Richard-if Labour do win in 2015 surely the best candidates will want to be in the Govt, and as you say Lab will be having to fess up that the cuts are continuing.
I can see the advantage of Khan as a trading bet but surely he would prefer a possible slot in the cabinet?
The pound is undoubtedly benefiting from its relative 'safe haven' status. If any, some or all of the following happen - Cyprus's banks are bailed out by Russia, the Italians form a working government and the Spanish banks don't fail - then the pound will weaken in response.
Another reason for the pound's temporary strength is the decision by the MPC not to increase QE against Merv's vote and in response to the recent better than expected news on government borrowing and retail sales.
Nonetheless, there are many downward pressures on the pound and any hint of a move to more inflationary monetary policies will see it continue its slide.
On the budget and the economy in general, there has been a shift in tactics by the government. Anyone trying to turnaround a failing and over-indebted enterprise essentially has three options:
A government also had the option of using monetary policy to increase money supply and thereby to stimulate demand.
The government is definitely giving much greater priority to asset sales. Restructuring the banks by offloading their mortgage books, otherwise cleaning up their balance sheets and selling as many government shares as possible before 2015 is one obvious course of action.
Guaranteeing the existing mortgage book against systemic risk, increasing its size by transfer from the existing state owned banks, further increasing it through the government backed new mortgage programmes announced in the budget, then packaging the mortgages into securities and selling mortgage backed bonds in the international markets is the next move.
None of the current economic forecasts (e.g. OBR) include the effects of substantial asset sales on government borrowing and there is plenty of scope for major transformation if the government can deliver within the timescale.
On cost cutting, the Treasury has got discretionary central departmental spend and borrowing costs under control, especially now that short term benefit rises have been capped. Provided employment holds steady or even continues with a small increase, the extended deadline tactics will work. Even the OBR very marginally moved in the key target deadlines on deficit and debt in their last forecast.
Revenue increases are proving more difficult. As you say we are "one of the healthier horses in the glue factory". That may buy us time but it will not be enough to save us. The key to acceleration lies in judicious use of asset sale receipts - part extra stimulus on infrastructure spending part debt pay down - and the cultivation of consumer and business confidence. If anything can achieve the latter quickly then a controlled mini-boom in house prices may pull off the trick.
I am being deliberately upbeat in this assessment but it is worth fixing on a source of light when engulfed by gloom. At least the scenario I paint is not wholly outside the school of realism.
Just noticed that if you go to your profile page there are notifications of people replying to you, so long as they have used the @nameinblue technique.
London Mayor you need to first decide if you believe the official version of multi-culturalism is true or not. If it's not then these kind of decisions will be based on different ethnic factions forming coalitions to get their man in. If neither of the coalitions is currently big enough to do so then the final candidate is more likely to be a compromise i.e. someone not from either coalition.
So - if the BBC and political class version of reality is false - then possibly counter-intuitively for a lot of people and at least for a while the Labour candidate is more likely to be white and/or female.
Then again it's possible national Labour see Khan as that kind of compromise candidate.
Ah, Ballentaylor and Ballylemon .. how we've missed them, it's been a while since you mentioned them. I'm almost tempted to visit them next time I'm home to see if they are fit for, well, a fop.
Not sure the gov't will want headlines from bank sales. Even if it makes sense to experts, I can't see it working well unless they make a clear profit (which is unlikely!). They'd surely prefer to keep them off the books and out of discussion for the most part.
Wow, if I was a named person who developed/forced through the Cypriot bail out deal, I wouldn't be sleeping too soundly from now on! Horses heads in beds come to mind.
@old_labour - That Guardian article is a tiny preview of what will happen if there's a Labour government in 2015:
critics within his party accuse Byrne of failing to mount any significant opposition to the government's bill. "The problem is that Liam basically agrees with them," said one. "There is a lot of anger. This is a very important issue. He has missed an opportunity and put us on the wrong side of the argument."
Of course Byrne agrees with the government on this, as anyone not completely out in la-la land would. Whoever is in government, the welfare bill has to be cut substantially and people have to be incentivised to seek work; the different between the parties is that Osborne, IDS and Cameron are honest about this, whereas Labour are still trying to pretend there's some magic way of defying financial gravity.
Interestingly, one of the principal reasons for the crisis in the ALP and the abortive leadership spill this week was the Commonwealth government's withdrawal of four of the six of the Bills in its media reform package, including two which were somewhat similar to the proposals for regulation of the press suggested by Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom on Monday. The Commonwealth government faced certain defeat on the floor of the House of Representatives. In Australia, it looks as if there are still some men of principle left.
Marcia just pointed me in the direction of this, from Ipsos-Mori -
"As the SNP gathers for its spring conference in Inverness this weekend, our most recent poll shows that a majority of Scots are satisfied with the way the Scottish Government is running the country.
