As for your promise of jam tomorrow, that's really nice, but a competent Chancellor would have had it on the table yesterday.
Let me ask you a question that has floored our friend BenM: if Osborne has got it wrong, who has got it right? Is there some other country you can point to where the finance minister has been competent by following your preferred approach?
Let me ask you a question that has floored our friend BenM: if Osborne has got it wrong, who has got it right? Is there some other country you can point to where the finance minister has been competent by following your preferred approach?
Something very strange is going on here. Eulogies have been paid to the late Baroness Thatcher for challenging established consensus, most famously by defying the collective opinion of 364 leading economists over the 1981 budget statement. Now, Baroness Thatcher may or may not have been right. But it is logically impermissible for her supporters (who also support Osborne), to argue that he couldn't do things differently because that would go against economic consensus or established practice.
@OblitusSumMe - By that argument, Churchill should have resigned when Lloyd George moved a motion of No Confidence in him on May 7th, 1941, or after the string of disasters culminating in the fall of Singapore in February 1942.
Just because a task turns out to be even more difficult than expected is not a reason to give up, still less to give up in favour of those who propose not even bothering to try.
In Churchill's first speech to the House on 13th May 1940 after becoming Prime Minister, he had this to say:
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.
Churchill was clear that no-one should have any illusions about the difficulty of the task ahead.
In his first budget speech in 2010, George Osborne opened with these words:
This emergency Budget deals decisively with our country's record debts. It pays for the past. And it plans for the future. It supports a strong enterprise-led recovery. It rewards work. And it protects the most vulnerable in our society. Yes it is tough; but it is also fair.
How hollow those words now sound.
It would have been nice if it had turned out the way George told us it would, but it did not.
- He has failed to decisively deal with the deficit (let alone paying for the past!) - There has been no strong recovery, enterprise-led or otherwise. - Pay in real terms has declined for those in work. - The vulnerable in society are now victimised and have their incomes falling behind inflation.
Osborne doesn't understand the magnitude of the difficulties we face. He seems to think that with a bit of jiggery-pokery he can get things back to 2007, when he was promising to match Labour spending plans, and all our problems will be disappeared.
What has he done to fix the banking sector? Nothing! Even the pathetically limp Vickers report was kicked into the long grass.
What has he done about falling living standards? Government giveaways in the form of increasing the personal allowance and cancelling fuel duty increases. At a time when we are borrowing more than £100bn a year Osborne's response is to spend more government money by cutting taxes. It is a classically Brownite short-termist response.
The country is kind of drifting, just as it was in 2008-10, when the biggest idea Labour had to revive the economy was a risible cut in VAT. It's not good enough. Osborne should go, so that the new Chancellor can have an opportunity to thoroughly reappraise the situation and change course. And woe betide us if the next Chancellor is Ed Balls - but that will be the price of Osborne's failure if he is left to bungle about in No.11 for the next two years.
On the scale of what we're borrowing £25bn to recapitalise banks is nothing. If it gets them back in to the business of greasing the wheels of commerce and the economy gowing again it will be £25bn well spent and quickly pay for itself.
So you're advocating giving bankers £25bn of taxpayers money? That would go down like a glass of cold sick with 98% of the electorate, and Labour would spend the next 3 months rolling around laughing.....Oh. I see. What a cunning stunt.
As for your promise of jam tomorrow, that's really nice, but a competent Chancellor would have had it on the table yesterday.
Let me ask you a question that has floored our friend BenM: if Osborne has got it wrong, who has got it right? Is there some other country you can point to where the finance minister has been competent by following your preferred approach?
Bit of a daft question Richard as no other country has quite our set of circumstances of a wrecked banking system, 13 years of turgid legislation and an insane level of deficit. The US is the closest and I don't think Obama has got it right. But where the States is starting to claw it's way back is by onshoring jobs sent off to Asia in the noughties. This is mostly as a result of lower energy costs restoring competitiveness.
For GO this that he has no ideas on how to get growth back in the economy and has run a mile from long overdue structural reforms.
There IS no way to get growth back into the economy any faster than he is doing, in current world economic conditions. This is not a failing, it is reality. You seem to think there's some magic wand which he is wilfully refusing to wave (although you never tell us what it is). All he can do is exactly what he and his colleagues are doing: set a stable framework, gradually reduce taxes on business, retain the confidence of the markets, gradually get spending under control (but this takes years, not months), do the long hard slog of getting public procurement back towards sanity (another multi-year effort), address the perverse incentives of the welfare system, and so on.
... As I have pointed out before there are lots of things can be done; reform the banks and break some of the bigger one's up to get effective credit flow back in to the economy by setting up more competition in the High street and cutting out the dead hand of big corporatism. The UK economy will not get back on its feet until we restore functional credit markets.
The problem with the banks is that they need to increase their capital by £25 bn (net) in order to meet new regulatory requirements necessary to protect the taxpayers against further bailouts in the event of another systemic crash in asset values.
The additional capital requirements are mostly required due to the extent of mortgage lending on the main high street banks' books. Osborne and the BoE are working on plans to extract large chunks of mortgage assets from the banks' balance sheets so that new capital requirements are lowered and existing capital is freed for lending.
The restructuring will also improve share value and bring forward the opportunity for the government to sell its share holdings in the 'nationalised' bank groups.
Part of the restructuring is likely to involve the creation of new retail banks, some focussed on specific regions which would benefit from a local lending focus.
All that you ask for is being done, Mr. Brooke.
I bet you can't wait for your breakfast eggs to boil for three and a half minutes in the morning.
.... As for your promise of jam tomorrow, that's really nice, but a competent Chancellor would have had it on the table yesterday.
