor, who is accountable to Parliament and the electorate.
July 11, 2023
@mickc +1 – Invented to get Governments of the hook, while forgetting that all the time they need Taxpayer funding the Government is still the Boss and that they act in accordance, wishes and direction from Government. It worked extremely well before their new creation at significantly less cost, without the subterfuge of political sleight of hand
July 11, 2023
It sounds as though the OBR try to justify their existence but Ā£1billion out in same year forecast is pushing the boundaries of finance too far.
July 11, 2023
I wish that the OBR would look into my council, as theyāre about to spend an additional Ā£11million making the temporary cycle lanes permanent (without any study into the numbers using them) ā¦.when they canāt fix pot-holes, canāt fix street lighting, nor provide public toilets, nor reduce council tax etc
July 11, 2023
Iāve found out that we have a highly paid position within our City Region called āWalking and Cycling Commissionerā
Canāt a Tory government stop this nonsense
July 12, 2023
Why would they? They’ve been enthusiastically promoting, facilitating and making us pay for it for the past 13 years.
July 11, 2023
Home Office data as at 10th July 2023
Illegal immigrants – 338
Small boats – 6
July 11, 2023
I see Boris Johnson has named his new son Odysseus the Cunning.
Says it all really. Admirer of guile and cunning. Qualities the British have never admired.
July 12, 2023
Frankly …who cares? another of so many.
July 11, 2023
It seems, then, that the Treasury, the Bank of England, and the OBR use the same model. Their staff input the same data into their computers, which are programmed to run the same model, and – surprisingly – they come to the same conclusions. Is this model open to inspection by other economists, or is it a black box? Could a Freedom of Information request bring this model into the public realm?
July 11, 2023
I believe that the Climate Change Committee uses the same model
July 11, 2023
Sunak at NATO summit, which of the following people is he (really) representing –
(a) European Union (wants adulation of the international elite)
(b) United States of America (wants a green card)
(c) United Kingdom (ignores the party membership wishes)
July 12, 2023
So you don’t like my suggestion or the possibility that others might agree with me. Nor do you like my offer to you or anyone else to produce an alternative solution.
July 12, 2023
The OBR being formed from Treasury staff was a recipe for disaster. They will use the same methods and come to the same conclusions, unless…
They are infiltrated by people with a political agenda. Which is what has happened, as in all our other institutions.
Guido Fawkes regularly reports the background of new appointees and they are, without exception, Brexit-hating lefties.
They may adjust their models, but they will probably do so until they give them the answer they want.
July 12, 2023
P.S. A computer model is a piece of software and as such, it will contain a number of assumptions – which may prove to be correct or incorrect, time shows us which it is.
The key aspect in question here is: testing.
All software goes through various phases of testing. At the final stage “user acceptance testing”, officials should be requiring the models to take the historic inputs that were provided to previous models and show that they can successfully predict what actually happened, rather than do what their predecessor models did (which was to get it wrong).
If the model is given the inputs that were given to a previous model after, say, the 2021 Budget, then they should be able to predict what happened as a result of that Budget. And the same for every other period in history – since we know the answer due to hindsight, we can test if the model can “predict” those known outcomes. And we can and should expect it to do that for every single year going back to the year dot.
If it can’t do that, then send the darned thing back to the drawing board and have it adjusted until it can.