Our latest Scottish Public Opinion Monitor, conducted last month, found that 53% of Scots are satisfied with the way the Scottish Government is running the country, down one point since October, compared to 41% who are dissatisfied, up two points since October. This gives the Scottish Government a net approval rating of +12 points, down three points since October. These figures are in contrast to the UK Government’s net approval rating of -41 among voters across Britain."
That Guardian article is a tiny preview of what will happen if there's a Labour government in 2015:
Surely Richard the problems will come before then. Labour agree the coalition are wrong, but this vote shows they don't agree about much else. It looks like even formulating electoral policies is going to cause big internal arguments on this and many other issues. And policy will have to be made quickly because Cruddas' think tank has come up with precisely zip so far.
@RichardNabavi @ 3:25 PM You miss the point. The issue with the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill has nothing whatever to do with cutting the welfare bill or providing incentives to the unemployed to seek work. Both are laudable objectives, which any reasonable person would support, especially in the economic straights which the country presently finds itself.
The problem with the Bill is that it retrospectively changes the law and retrospectively makes lawful sanctions which were held to be unlawful by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. As such, it is an implicit attack on the fundamental constitutional principle of the rule of law, and its corollary that no one should be punished without law. As this government has shown with the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011 and Mental Health (Approval Functions) Act 2012, it does not value the rule of law. The Bill ought to be opposed by any responsible opposition as an attack on the English constitution. Needless to say, such an opposition cannot be found at the present time, but that is beside the point.
Indeed. Redward's premierhip and political legacy will be utter poison - unless some very ugly truths are accepted and acted upon.
I would, in a non-tribal well intended way, propose that the man sits back and think what he wants from being PM. Getting elected is not the prize. This county's make or break decision on spending will come under his time in No.10. He will be obliged to make a decision that is antithetical to Labour's raison d'etre. He may have to destroy his chancellor in doing so. He should be very very careful what he wishes for.
@Grandiose @ 3:37 PM I don't think so. The site was becoming unreadable, and I made little attempt to follow the threads in detail. I would of course be interested if you could dig up a link, if that is still possible with the change to the new system?
@Life_ina_market_town. Nod doubt you'll disagree, but this is a (slightly shorterned) version:
I hadn't at the time considered the case in hand, but having now read a couple of summaries it's not the archetypal case but does, in my opinion, fall within the conclusion.
Retrospective legislation is normally considered problematic because the law is expected to guide conduct (see, e.g. H L A Hart), or to put it another way, it should be possible to live life without crossing legal barriers (see, especially, Joseph Raz). The problem comes when we think about common law legal systems of precedent in particular, but also any sort of judicial action in general. A court's ruling, where it can be said to have made new law or changed the law, it acts retrospectively. It has been common to defend this on the ground that those things which are appealed are grey areas; they are unresolved questions of law (as all appeals are framed). This being the case, where there is a grey area, that should in itself enough to guide conduct. It would not have been possible for the person, if asked at the time of their conduct, to say that their conduct was lawful, or, to draw on the current case, that the law definitively required them to be paid (on such terms). Despite the language of higher courts to a small extent, you are denied an appeal unless the law is unclear or de facto likely to be changed (out of date, for example). Basing retrospective statute on the outcome of a court case places it within this realm of grey-areas.
Some, in terminology, would say this judicial process a) isn't retrospective or b) isn't a derogation from the rule of law. I would call it a justified derogation myself. But few actively attack it, because it applies to every court system to a greater or lesser extent; the analogy is the same no matter the terminology.
Just read the comments. A few of them make the (intellectually dubious) point about retrospective legislation, but most of them are just mindless rants about Labour Quislings helping the evil Tories bash the disabled/unemployed/blah blah.
The idea that it might be in the interests of the unemployed to be given the opportunity of some work experience is as alien to them as the notion that money doesn't grow on trees.
Well, money won't grow on trees any more after 2015 than it does in 2013, as Labour supporters will rapidly discover if Ed M becomes PM.
While the education survey is very interesting I doubt it stands up to scrutiny. How many of the 2,000 teenagers said Nick Knowles built the pyramids? 30%? 50%. I suspect the answer is 1 and the same with all the other whacky answers. One of the few actual stats is that 25% don't know Arsenal play in London. Considering half of teenagers are girls and many aren't interested in football why would they know? Are football club locations taught on the national curriculum? The only really poor stat is that only a 1/3 know London is in the SE but on the other hand 2/3s do know.
Overall this is either very poor research or very poor use of research. It is telling that the company doing the survey is not named in the article.
@RIchardNabavi This "money doesn't grow on trees" statement is annoying. Every time I hear it I can't help thinking that cotton and paper do grow on trees. It's a bit like "First Past the Post" having no post. Grrr. PB does bring out your inner pedant.