You want jam with your under-boiled eggs?
Is this a Warwickshire speciality?
Mr Pole the good citizens of Warwickshire like to plan ahead so we always have time to have our eggs just as we like them. Perhaps if Mr Osborne spent more time concetrating on his job rather dabbling in everyone else's he's be more able to serve an egg with accompanying buttered soldiers.
@tim Quite right. @Charles could, on the same basis, argue that the result of a supermarket that purchased foreign products to sell in the United Kingdom, was a series of negative externalities, insofar as it damaged domestic vendors of the same product, with a resulting loss of jobs, depression in domestic manufacturing areas etc. He is simply making an argument for protectionism. What is astonishing is that you, (an albeit moderate) leftwinger, are just about the only person on here willing to stand up for a free market in labour, despite the presence of numerous self-professed economic liberals.
How many Guardian readers does it take to wire a plug?
Two. One to try and do it, and the other to blame Mrs Thatcher when it goes wrong.
I wired a plug the other day, onto a 1947 electric clock which was a wedding present to my parents. It has kept excellent time so far. I'm not sure it would pass all modern safety regulations, but I was impressed that a 65 year old electric clock would still work and be accurate.
Who needs to spend money when the old stuff still works?
On the scale of what we're borrowing £25bn to recapitalise banks is nothing. If it gets them back in to the business of greasing the wheels of commerce and the economy gowing again it will be £25bn well spent and quickly pay for itself.
So you're advocating giving bankers £25bn of taxpayers money? That would go down like a glass of cold sick with 98% of the electorate, and Labour would spend the next 3 months rolling around laughing.....Oh. I see. What a cunning stunt.
The taxpayers are being fleeced as we speak through a combination of overt and covert government assistance - that's why you're getting bugger all on your savings.And it's going to cost you more than £25bn - it probably has already. I think it's eminently sellable to get the banks back on their feet, break the big offenders up, hack salaries to realistic levels and have localised banking doing the bread and butter stuff the current lot can't do. Personally I'd make them mutuals and takeover proof.
There is no easy solution to the dearth of investment. If there was the government would have done it. We face a situation where the world economy in general and the EU economy in particular have almost unprecedented levels of uncertainty. The international economy has been kept alive by the printing of money and kicking innumerable cans down the road.
Very little has been done to actively correct what started the recession in 2007. Contrary to popular belief this is not because politicians are stupid but because the problems that caused the crash in 2007 are very, very deep rooted. They threaten the very existence and viability of the western welfare state.
What do we do now? I do not think a further recapitalisation of the banks is either politically do able or economically sound. We need to free our banks to lend but we need to do so in an environment where government finances are sound and sustainable going forward. If they are not people will not invest here. This is an increasing risk.
But at least some part of the banks must be freed of the deathly overhang on their balance sheets. I think this requires RBS in particular to be broken up, arguably Lloyds as well. It means acknowledging the price of the multiple failures leading up to 2007. It means accepting that most of the money the British tax payer lent to these banks is not coming back. Facing those write downs and bad debts now will be painful but it will set up the opportunity for things to get better. Working out these debts over years is just taking too long and having too great an effect on the rest of the economy.
What's to celebrate is that it's not a hell of a lot worse.
Can people not get their heads round what danger we were in, with public spending 33% over tax revenue? And, what's more, to be stuck with this nightmare at a time when our main trading partners are also in dire straits.
This was never going to be easy. It will take five years, maybe even more, to get back to sanity.
What I cannot understand is why Osborne has not resigned given that the OBR now forecasts that we will borrow more than £100bn during every single year of this Parliament, the 2014-15 forecast now standing at £108bn.
The Coalition government was formed with one overriding purpose - to bring the deficit under control. The constituent parties look likely to face the next election having failed to do this.
Simply untrue on the target set by Osborne. Here is a direct quote from the OBR EFO March 2013:
In the June 2010 Budget the Coalition Government set itself a medium-term fiscal mandate and a supplementary target, namely:
• to balance the cyclically-adjusted current budget (CACB) by the end of a rolling, five-year period, which is now 2017-18; and
• to see public sector net debt (PSND) falling as a share of GDP in 2015-16.
On the medium term fiscal mandate the government, according to the OBR, is on course to meet its target. As the OBR state:
Our latest forecasts suggest that the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of meeting the fiscal mandate.
In fact the OBR forecast that the government would meet the target a year earlier than they previously forecast in December 2012.
The supplementary target will not be met by 2015-16. The OBR again:
PSND is forecast to rise to a peak of 85.6 per cent of GDP in 2016-17, rather than 79.9 per cent a year earlier as in December. Consequently, as in December, we do not believe that the Government is on course to hit the supplementary target – we expect PSND to rise by 2.4 per cent of GDP in the target year, up from an increase of 1 per cent of GDP in December.
Remember that the OBR EFO forecast is only a single snap-shot. It tells us what the OBR believes is most likely to happen based on current known policies and outurns. To put it another way, it is what the OBR believed in March would happen if Osborne changed no policy between now and the end of the five year period.
For example it makes no provision for asset sales, such as sale of bank shares, by the government in this period beyond those already announced. If Osborne were to sell a substantial amount of bank shares then the supplementary target would be easily met.
It is inconceivable that the supplementary target on debt to GDP ratio will not be significantly altered between now and 2015. In fact we are likely to see a major favourable change in the next EFO due in June as a result of very much better public finance figures announced since the March OBR review.
Whilst its all very amusing - I'm finding the absence of DIY/Nannied State citizens rather worrying.
You can't wire a plug on your own? There are only three wires and they're three different colours and they come with a little paper tag telling you what they are if you're so ignorant that you don't know this simple fact that powers 99.9999999% of the things in your home?
