The Left Foot Forward blog have made quite a big deal about a need to encourage business investment. They have a reasonable point that falling investment is a key component of falling demand and a recovery will be vital to our broader economic fortunes. Greg Mankiw, the world's 20th... Read more...
“Oversight of the Single Payment Scheme is a singular example of comprehensively poor administration on a grand scale.” This statement opens the second paragraph of the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) latest report, and it clearly pulls no punches. DEFRA and the Rural Payment’s Agency (RPA) are set to receive more... Read more...
As the Copenhagen summit draws to a conclusion, the TaxPayers' Alliance estimates the excessive burden of green taxes and regulations in every local authority Green taxes have risen to £26.4 billion in the last year. That is up £1.7 billion from £24.7 billion in 2007/08. The total cost of... Read more...
Another Wednesday, another crop of new jobs in the Society Guardian, and it appears that ‘diversity’ is very much the word of the week. Peterborough prison service are hiring for a Diversity Manager to keep its staff up to date on the full-range of politically correct dos-and-don’ts with a... Read more...
This morning Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee was on BBC R4 Today with the economist Ruth Lea. They were discussing the question of government debt and whether the UK might lose its AAA credit rating.According to Polly Toynbee, the risks have been hugely exaggerated by the City and their groupthink apologists. She says: "No serious economist... Read more...
The TPA recently produced a survey of capital project overruns and found that on average they ran 38 per cent above their original budgets. Procurement and the the Ministry of Defence (MOD) have made particularly uncomfortable bedfellows in the recent past, and the MOD unsurprisingly fared badly in our report,... Read more...
Dan Mitchell, from the Centre for Freedom and Prosperity, presents a new video about massive borrowing in the United States. The issues are very similar in the UK and, to an even greater extent, excessive spending is definitely the problem. More detail is set out in our report (PDF) on... Read more...
Advantage West Midlands usually use any opportunity to blast out “return on investment” figures with regards to their spending, but today’s Birmingham Mail reports that quango bosses a little shyer about how much their massive £300,000 MIPIM spend brought in. Mick Laverty, chief executive of AWM, was being questioned... Read more...
The quality of the pre-Budget report depends largely on what we want from it. Those who think it should be about politics will be pleased, but for the rest of us, who believe a budget should be about sound fiscal management, the verdict is damning. Under close examination, staggering inconsistencies... Read more...
Last week the Open Knowledge Foundation launched a prototype version of 'Where Does My Money Go', an excellent project to illustrate UK public spending (from 2003-04 to date) through a graphic visualisation. Find it here ...... www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/prototype/ If anyone's seen the Guardian's annual 'Public Spending' postersthey'll know what to expect,... Read more...
There goes our future prosperity The Pre-Budget Report (PBR) is turning out to be one of the most disreputable documents ever to emerge from HM Treasury - and that's against some pretty stiff competition over recent years.As we blogged here, it failed to deliver on three critical counts: Borrowing - no progess on reducing... Read more...
The fiscal projections in yesterday's PBR - just like last April's budget - rest on economic growth assumptions that are extraordinarily optimistic.Here is the relevant table from the PBR (click on image to enlarge): As we can see, GDP growth is assumed to bounce back in very short order to... Read more...
There’s never much time between revelations, but even Sylvia King who conceived The Public nightmare is shocked this week, as one exec whom she and Sandwell Council would gladly off-load a decent amount of the flak on walks away with £211,000 redundancy (Express & Star). Sally Luton, currently chief... Read more...
It's that time again - the new MPs' expenses receipts have been released. Below is a rolling blog of interesting, bizarre and outrageous claims that we intend to update throughout the day. There are loads of claim forms online to look through, so your help would be much appreciated. ... Read more...
Today’s Pre-Budget Report laid out plans for significant reform to company car tax. The level of tax is currently based on carbon emissions, a policy introduced in 2002. The government intends to change company car tax. At the moment, cars emitting 120g of CO2 per km or less pay 10... Read more...
Read in the shadow of yesterday's statement from Moody's, the PBR's lack of substantive expenditure savings is worrying. Not only are the measures of fiscal restraint rather ill defined and optimistic ("£10-12 billion in the NHS budget by 2013"), they fail to really reassure taxpayers and voters that tough decisions... Read more...
The most concerning aspect of the PBR is its failure to address our excessive public spending. Because the key reason for our fiscal mess is that over the last decade public spending has been increased way beyond the capacity of our economy to support. According to the OECD, next year... Read more...
Today’s Pre-Budget report was yet again an exercise in procrastination. For all of the talk of hard choices, necessary decisions to restore the fiscal credibility of Britain were most certainly not taken. A bit of tinkering here and there does not make a policy adequate to satisfy those commentators –... Read more...
The PBR has been a triumph of doublethink. Announcing borrowing of £707 billion over five years whilst stuck in recession is, apparently, a "position of strength". Just as bizarre is the idea that taxing landline phones will help people's access to communication. The telephone tax is part of the... Read more...
Alistair Darling said in his speech: "I can also announce changes to the climate change levy, company car tax, and fuel benefit charge." Try and guess what happens to revenue under all of those changes? That's right, it goes up. From Table 1.2 in the PBR document, by 2012-13: Climate... Read more...
Plenty of public sector jobs on offer this week in the pages of the Society Guardian with several enormous, elaborately designed adverts battling for space whilst emphasising the proliferation of generous salaries. Nevertheless, this week’s non-job comes with more humble pay, if a more ambiguous description. “Community Engagement Officer ... Read more...
Woefully inadequate, gravely concerning, toe-curlingly aggravating, these are just a few of the phrases I could use to describe today's PBR announcements. But I will stop indulging my creative writing bent and focus on something that wasn't a surprise in the PBR, but still requires a few chosen words. ... Read more...
In our taxpayers' guide (PDF) to the fiscal crisis we reported that analysts were predicting a one per cent rise in both rates of National Insurance. The Government had already increased it by 0.5% in the Budget, now they've announced another increase, for a total rise of 1%. As we... Read more...
Amongst the gigantic storm tearing through the public finances, there was one tax cut that will undoubtedly grab attention in today's Pre-Budget Report: reducing bingo tax. Bingo, whilst not the world's most important issue, is indeed suffering severely as an industry. On top of the recession, the smoking ban has... Read more...