"The Bill ought to be opposed by any responsible opposition as an attack on the English constitution. Needless to say, such an opposition cannot be found at the present time, but that is beside the point."
The SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens and (to be fair) a small number of principled Labour MPs might take issue with you on the latter point.
I get annoyed by the phrase "money doesn't grow on trees" and "there is no magic money tree" when the Bank of England has merrily printed an extra £325,000,000,000! What is that if it isn't a money tree?
@Garethofthevale I expect they deliberately put in stupid answers so that people who had genuinely no idea would provide them with some good stats. After all, if you don't know Oliver Cromwell was a civil-war Puritan leader, there's no reason "Rock Star" would appeal less than, say, "Courtier of Charles I".
To be fair, though, in a 2011 poll conducted by Panelbase, 6% of the Scottish electorate thought that the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats was six-times world snooker champion Steve Davis.
@Grandiose @ 3:49 PM That just about looks tenable in the abstract, but in practice, can lead to absolutely bonkers results. One could argue that the effect of, for example, Rimmington & Goldstein[2006] 1 AC 459 was to narrow retroactively the scope of the offence of causing a public nuisance. The appellants' conduct at the time fell into a grey area, on which contemporary law could not have provided an adequate guide to what behaviour was acceptable. Would it have been acceptable for Parliament, as a matter of what has long been understood as fundamental constitutional principle, (leaving aside article 7(1) of the Convention) to pass a statute declaring that the judgment of the House of Lords was reversed, and that the appellants' convictions were restored?
I don't think you would find a single reasonable person who would suggest it would be. What is the difference, in principle, between such a statute and the current Bill? The only one that comes to mind is that such a statute would retroactively impose a criminal, rather than a civil liability, but that is hardly one of substance. It is for the courts to determine how the law of the land is to be applied. I simply do not accept Parliament has any rôle in retrospectively clearing up "grey areas". If it did, it could legitimately overturn any decision on a point of law which went against the executive, which would vitiate the rule of law completely.
I accept that there is a very limited place for retrospective legislation (the Commonwealth Secretariat Act 1966 is one such example). The government's Bill is not acceptable because it serves no legitimate purpose. It aims simply to save money, as the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011 did. The rule of law should not be fettered by the state of the national economy.
@RichardNabavi @ 3:50 PM Tell me, what is 'intellectually dubious' about objecting to retroactive legislation? Is it merely that opposition, to whatever the coalition government's latest machinations happen to be, is ipso facto intellectually dubious?
It is dubious because it can reasonably be argued that this is about correcting a technical breach, which was unknowingly made by successive governments; all it does is restore the situation to what everyone thought already applied.
I appreciate that you can also argue the opposite, but either way this is nothing like retrospectively creating a criminal offence.
Edit: Anyway, aren't you a strong supporter of the supremacy of parliament?
@RichardNabavi @ 4:24 PM @JamesKelly is right on this. It cannot 'reasonably be argued that this is about correcting a technical breach, which was unknowingly made by successive governments; all it does is restore the situation to what everyone thought already applied.' That line was just about tenable with the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011. It is untenable in relation to the Bill. If you took the time to read the judgment of the Court of Appeal in question, you would discover that the question of law was whether the Jobseeker's Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme) Regulations 2011 SI 2011/917 were ultra vires section 17A of the Jobseekers Act 1995, as inserted by the Welfare Reform Act 2009. The Court of Appeal held that the regulations were ultra vires. The legislation is so recent that your argument is void. It is obvious that a great number of people disagreed, and have done so since the legislation was enacted, with the government's interpretation. The legislation retroactively imposes a civil liability. It is just a small step from there to the retroactive creation of criminal liability.
I am a supporter in some senses of the supremacy of Parliament. That does not mean I would support a statute authorising the execution of the first born or enforcing religious uniformity.
@Barnesian - There's also the case that governments can currently borrow money from the markets at historically low rates, so we actually have a fairly easy source of money.
Equally, though, you can argue that this does not 'retroactively impose a civil liability', since first of all there was no liability - the state was paying money TO the claimant, the only question was how much it should pay to her - and secondly it is not retroactive, since the reduction in the amount paid to her was applied at the time. It turns out, as you say, that this reduction was ultra vires, because the government's interpretation of the law was wrong. But this was a purely technical breach in drafting; different wording of the Welfare Reform Act 2009, so as to correctly implement the clear intention of parliament, would have avoided the problem.
It was a straightforward adminstrative cock-up, not a breach of human rights or the rule of law.
You really need to direct your indignation at more worthwhile causes!
Incidentally, I was very amused by your statement upthread that saving money is not a legitimate purpose of an Act of Parliament. What world do you live in?
"Boris Johnson has declared he "wouldn't say no" to being Prime Minister if he were urged to help rescue the country like the Roman leader Cincinnatus."
Sounds like he's suffering from the Kevin Rudd delusion.