I could rewire a plug/change a fuse before I was 9yrs old. What has happened to this country? Next HMG will require a certificated and accredited petrol pump attendant to refill our cars in case we are stupid enough to smoke a fag whilst refilling.
I do not think a further recapitalisation of the banks is either politically do able or economically sound.
Why must banks be almost entirely debt financed?
Because only an idiot would invest useful amounts of capital into the current structures until their balance sheets are properly cleaned up. If we had a "good bank" out of RBS without that sort of inheritance then equity capital may be possible. At present it isn't as the current court case against RBS and their former directors vividly demonstrates.
Bit of a daft question Richard as no other country has quite our set of circumstances of a wrecked banking system, 13 years of turgid legislation and an insane level of deficit.
Well, quite. This is one of the points I've been making.
The US is the closest and I don't think Obama has got it right. But where the States is starting to claw it's way back is by onshoring jobs sent off to Asia in the noughties. This is mostly as a result of lower energy costs restoring competitiveness.
Yes, but they haven't made much progress on the deficit (see the IMF comment on the US, which I posted earlier), and unemployment remains higher than here. On the other side of the coin, they have several advantages, notably that they've been very lucky on energy, they are not so dependent on the Eurozone as we are, and they have a more competitive labour market. This puts the problems Osborne has to tackle in perspective, and is why I repeat my main point: by any relevant international comparison, given the scale of the challenges he faces and the dangers on either side of the course he has chosen, no reasonable person could deny that he is doing at least a pretty good job, and arguably a lot better than a pretty good job.
@AveryLP The first part of the mandate simply requires the Chancellor to show that the cyclically-adjusted current budget deficit will be in balance 5 years from the date of the budget. It is as bad, if not worse, as the "no borrowing over the economic cycle" rule (so-called the golden rule) which it replaced, and which was mocked so heavily by Osborne in the emergency budget of June 2010. Osborne realised that the only way such a textbook Gordon Brown fiscal rule could be made to appear credible was by the addition of the supplementary part of the mandate, that net debt would be falling as a % GDP in 2015-2016. He said as much in the budget statement.
Now, you appear very confident that the government are not going to miss this target, contrary to the OBR's forecasts. So how about £50 @ evens, you win if the OBR's figures for 2015-2016 show that the target has been met, I win if their figures show that the target has not been met. (The figures being hard data for the fiscal year in question, rather than forecasts).
@Plato - Whilst the plug rewiring scandal and the play-doh volcanoes are presumably spoofs, I have a horrible feeling that the person complaining that - wait for it, steel yourself for the full horrror of the Tory cuts - the Tourist Information Centre in Richmond, Yorks remains closed, might be genuine. This clearly shows that civilised life as we know it is coming to an end, as a result of the vicious ideologically-motivated cuts which Labour think are both too far too fast, and don't actually exist.
Whilst its all very amusing - I'm finding the absence of DIY/Nannied State citizens rather worrying.
You can't wire a plug on your own? There are only three wires and they're three different colours and they come with a little paper tag telling you what they are if you're so ignorant that you don't know this simple fact that powers 99.9999999% of the things in your home?
I could rewire a plug/change a fuse before I was 9yrs old. What has happened to this country? Next HMG will require a certificated and accredited petrol pump attendant to refill our cars in case we are stupid enough to smoke a fag whilst refilling.
Elf and Safety says so.
This is one of those things where we all tend to assume everyone is like ourselves. I haven't the faintest idea how to wire a plug, and I'd be astonished if more than 20% of the population knows. When electrics used to go wrong frequently it was something people needed to know, but a decade can go by before the need arises these days. Changing the wheel on a car is another example - I do know how to do that and I've done it, but I doubt if most drivers do - again, the need virtually never arises these days. Skills that aren't used die out.
What's to celebrate is that it's not a hell of a lot worse.
Can people not get their heads round what danger we were in, with public spending 33% over tax revenue? And, what's more, to be stuck with this nightmare at a time when our main trading partners are also in dire straits.
This was never going to be easy. It will take five years, maybe even more, to get back to sanity.
What I cannot understand is why Osborne has not resigned given that the OBR now forecasts that we will borrow more than £100bn during every single year of this Parliament, the 2014-15 forecast now standing at £108bn.
The Coalition government was formed with one overriding purpose - to bring the deficit under control. The constituent parties look likely to face the next election having failed to do this.
Simply untrue on the target set by Osborne....
Did Brown ever admit to missing his golden rule? I seem to recall he engaged in sophistry over the period it applied to so that he didn't have to, but everyone could see that he hadn't done what he had promised to do (which was to balance the books over the course of the economic cycle).
Likewise with Osborne. You are attempting to convince me on the basis of the technical details of Osborne's targets. As a simple soul I take his promise to deal with the deficit at face value and look at the forecast* deficit of £108bn in 2014-15 and conclude that he has failed monumentally.
* The OBR's original forecast from June 2010 was that Borrowing would be £37bn in 2014-15. So that's nearly three times as high as intended. How many times higher would it have to be for you to admit that he has failed?
@AveryLP The first part of the mandate simply requires the Chancellor to show that the cyclically-adjusted current budget deficit will be in balance 5 years from the date of the budget. It is as bad, if not worse, as the "no borrowing over the economic cycle" rule (so-called the golden rule) which it replaced, and which was mocked so heavily by Osborne in the emergency budget of June 2010. Osborne realised that the only way such a textbook Gordon Brown fiscal rule could be made to appear credible was by the addition of the supplementary part of the mandate, that net debt would be falling as a % GDP in 2015-2016. He said as much in the budget statement.