@grandiose I suppose that is possible too. I assumed they had asked the question as an open end and then picked out the wackiest answers. I suppose if they did put in stupid false answers in the questionnaire it would explain why they haven't published the full stats.
All in all it's still pretty disgraceful.
Recently I worked on a survey for PR purposes and the client sent me their press release and materials for me to check that they were using the data correctly. That is how you should do it!
That NIESR report on the budget adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge.
Not surprising really as I have always mistrusted the 'S' bit its name.
Their real colour is shown early in the report:
To generate a significant boost to growth would have required a boost to public investment, financed initially by borrowing, of the order of 1-2 percent of GDP, as suggested by NIESR (and elsewhere: for example The Economist, and in the IFS Green Budget).
So the NIESR is advocating additional government borrowing of between £20 and £40 trillion. Yet it doesn't even begin to explain what impact such increase in borrowing would have in the financial markets and on interest costs.
Luckily the OBR comes to the NIESR's rescue by letting us know how much each £100 billion (not trillion!) of BoE Quantitative Easing adds to the UK's cost of borrowing:
We adjust Bank rate expectations by 100 basis points for each £100 billion of QE that market participants expect, consistent with Bank of England analysis.
Assuming a linear extension of the BoE's 'rule of thumb' (just for the purposes of demonstration) the NIESR's additional borrowing would force the UK's rates up by between 2% and 4% to between 4-6%, or, to put it another way, to the levels currently being charged to Italy and Spain.
Now take into account the fact that the UK already has a Public Sector Net Debt to GDP ratio of 141%, the largest of all the main EU economies, what chances do you think that the financial markets would support further borrowing of the scale advocated by NIESR?
It is very easy to criticise the budget on the grounds that it disappoints on expectations of recovery, but to be effective you need to advocate alternative policies which are feasible to implement, acceptable to stakeholders and suitable to the current state of the UK economy.
NIESR's criticisms fail on all three of these requirements. Even Ed Balls has only had the courage to hint at the possible existence of such fantasy.
Another toss-up bet. If you play points you'll win before the next LE (or tomorrow, which-ever comes first).
One good thing about the 'Vanilla' API is - subject to the MODs - you can point out spam. This thread would recompense all those Argie Cow-handlers that have been feckered by Presidente Turkey-Neck. As such it is Spam*....
@Garethofthevale The other thing people overlook is that there has been no time in the history of the country where people knew basic facts, used grammar correctly, etc.
@Grandiose Just to add I've gone back to the Market Research Society code of conduct and the regulations regarding this sort of thing are as follows:
B.59 Members must take reasonable steps to check and where necessary amend any Client-prepared materials prior to publication to ensure that the published results will not be incorrectly or misleadingly reported. Comment: This means that Members are expected to take reasonable steps to ensure that any press releases include either final report details (including question wording for any questions quoted) or details of where the information can be obtained (e.g. via a website link). B.60 Members must take reasonable steps to ensure that findings from a project, published by themselves or in their employer’s name, are not incorrectly or misleadingly presented. B.61 If Members are aware, or ought reasonably to be aware, that findings from a project have been incorrectly or misleadingly reported by a Client they must at the earliest opportunity: 1 refuse permission for the Client to use their name further in connection with the incorrect or misleading published findings; and 2 publish in an appropriate forum the relevant technical details of the project to correct any incorrect or misleading reporting
A server can - if it wishes - check the LOCALE of the browser and compensate accordingly. The lack of awareness of how the internet works - atleast within OGH's purse - does not surprise me.
The previous two German polls suggested the present coalition might just have been able to continue, whereas these two point unambiguously towards a grand coalition. It's difficult to see how a SPD/Green coalition can win a majority as they did in 1998 and 2002.
@Plato For me, "Overall, do you think this week's budget is a fair one or not?" is the key question. Last year it was -16, this year it's +8. Small but significant, because 20% of Labour voters thought it was fair compared with 7% of Tories unfair.
The Fitch 'negative watch' rerating is better than expected and a fair assessment of the budget impact.
More time is needed to see whether the 'flat-lining' predicted by OBR in its March EFO is already out of date.
Also more time is needed to estimate the impact of the housing stimulus programme and the potential for as yet undisclosed asset sales to alter the overall debt position substantially.
A good decision by Fitch and one about which Osborne will be feeling relieved.
I'm hoping that Vettel and Webber bitching about the tyres means they'll struggle again. The Ferraris seem good and the Lotus likewise. If it's soggy then Button and Perez could come into play.
That's $2.5 trillion GDP i.e. about £1.5 trillion.
A stimulus of 1 or 2% of GDP is £25 - £50 billion. That would do it, especially if it was a tax cut or even better a gift of £400 - £800 to every man, woman and child in the UK. That would get demand going.
I can't understand why the BoE doesn't use the £325 billion it has printed to give a gift of £5,000 to everyone. Far better than using it to buy gilts from banks to give them cash to lend if they feel like it. That's pushing on a string and isn't working. Go direct. The extra demand will get businesses investing and employing again, increase income and corporation tax take and reduce employment and other benefits. Hey presto! We're growing again and the deficit is falling. And it doesn't require any borrowing.
Comments
Sanity may have returned to pb, in that comments appear to be flowing more logically.
Richard-if Labour do win in 2015 surely the best candidates will want to be in the Govt, and as you say Lab will be having to fess up that the cuts are continuing.
I can see the advantage of Khan as a trading bet but surely he would prefer a possible slot in the cabinet?
Your avatar looks like a Cypriot's life savings.
Liam Byrne is not looking too popular.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/mar/21/labour-abstention-workfare-bill-byrne
The pound is undoubtedly benefiting from its relative 'safe haven' status. If any, some or all of the following happen - Cyprus's banks are bailed out by Russia, the Italians form a working government and the Spanish banks don't fail - then the pound will weaken in response.
Another reason for the pound's temporary strength is the decision by the MPC not to increase QE against Merv's vote and in response to the recent better than expected news on government borrowing and retail sales.
Nonetheless, there are many downward pressures on the pound and any hint of a move to more inflationary monetary policies will see it continue its slide.
On the budget and the economy in general, there has been a shift in tactics by the government. Anyone trying to turnaround a failing and over-indebted enterprise essentially has three options:
1. Cut discretionary costs
2. Increase revenues
3. Sell assets
A government also had the option of using monetary policy to increase money supply and thereby to stimulate demand.
The government is definitely giving much greater priority to asset sales. Restructuring the banks by offloading their mortgage books, otherwise cleaning up their balance sheets and selling as many government shares as possible before 2015 is one obvious course of action.
Guaranteeing the existing mortgage book against systemic risk, increasing its size by transfer from the existing state owned banks, further increasing it through the government backed new mortgage programmes announced in the budget, then packaging the mortgages into securities and selling mortgage backed bonds in the international markets is the next move.
None of the current economic forecasts (e.g. OBR) include the effects of substantial asset sales on government borrowing and there is plenty of scope for major transformation if the government can deliver within the timescale.
On cost cutting, the Treasury has got discretionary central departmental spend and borrowing costs under control, especially now that short term benefit rises have been capped. Provided employment holds steady or even continues with a small increase, the extended deadline tactics will work. Even the OBR very marginally moved in the key target deadlines on deficit and debt in their last forecast.
Revenue increases are proving more difficult. As you say we are "one of the healthier horses in the glue factory". That may buy us time but it will not be enough to save us. The key to acceleration lies in judicious use of asset sale receipts - part extra stimulus on infrastructure spending part debt pay down - and the cultivation of consumer and business confidence. If anything can achieve the latter quickly then a controlled mini-boom in house prices may pull off the trick.
I am being deliberately upbeat in this assessment but it is worth fixing on a source of light when engulfed by gloom. At least the scenario I paint is not wholly outside the school of realism.
Sorry if thats old news
So - if the BBC and political class version of reality is false - then possibly counter-intuitively for a lot of people and at least for a while the Labour candidate is more likely to be white and/or female.
Then again it's possible national Labour see Khan as that kind of compromise candidate.
Ah, Ballentaylor and Ballylemon .. how we've missed them, it's been a while since you mentioned them. I'm almost tempted to visit them next time I'm home to see if they are fit for, well, a fop.
Not sure the gov't will want headlines from bank sales. Even if it makes sense to experts, I can't see it working well unless they make a clear profit (which is unlikely!). They'd surely prefer to keep them off the books and out of discussion for the most part.
on pictures, not sure what to load - my previous picture of a Canadian lake, or an actual picture of me.
Narcissus had a similar dilemma.
Why not use the famous Caravaggio painting:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Michelangelo_Caravaggio_065.jpg
critics within his party accuse Byrne of failing to mount any significant opposition to the government's bill. "The problem is that Liam basically agrees with them," said one. "There is a lot of anger. This is a very important issue. He has missed an opportunity and put us on the wrong side of the argument."
Of course Byrne agrees with the government on this, as anyone not completely out in la-la land would. Whoever is in government, the welfare bill has to be cut substantially and people have to be incentivised to seek work; the different between the parties is that Osborne, IDS and Cameron are honest about this, whereas Labour are still trying to pretend there's some magic way of defying financial gravity.
For those that followed this last year, some really good news
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-21898098
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9948612/Labour-living-in-the-past-over-the-economy-says-Lord-Mandelson.html
"As the SNP gathers for its spring conference in Inverness this weekend, our most recent poll shows that a majority of Scots are satisfied with the way the Scottish Government is running the country.