Now, you appear very confident that the government are not going to miss this target, contrary to the OBR's forecasts. So how about £50 @ evens, you win if the OBR's figures for 2015-2016 show that the target has been met, I win if their figures show that the target has not been met. (The figures being hard data for the fiscal year in question, rather than forecasts).
The latest figures from ONS show the following for PSND for the three completed fiscal years of this government:
Whilst its all very amusing - I'm finding the absence of DIY/Nannied State citizens rather worrying.
You can't wire a plug on your own? There are only three wires and they're three different colours and they come with a little paper tag telling you what they are if you're so ignorant that you don't know this simple fact that powers 99.9999999% of the things in your home?
I could rewire a plug/change a fuse before I was 9yrs old. What has happened to this country? Next HMG will require a certificated and accredited petrol pump attendant to refill our cars in case we are stupid enough to smoke a fag whilst refilling.
Elf and Safety says so.
This is one of those things where we all tend to assume everyone is like ourselves. I haven't the faintest idea how to wire a plug, and I'd be astonished if more than 20% of the population knows. When electrics used to go wrong frequently it was something people needed to know, but a decade can go by before the need arises these days. Changing the wheel on a car is another example - I do know how to do that and I've done it, but I doubt if most drivers do - again, the need virtually never arises these days. Skills that aren't used die out.
I think the point is that with a bit of intrepidness, some reading comprehension skills, and the willingness to learn something new, you can work out how to wire a plug (or countersink a hinge), without having to call in a professional.
Using the profits to gradually work off the bad debts is what the banks have been doing for the last 5 years. They have been considerably assisted by virtually free money from the BoE and interest rates that steal from those who were daft enough to save when everyone else (including the banks themselves) was going crazy.
It isn't working, or at least it is not working fast enough. Bank balance sheets continue to shrink. Private borrowing has contracted for several years in a row, mainly because of the lack of credit. This reduces demand even when our government is borrowing far too much. Basle II requirements simply make this worse because states are understandably nervous of whether they could afford to bail banks out again if we had a repeat and want banks to hold more capital. New banks without the inheritance are the answer but it is not a pain free option.
@AveryLP The first part of the mandate simply requires the Chancellor to show that the cyclically-adjusted current budget deficit will be in balance 5 years from the date of the budget. It is as bad, if not worse, as the "no borrowing over the economic cycle" rule (so-called the golden rule) which it replaced, and which was mocked so heavily by Osborne in the emergency budget of June 2010. Osborne realised that the only way such a textbook Gordon Brown fiscal rule could be made to appear credible was by the addition of the supplementary part of the mandate, that net debt would be falling as a % GDP in 2015-2016. He said as much in the budget statement.
Now, you appear very confident that the government are not going to miss this target, contrary to the OBR's forecasts. So how about £50 @ evens, you win if the OBR's figures for 2015-2016 show that the target has been met, I win if their figures show that the target has not been met. (The figures being hard data for the fiscal year in question, rather than forecasts).
Your comments on the fiscal mandate are valid but every Chancellor needs a borrowing target that is flexible enough to accommodate changes in global and domestic economic conditions.
The target needs elasticity. Your solution would be to nail the elastic down to a fixed position in time and then move forward with the other end in your hand. In these circumstances I would predict a painful outcome.
@Plato - Whilst the plug rewiring scandal and the play-doh volcanoes are presumably spoofs, I have a horrible feeling that the person complaining that - wait for it, steel yourself for the full horrror of the Tory cuts - the Tourist Information Centre in Richmond, Yorks remains closed, might be genuine. This clearly shows that civilised life as we know it is coming to an end.
Playing conkers whilst wearing safety goggles was unfortunately totally legit. Given that in my school days Chemistry lab we were routinely evacuated because of an accident due to bucket experiments - none of us died, but had a bit of a thrill!
If you're wrapped in cotton wool - you learn nothing about risk. A gardener of mine used to play a prank on new starters. He'd wait until there was a dew on the grass, trickle petrol on it and then get the newbie to stand near by when he threw a match on it.
It'd race across the grass but fizzle out in seconds -but the message was clear - don't be careless with matches or fags nr grass. I've almost set fire to my own hedge and had to put out grass fires on more than one occasion - but I was prepared because I knew the dangers - and stopped it in its tracks. The more we know how to deal with issues - the better off we are.
This error is needed to get the results they published, and it would go a long way to explaining why it has been impossible for others to replicate these results. If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.
Bit of a daft question Richard as no other country has quite our set of circumstances of a wrecked banking system, 13 years of turgid legislation and an insane level of deficit.
Well, quite. This is one of the points I've been making.
The US is the closest and I don't think Obama has got it right. But where the States is starting to claw it's way back is by onshoring jobs sent off to Asia in the noughties. This is mostly as a result of lower energy costs restoring competitiveness.
Yes, but they haven't made much progress on the deficit (see the IMF comment on the US, which I posted earlier), and unemployment remains higher than here. On the other side of the coin, they have several advantages, notably that they've been very lucky on energy, they are not so dependent on the Eurozone as we are, and they have a more competitive labour market. This puts the problems Osborne has to tackle in perspective, and is why I repeat my main point: by any relevant international comparison, given the scale of the challenges he faces and the dangers on either side of the course he has chosen, no reasonable person could deny that he is doing at least a pretty good job, and arguably a lot better than a pretty good job.
Well Richard, I think we agree on some points there, that there are few direct comparisons to the UK, we can see bits in other countries but nowhere where it all comes together. However where we disagree is on what Osborne has done on economic reform, both the pace and the quantum. imo the UK has no chance of getting things moving until we face up to the 16 years of political dabbling and the need to substantially overhaul the banking system. Since these are hard to do they will not be now done in this Parliament, politically it's not possible. Yet every day we leave it we just mark time.