Our latest Scottish Public Opinion Monitor, conducted last month, found that 53% of Scots are satisfied with the way the Scottish Government is running the country, down one point since October, compared to 41% who are dissatisfied, up two points since October. This gives the Scottish Government a net approval rating of +12 points, down three points since October. These figures are in contrast to the UK Government’s net approval rating of -41 among voters across Britain."
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3153/Scottish-Government-approval-rating-remains-positive.aspx#
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/945/#Comment_945
The issue is about retrospective legislation.
Individuals are being sanctioned for no apparent reason, removed from the unemployment statistics and unsurprisingly the jobless figures look better.
Here is a video link to what has been happening.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2013/mar/22/jobcentre-sanctions-money-stopped-video
Surely Richard the problems will come before then. Labour agree the coalition are wrong, but this vote shows they don't agree about much else. It looks like even formulating electoral policies is going to cause big internal arguments on this and many other issues. And policy will have to be made quickly because Cruddas' think tank has come up with precisely zip so far.
You miss the point. The issue with the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill has nothing whatever to do with cutting the welfare bill or providing incentives to the unemployed to seek work. Both are laudable objectives, which any reasonable person would support, especially in the economic straights which the country presently finds itself.
The problem with the Bill is that it retrospectively changes the law and retrospectively makes lawful sanctions which were held to be unlawful by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. As such, it is an implicit attack on the fundamental constitutional principle of the rule of law, and its corollary that no one should be punished without law. As this government has shown with the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011 and Mental Health (Approval Functions) Act 2012, it does not value the rule of law. The Bill ought to be opposed by any responsible opposition as an attack on the English constitution. Needless to say, such an opposition cannot be found at the present time, but that is beside the point.
Indeed. Redward's premierhip and political legacy will be utter poison - unless some very ugly truths are accepted and acted upon.
I would, in a non-tribal well intended way, propose that the man sits back and think what he wants from being PM. Getting elected is not the prize. This county's make or break decision on spending will come under his time in No.10. He will be obliged to make a decision that is antithetical to Labour's raison d'etre. He may have to destroy his chancellor in doing so. He should be very very careful what he wishes for.
I don't think so. The site was becoming unreadable, and I made little attempt to follow the threads in detail. I would of course be interested if you could dig up a link, if that is still possible with the change to the new system?
Not for me at these considerably shortened odds - I prefer Cruddas at 25/1 with either Ladbrokes or Paddy Power.
I hadn't at the time considered the case in hand, but having now read a couple of summaries it's not the archetypal case but does, in my opinion, fall within the conclusion.
I don't miss the point at all.
Just read the comments. A few of them make the (intellectually dubious) point about retrospective legislation, but most of them are just mindless rants about Labour Quislings helping the evil Tories bash the disabled/unemployed/blah blah.
The idea that it might be in the interests of the unemployed to be given the opportunity of some work experience is as alien to them as the notion that money doesn't grow on trees.
Well, money won't grow on trees any more after 2015 than it does in 2013, as Labour supporters will rapidly discover if Ed M becomes PM.
While the education survey is very interesting I doubt it stands up to scrutiny. How many of the 2,000 teenagers said Nick Knowles built the pyramids? 30%? 50%. I suspect the answer is 1 and the same with all the other whacky answers. One of the few actual stats is that 25% don't know Arsenal play in London. Considering half of teenagers are girls and many aren't interested in football why would they know? Are football club locations taught on the national curriculum? The only really poor stat is that only a 1/3 know London is in the SE but on the other hand 2/3s do know.
Overall this is either very poor research or very poor use of research. It is telling that the company doing the survey is not named in the article.
I think you're referring to M0 whereas the reference is to the wider money supply :-)
A bit like the cheesmakers in Life of Brian
"The Bill ought to be opposed by any responsible opposition as an attack on the English constitution. Needless to say, such an opposition cannot be found at the present time, but that is beside the point."
The SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens and (to be fair) a small number of principled Labour MPs might take issue with you on the latter point.
I get annoyed by the phrase "money doesn't grow on trees" and "there is no magic money tree" when the Bank of England has merrily printed an extra £325,000,000,000! What is that if it isn't a money tree?
Apparently cotton does grow on trees in Mexico. Well I never.
That just about looks tenable in the abstract, but in practice, can lead to absolutely bonkers results. One could argue that the effect of, for example, Rimmington & Goldstein [2006] 1 AC 459 was to narrow retroactively the scope of the offence of causing a public nuisance. The appellants' conduct at the time fell into a grey area, on which contemporary law could not have provided an adequate guide to what behaviour was acceptable. Would it have been acceptable for Parliament, as a matter of what has long been understood as fundamental constitutional principle, (leaving aside article 7(1) of the Convention) to pass a statute declaring that the judgment of the House of Lords was reversed, and that the appellants' convictions were restored?
I don't think you would find a single reasonable person who would suggest it would be. What is the difference, in principle, between such a statute and the current Bill? The only one that comes to mind is that such a statute would retroactively impose a criminal, rather than a civil liability, but that is hardly one of substance. It is for the courts to determine how the law of the land is to be applied. I simply do not accept Parliament has any rôle in retrospectively clearing up "grey areas". If it did, it could legitimately overturn any decision on a point of law which went against the executive, which would vitiate the rule of law completely.
I accept that there is a very limited place for retrospective legislation (the Commonwealth Secretariat Act 1966 is one such example). The government's Bill is not acceptable because it serves no legitimate purpose. It aims simply to save money, as the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011 did. The rule of law should not be fettered by the state of the national economy.
Tell me, what is 'intellectually dubious' about objecting to retroactive legislation? Is it merely that opposition, to whatever the coalition government's latest machinations happen to be, is ipso facto intellectually dubious?
Whilst the site looks good and simple there surely should be some instructions such as how to edit posts somewhere available.
Don't be silly.
It is dubious because it can reasonably be argued that this is about correcting a technical breach, which was unknowingly made by successive governments; all it does is restore the situation to what everyone thought already applied.
I appreciate that you can also argue the opposite, but either way this is nothing like retrospectively creating a criminal offence.
Edit: Anyway, aren't you a strong supporter of the supremacy of parliament?
If everybody had thought that was what the position was, it would scarcely have occurred to anyone to go to court in the first place.
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/977/#Comment_977
To reply to me type @ then copy and paste my user name with no gaps between @ and my user name.
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I am sure someone can explain better than I can.
I'm getting GMT.
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/981/#Comment_981
Are you in a time zone that is 1 hour ahead of the UK? My times are showing as UK time.
That is all I get I don't seem to be able to copy your name (using Safari on a Mac) with the track pad.
trying with keyboard:
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/profile/105/old_labour
nope -the same
if you do copy and paste, you have to type @ first with no gaps between that and my user name.
@JamesKelly is right on this. It cannot 'reasonably be argued that this is about correcting a technical breach, which was unknowingly made by successive governments; all it does is restore the situation to what everyone thought already applied.' That line was just about tenable with the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011. It is untenable in relation to the Bill. If you took the time to read the judgment of the Court of Appeal in question, you would discover that the question of law was whether the Jobseeker's Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme) Regulations 2011 SI 2011/917 were ultra vires section 17A of the Jobseekers Act 1995, as inserted by the Welfare Reform Act 2009. The Court of Appeal held that the regulations were ultra vires. The legislation is so recent that your argument is void. It is obvious that a great number of people disagreed, and have done so since the legislation was enacted, with the government's interpretation. The legislation retroactively imposes a civil liability. It is just a small step from there to the retroactive creation of criminal liability.
I am a supporter in some senses of the supremacy of Parliament. That does not mean I would support a statute authorising the execution of the first born or enforcing religious uniformity.
Like this?
Thanks
Test
Vanilla-PB looks good. Much better than the incomprehensible DISQUS.
Sure, you can argue that, as I said.
Equally, though, you can argue that this does not 'retroactively impose a civil liability', since first of all there was no liability - the state was paying money TO the claimant, the only question was how much it should pay to her - and secondly it is not retroactive, since the reduction in the amount paid to her was applied at the time. It turns out, as you say, that this reduction was ultra vires, because the government's interpretation of the law was wrong. But this was a purely technical breach in drafting; different wording of the Welfare Reform Act 2009, so as to correctly implement the clear intention of parliament, would have avoided the problem.
It was a straightforward adminstrative cock-up, not a breach of human rights or the rule of law.
You really need to direct your indignation at more worthwhile causes!
Incidentally, I was very amused by your statement upthread that saving money is not a legitimate purpose of an Act of Parliament. What world do you live in?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9948388/Boris-Johnson-Id-love-to-be-Prime-Minister-if-the-public-called-me-to-serve.html
According to my Britannica DVD, his career has been much embellished by legend
Sounds like he's suffering from the Kevin Rudd delusion.
if you are passing the hat round for contributions, I am happy to pay. Do you have a system other than PayPal for this?
All in all it's still pretty disgraceful.
Recently I worked on a survey for PR purposes and the client sent me their press release and materials for me to check that they were using the data correctly. That is how you should do it!
That NIESR report on the budget adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge.
Not surprising really as I have always mistrusted the 'S' bit its name.
Their real colour is shown early in the report:
To generate a significant boost to growth would have required a boost to public investment, financed initially by borrowing, of the order of 1-2 percent of GDP, as suggested by NIESR (and elsewhere: for example The Economist, and in the IFS Green Budget).
So the NIESR is advocating additional government borrowing of between £20 and £40 trillion. Yet it doesn't even begin to explain what impact such increase in borrowing would have in the financial markets and on interest costs.