Whether the OBR state public sector net debt as a % GDP is higher or lower in 2015-2016 than 2014-2015. [edit: for clarity's sake, what is contained in the annex to budget 2016 which contains the OBR's fiscal forecasts and the previous year's hard data]
What's to celebrate is that it's not a hell of a lot worse.
Can people not get their heads round what danger we were in, with public spending 33% over tax revenue? And, what's more, to be stuck with this nightmare at a time when our main trading partners are also in dire straits.
This was never going to be easy. It will take five years, maybe even more, to get back to sanity.
What I cannot understand is why Osborne has not resigned given that the OBR now forecasts that we will borrow more than £100bn during every single year of this Parliament, the 2014-15 forecast now standing at £108bn.
The Coalition government was formed with one overriding purpose - to bring the deficit under control. The constituent parties look likely to face the next election having failed to do this.
Simply untrue on the target set by Osborne....
Did Brown ever admit to missing his golden rule? I seem to recall he engaged in sophistry over the period it applied to so that he didn't have to, but everyone could see that he hadn't done what he had promised to do (which was to balance the books over the course of the economic cycle).
Likewise with Osborne. You are attempting to convince me on the basis of the technical details of Osborne's targets. As a simple soul I take his promise to deal with the deficit at face value and look at the forecast* deficit of £108bn in 2014-15 and conclude that he has failed monumentally.
* The OBR's original forecast from June 2010 was that Borrowing would be £37bn in 2014-15. So that's nearly three times as high as intended. How many times higher would it have to be for you to admit that he has failed?
You misunderstand the purpose of the fiscal mandate.
It is designed to prevent a government embarking on a course of current account borrowing (i.e. excluding infrastructure investment) which could not be paid down (or balanced by receipts) within a future five year period.
So far, George has operated consistently within his fiscal mandate.
The fiscal mandate does not require the CACB to be in surplus by a given date, just that it be projected to be in surplus within the five year period: two very different objectives!
Another way of putting it is that it is a credit limit on a payment card and not a commitment to pay off the outstanding balance.
Or a mandate to never borrow more than you cannot pay off in five years.
Sky News Newsdesk @SkyNewsBreak 12m IMF Chief Economist tells Sky News Chancellor George Osborne is "playing with fire" and could have done more to reduce austerity in budget
MODERATED I doubt Christine will have too much to worry about, Francois needs all the help he can get.
Sky News Newsdesk @SkyNewsBreak 12m IMF Chief Economist tells Sky News Chancellor George Osborne is "playing with fire" and could have done more to reduce austerity in budget
MODERATED Wait for Christine Lagarde to slap down her Chief Economist.
Blanchard is an unrepentant Keynesian and not a Member of the Board of Governors of the IMF. His view is advisory not executive.
Why on earth did the IMF get rid of Rogoff?
Conway is merely a Blanchard fanboy with delusions of being Sky's Krugman.
Even Nicomachus wouldn't treat the IMF report as an excuse to promote Blanchard's advice or opinions as gospel.
Time for Conway to be replaced. I have emailed Rupert and James.
There are certain life skills that my wife and I have tried to give our children.
Basic household electrics - change a plug and fuses. Basic plumbing - dripping taps and loo overflows and to find the house stop cock know when to call a plumber. Cooking - at a minimum spag bol, chilli, roast dinner. Healthcare - take a temperature, use OTC medicines wisely, stop superficial bleeding, know when to call 999
With these we feel that they can at least make a start at independent living.
Whether the OBR state public sector net debt as a % GDP is higher or lower in 2015-2016 than 2014-2015. [edit: for clarity's sake, what is contained in the annex to budget 2016 which contains the OBR's fiscal forecasts and the previous year's hard data]
It has to be the "Public Sector Net Borrowing including financial interventions" as published by the ONS (not OBR) in the first issue of the National Accounts following the close of the 2015-16 financial year.
You will want the measure to be PSND ex(cluding financial interventions) but this would deny my argument that George will pay down overall net debt through sale of bank shares.
We need to be careful here LIAMT to ensure we are singing off the same Order of Service.
@RichardNabavi: "Why on earth do we need all these ludicrous planning restrictions?"
I really cannot believe you posed such a question. The whole point of planning restrictions on what you can build in your back garden is to make sure that what you do does not unreasonably infringe on the rights of your near neighbours e.g. preventing someone building a terrace which allowed your neighbour to peer into your bedroom or to build a huge extension which blocked out your light or caused harm to your home or your enjoyment of it. It's a question of allowing both parties' views and interests to be taken into account in a way which enables a decision to be reached with which both are content.
The government's proposals are the wrong answer to the wrong question. They should use the bloody nose they've been given as an opportunity to rethink this stupidity and come up with something that works and which addresses the real housing needs of the country.
I'm looking for The Brute, my cat, an it's all Mr. AlanBrooke's fault.
A week or two back Mr. Brooke, gent of this parish, posted a threat that if I did something he didn't like he would come down here and shoot my cat. Of course, I took his "threat" as a bit of light-hearted internet banter but I did tell my cat about it - we have that sort of relationship. Sitting together on the sofa we can spend hours exchanging news, gossip and the amusing things that have happened to us; well to be honest I spend hours talking to him and he purrs quite a bit and pretends to stay awake.