Luckily the OBR comes to the NIESR's rescue by letting us know how much each £100 billion (not trillion!) of BoE Quantitative Easing adds to the UK's cost of borrowing:
We adjust Bank rate expectations by 100 basis points for each £100 billion of QE that market participants expect, consistent with Bank of England analysis.
Assuming a linear extension of the BoE's 'rule of thumb' (just for the purposes of demonstration) the NIESR's additional borrowing would force the UK's rates up by between 2% and 4% to between 4-6%, or, to put it another way, to the levels currently being charged to Italy and Spain.
Now take into account the fact that the UK already has a Public Sector Net Debt to GDP ratio of 141%, the largest of all the main EU economies, what chances do you think that the financial markets would support further borrowing of the scale advocated by NIESR?
It is very easy to criticise the budget on the grounds that it disappoints on expectations of recovery, but to be effective you need to advocate alternative policies which are feasible to implement, acceptable to stakeholders and suitable to the current state of the UK economy.
NIESR's criticisms fail on all three of these requirements. Even Ed Balls has only had the courage to hint at the possible existence of such fantasy.
One good thing about the 'Vanilla' API is - subject to the MODs - you can point out spam. This thread would recompense all those Argie Cow-handlers that have been feckered by Presidente Turkey-Neck. As such it is Spam*....
Apols to Uraguay...!
Infratest dimap:
CDU/CSU: 38%
SPD: 27%
Green: 16%
Linke: 8%
FDP: 5%
Pirates: 2%
Others: 4%
Forsch'gr. Wahlen:
CDU/CSU: 40%
SPD: 29%
Green: 14%
Linke: 7%
FDP: 4%
Pirates: 3%
Others: 3%
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm
B.59 Members must take reasonable steps to check and where necessary
amend any Client-prepared materials prior to publication to ensure
that the published results will not be incorrectly or misleadingly
reported.
Comment: This means that Members are expected to take
reasonable steps to ensure that any press releases include either
final report details (including question wording for any questions quoted) or details of where the information can be obtained (e.g. via a website link).
B.60 Members must take reasonable steps to ensure that findings from a
project, published by themselves or in their employer’s name, are not
incorrectly or misleadingly presented.
B.61 If Members are aware, or ought reasonably to be aware, that findings
from a project have been incorrectly or misleadingly reported by a
Client they must at the earliest opportunity:
1 refuse permission for the Client to use their name further in
connection with the incorrect or misleading published findings; and
2 publish in an appropriate forum the relevant technical details of the
project to correct any incorrect or misleading reporting
Infratest -
Centre-right coalition 43%
Centre-left coalition 43%
Linke 8%
Forch'gr. -
Centre-right coalition 40% (FDP miss threshold)
Centre-left coalition 43%
Linke 7%
A server can - if it wishes - check the LOCALE of the browser and compensate accordingly. The lack of awareness of how the internet works - atleast within OGH's purse - does not surprise me.
:brass-pfennigs:
Take the IMF fgiure for 2011
UK GDP = $2,471.883 billions
See: http://bit.ly/H6WdVO
There are probably more up to date/accurate stats around but this source was "good enough for government work".
@ITVLauraK: That will be relief for Treasury at end of big week that only a watch not losing triple A yet
More time is needed to see whether the 'flat-lining' predicted by OBR in its March EFO is already out of date.
Also more time is needed to estimate the impact of the housing stimulus programme and the potential for as yet undisclosed asset sales to alter the overall debt position substantially.
A good decision by Fitch and one about which Osborne will be feeling relieved.
Less than a day before my creepy stalker strikes. Just sad.
Still half a cent up on the day and climbing.
So the rerating (in the current context of Eurozone events!) is no more troublesome than a flea bite to an elephant.
Onward, George, onward!
RT @libdemvoice: Nick Clegg's illiberal hat-trick: immigration joins 'secret courts' and media regulation on the pyre http://ldv.org.uk/33815 by @stephentall
I'm hoping that Vettel and Webber bitching about the tyres means they'll struggle again. The Ferraris seem good and the Lotus likewise. If it's soggy then Button and Perez could come into play.
That's $2.5 trillion GDP i.e. about £1.5 trillion.
A stimulus of 1 or 2% of GDP is £25 - £50 billion. That would do it, especially if it was a tax cut or even better a gift of £400 - £800 to every man, woman and child in the UK. That would get demand going.
I can't understand why the BoE doesn't use the £325 billion it has printed to give a gift of £5,000 to everyone. Far better than using it to buy gilts from banks to give them cash to lend if they feel like it. That's pushing on a string and isn't working. Go direct. The extra demand will get businesses investing and employing again, increase income and corporation tax take and reduce employment and other benefits. Hey presto! We're growing again and the deficit is falling. And it doesn't require any borrowing.
CDU/CSU 40 SPD 27 Green 15 Linke 7 FDP 5 Pirate 2 Others 4