Anyway, no harm done until this morning when Toby, a new member of the local Temperance Association, called round with some papers about a possible future trip (I am Hon Sec of the Outings Committee). It was a miserable, overcast and chilly morning so naturally I invited him in for a drop of something medicinal to ward off colds and any fevers that might be about. The Brute was lying fast asleep on his favourite day-time chair until he heard Toby speak. Toby is an Ulsterman, you see. The Brute was up, off his chair and out through the cat-flap faster than you can say, "Provisional".
He hasn't been seen since. It is now an hour after his tea-time and I am going to have to go out and try and find him.
@AveryLP I want to bet on the figures by which the OBR judge whether the supplementary target has been met. You do not. That is fair enough. I am afraid we are indeed singing from different orders of service.
e.g. preventing someone building a terrace which allowed your neighbour to peer into your bedroom
Is that an actual thing that can stop you getting planning permission? No wonder houses in Britain cost so sodding much. Somebody should explain to British people about curtains.
@Cyclefree - I'm afraid your view of the planning process doesn't match my experience, which is that small, harmless developments and extensions either get refused, or at best get tied up in a bureaucratic morass with the Council asking for irrelevant information which has to be put together at considerable cost, whereas developments which do actually infringe on the rights of neighbours, or are out of scale with the local community, do get permission because the larger developers are good at working the system.
@AveryLP I want to bet on the figures by which the OBR judge whether the supplementary target has been met. You do not. That is fair enough. I am afraid we are indeed singing from different orders of service.
Yes but my argument was that GO will accelerate the pay down the debt through sales of bank shares.
If you chose a measure that excludes the impact of the sale of bank shares then you are stitching me up!
p.s. I am not certain without looking it up how the receipts of bank share sales will be treated in the National Accounts let alone by OBR. It is quite possible that they will draw down the PSNDex figures on the grounds that the sale completes the temporary intervention. This would be logical but I have learnt from experience that the National Accounts do not necessarily follow the rules of logic.
I will research. There is plenty of time yet to complete a bet. The payout would be late 2016 whoever won!
What's to celebrate is that it's not a hell of a lot worse.
Can people not get their heads round what danger we were in, with public spending 33% over tax revenue? And, what's more, to be stuck with this nightmare at a time when our main trading partners are also in dire straits.
This was never going to be easy. It will take five years, maybe even more, to get back to sanity.
What I cannot understand is why Osborne has not resigned given that the OBR now forecasts that we will borrow more than £100bn during every single year of this Parliament, the 2014-15 forecast now standing at £108bn.
The Coalition government was formed with one overriding purpose - to bring the deficit under control. The constituent parties look likely to face the next election having failed to do this.
Simply untrue on the target set by Osborne....
Did Brown ever admit to missing his golden rule? I seem to recall he engaged in sophistry over the period it applied to so that he didn't have to, but everyone could see that he hadn't done what he had promised to do (which was to balance the books over the course of the economic cycle).
Likewise with Osborne. You are attempting to convince me on the basis of the technical details of Osborne's targets. As a simple soul I take his promise to deal with the deficit at face value and look at the forecast* deficit of £108bn in 2014-15 and conclude that he has failed monumentally.
* The OBR's original forecast from June 2010 was that Borrowing would be £37bn in 2014-15. So that's nearly three times as high as intended. How many times higher would it have to be for you to admit that he has failed?
You misunderstand the purpose of the fiscal mandate.
It is designed to prevent a government embarking on a course of current account borrowing (i.e. excluding infrastructure investment) which could not be paid down (or balanced by receipts) within a future five year period.
So far, George has operated consistently within his fiscal mandate.
The fiscal mandate does not require the CACB to be in surplus by a given date, just that it be projected to be in surplus within the five year period: two very different objectives!
Another way of putting it is that it is a credit limit on a payment card and not a commitment to pay off the outstanding balance.
Or a mandate never borrow more than you cannot pay off in five years.
Even if the borrowing in 2014-15 was £370m, Avery, Nabavi & co. will be fragrant about Osborne. To them Osborne can never fail.
They go on talking about Labour "spending", quitely forgetting that Cameron & Osborne had promised to match Labour spending.
This error is needed to get the results they published, and it would go a long way to explaining why it has been impossible for others to replicate these results. If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.
What's to celebrate is that it's not a hell of a lot worse.
Can people not get their heads round what danger we were in, with public spending 33% over tax revenue? And, what's more, to be stuck with this nightmare at a time when our main trading partners are also in dire straits.
This was never going to be easy. It will take five years, maybe even more, to get back to sanity.
What I cannot understand is why Osborne has not resigned given that the OBR now forecasts that we will borrow more than £100bn during every single year of this Parliament, the 2014-15 forecast now standing at £108bn.
The Coalition government was formed with one overriding purpose - to bring the deficit under control. The constituent parties look likely to face the next election having failed to do this.
Simply untrue on the target set by Osborne....
Did Brown ever admit to missing his golden rule? I seem to recall he engaged in sophistry over the period it applied to so that he didn't have to, but everyone could see that he hadn't done what he had promised to do (which was to balance the books over the course of the economic cycle).
Likewise with Osborne. You are attempting to convince me on the basis of the technical details of Osborne's targets. As a simple soul I take his promise to deal with the deficit at face value and look at the forecast* deficit of £108bn in 2014-15 and conclude that he has failed monumentally.
* The OBR's original forecast from June 2010 was that Borrowing would be £37bn in 2014-15. So that's nearly three times as high as intended. How many times higher would it have to be for you to admit that he has failed?
You misunderstand the purpose of the fiscal mandate.
It is designed to prevent a government embarking on a course of current account borrowing (i.e. excluding infrastructure investment) which could not be paid down (or balanced by receipts) within a future five year period.
So far, George has operated consistently within his fiscal mandate.
The fiscal mandate does not require the CACB to be in surplus by a given date, just that it be projected to be in surplus within the five year period: two very different objectives!
Another way of putting it is that it is a credit limit on a payment card and not a commitment to pay off the outstanding balance.
Or a mandate never borrow more than you cannot pay off in five years.
Even if the borrowing in 2014-15 was £370m, Avery, Nabavi & co. will be fragrant about Osborne. To them Osborne can never fail.
They go on talking about Labour "spending", quitely forgetting that Cameron & Osborne had promised to match Labour spending.
If the borrowing was only £370 m in 2014-5, the whole country would be fragrant, Surbiton.
It is evidently the season for offering you well-intentioned advice. Since I spend rather a lot of time finding out how the voters see things, I thought you might appreciate a view from the other side of the fence.
Most of the advice you have been getting is pretty good. David Blunkett is right that Labour must do more than articulate grievance. John Reid is right about the need to move beyond protest towards offering solutions. Tom Harris is right about the importance of showing you are the Labour Party, not the Benefits Party. Peter Mandelson is right that Labour should not try to duck the major structural challenges and choices facing Britain. Alan Milburn is right that people will soon want to know what Labour is for, not just what it is against. And above all, Tony Blair is right that Labour must move out of its “comfort zone” and offer leadership if it is to win.
Deloitte's have surveyed the country's leading financial executives:
Finance chiefs of Britain’s biggest companies are upbeat about future corporate growth despite a flat economy, according to a new survey.
The quarterly survey by financial services group Deloitte found business confidence among chief financial officers has soared as fears about economic and financial uncertainty fell to its their lowest level for two and a half years.
Improving financial conditions, rising equity markets and easy monetary policy has led to growing optimism in corporate Britain, Deloitte said.
The company surveyed 120 chief financial officers (CFOs) during March, including 26 from the FTSE 100 and 44 from the mid-cap FTSE 250.
Deloitte's have surveyed the country's leading financial executives:
Finance chiefs of Britain’s biggest companies are upbeat about future corporate growth despite a flat economy, according to a new survey.
The quarterly survey by financial services group Deloitte found business confidence among chief financial officers has soared as fears about economic and financial uncertainty fell to its their lowest level for two and a half years.
Improving financial conditions, rising equity markets and easy monetary policy has led to growing optimism in corporate Britain, Deloitte said.
The company surveyed 120 chief financial officers (CFOs) during March, including 26 from the FTSE 100 and 44 from the mid-cap FTSE 250.
Not even a whiff of an excel error in this one.
Basically, their own profits and bonuses will be great despite the flat economy. Bugger the rest !
RT @tracey_crouch: Because of way amendments were grouped MPs didn't get vote on Royal Charter. 300 years of press freedom gone. Democracy?
This isn't just an accident - the power to group amendments in a way to prevent debate or a vote is an established tool of governments. The Wright Committee (which I was part of) recommended that a House Business Committee should be created to decide how much time should be given to each group of amendments, within a total time frame set by the government - so Ministers would still get their stuff through if they had the votes, but couldn't squash inconvenient debate by having hours devoted to something inconsequential.
This is currently being reviewed by Graham Allen's Select Committee on constitutional reform and it's worth submitting comments if you have a view.
@Cyclefree - I'm afraid your view of the planning process doesn't match my experience, which is that small, harmless developments and extensions either get refused, or at best get tied up in a bureaucratic morass with the Council asking for irrelevant information which has to be put together at considerable cost, whereas developments which do actually infringe on the rights of neighbours, or are out of scale with the local community, do get permission because the larger developers are good at working the system.
As the chair of a parish council planning committee, my experience is that the vast majority of extensions etc., are approved no problem. Do you have any evidence to support your comment? You are however right that the big developments are dictated by the big house builders, and often to the detriment of the community. What frustrates me is how county councils (usually Tory as it happens, and I give you South Norfolk as an example) are hell bent on stymie of any development outside very tightly drawn village envelope boundaries, which in my view is at odds with the more organic history of settlement in Britain.
Can someone remember whatever happened to the Football Spectators Act ? Presumably, it was passed. What happened afterwards ? I can't remember any of it.
Ah, tim, now you and I are both back, care to comment on the latest ICM poll's findings that the Tory deficit among women is now less than that among men.
It was echoed by YouGov today.....but, yes, we'll see. Anyway, you would do well do suspend that particular obsession for a while. Oh, and George appears to be climbing back in favour too. Hey ho, you can't win them all.
I couldn't POSSIBLY comment on your second point. No way. Would be totally disloyal. Tee hee....
The protest seems unnecessary. After watching Carol and Mark grow up she's suffered enough.
I agree about Mark but it's a bit unfair on Carol.
Agreed. I quite like Carol Thatcher. About her sibling, the less said the better. There was once some good news. He was lost in the Sahara. Sadly.......
Seems grant Green is getting cold feet that no one is going to turn up tomorrow. He's apparently sent letters to constituency chairmen and asked them to come to London to line the route.
He's then promised them a tombola with a first prize of dinner with Sir Mark at The Gay Hussar on one of his 'tax days'. (the last bit might be an invention)
Comments
https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/324183569914294272/photo/1
In his first budget speech in 2010, George Osborne opened with these words:How hollow those words now sound.
It would have been nice if it had turned out the way George told us it would, but it did not.
- He has failed to decisively deal with the deficit (let alone paying for the past!)
- There has been no strong recovery, enterprise-led or otherwise.
- Pay in real terms has declined for those in work.
- The vulnerable in society are now victimised and have their incomes falling behind inflation.
Osborne doesn't understand the magnitude of the difficulties we face. He seems to think that with a bit of jiggery-pokery he can get things back to 2007, when he was promising to match Labour spending plans, and all our problems will be disappeared.
What has he done to fix the banking sector? Nothing! Even the pathetically limp Vickers report was kicked into the long grass.
What has he done about falling living standards? Government giveaways in the form of increasing the personal allowance and cancelling fuel duty increases. At a time when we are borrowing more than £100bn a year Osborne's response is to spend more government money by cutting taxes. It is a classically Brownite short-termist response.
The country is kind of drifting, just as it was in 2008-10, when the biggest idea Labour had to revive the economy was a risible cut in VAT. It's not good enough. Osborne should go, so that the new Chancellor can have an opportunity to thoroughly reappraise the situation and change course. And woe betide us if the next Chancellor is Ed Balls - but that will be the price of Osborne's failure if he is left to bungle about in No.11 for the next two years.
How many Guardian readers does it take to wire a plug?
Quite right. @Charles could, on the same basis, argue that the result of a supermarket that purchased foreign products to sell in the United Kingdom, was a series of negative externalities, insofar as it damaged domestic vendors of the same product, with a resulting loss of jobs, depression in domestic manufacturing areas etc. He is simply making an argument for protectionism. What is astonishing is that you, (an albeit moderate) leftwinger, are just about the only person on here willing to stand up for a free market in labour, despite the presence of numerous self-professed economic liberals.
Who needs to spend money when the old stuff still works?
It has to be a hoax. I had to cross check the date. Great spot by @Glassfet
https://witness.guardian.co.uk/assignment/516beb30e4b046e93b9623d2
Very little has been done to actively correct what started the recession in 2007. Contrary to popular belief this is not because politicians are stupid but because the problems that caused the crash in 2007 are very, very deep rooted. They threaten the very existence and viability of the western welfare state.
What do we do now? I do not think a further recapitalisation of the banks is either politically do able or economically sound. We need to free our banks to lend but we need to do so in an environment where government finances are sound and sustainable going forward. If they are not people will not invest here. This is an increasing risk.
But at least some part of the banks must be freed of the deathly overhang on their balance sheets. I think this requires RBS in particular to be broken up, arguably Lloyds as well. It means acknowledging the price of the multiple failures leading up to 2007. It means accepting that most of the money the British tax payer lent to these banks is not coming back. Facing those write downs and bad debts now will be painful but it will set up the opportunity for things to get better. Working out these debts over years is just taking too long and having too great an effect on the rest of the economy.
In the June 2010 Budget the Coalition Government set itself a medium-term fiscal mandate and a supplementary target, namely:
• to balance the cyclically-adjusted current budget (CACB) by the end of a rolling, five-year period, which is now 2017-18; and
• to see public sector net debt (PSND) falling as a share of GDP in 2015-16.
On the medium term fiscal mandate the government, according to the OBR, is on course to meet its target. As the OBR state:
Our latest forecasts suggest that the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of meeting the fiscal mandate.
In fact the OBR forecast that the government would meet the target a year earlier than they previously forecast in December 2012.
The supplementary target will not be met by 2015-16. The OBR again:
PSND is forecast to rise to a peak of 85.6 per cent of GDP in 2016-17, rather than 79.9 per cent a year earlier as in December. Consequently, as in December, we do not believe that the Government is on course to hit the supplementary target – we expect PSND to rise by 2.4 per cent of GDP in the target year, up from an increase of 1 per cent of GDP in December.
Remember that the OBR EFO forecast is only a single snap-shot. It tells us what the OBR believes is most likely to happen based on current known policies and outurns. To put it another way, it is what the OBR believed in March would happen if Osborne changed no policy between now and the end of the five year period.
For example it makes no provision for asset sales, such as sale of bank shares, by the government in this period beyond those already announced. If Osborne were to sell a substantial amount of bank shares then the supplementary target would be easily met.
It is inconceivable that the supplementary target on debt to GDP ratio will not be significantly altered between now and 2015. In fact we are likely to see a major favourable change in the next EFO due in June as a result of very much better public finance figures announced since the March OBR review.
You can't wire a plug on your own? There are only three wires and they're three different colours and they come with a little paper tag telling you what they are if you're so ignorant that you don't know this simple fact that powers 99.9999999% of the things in your home?
I could rewire a plug/change a fuse before I was 9yrs old. What has happened to this country? Next HMG will require a certificated and accredited petrol pump attendant to refill our cars in case we are stupid enough to smoke a fag whilst refilling.
Elf and Safety says so.
The first part of the mandate simply requires the Chancellor to show that the cyclically-adjusted current budget deficit will be in balance 5 years from the date of the budget. It is as bad, if not worse, as the "no borrowing over the economic cycle" rule (so-called the golden rule) which it replaced, and which was mocked so heavily by Osborne in the emergency budget of June 2010. Osborne realised that the only way such a textbook Gordon Brown fiscal rule could be made to appear credible was by the addition of the supplementary part of the mandate, that net debt would be falling as a % GDP in 2015-2016. He said as much in the budget statement.
Now, you appear very confident that the government are not going to miss this target, contrary to the OBR's forecasts. So how about £50 @ evens, you win if the OBR's figures for 2015-2016 show that the target has been met, I win if their figures show that the target has not been met. (The figures being hard data for the fiscal year in question, rather than forecasts).
Likewise with Osborne. You are attempting to convince me on the basis of the technical details of Osborne's targets. As a simple soul I take his promise to deal with the deficit at face value and look at the forecast* deficit of £108bn in 2014-15 and conclude that he has failed monumentally.
* The OBR's original forecast from June 2010 was that Borrowing would be £37bn in 2014-15. So that's nearly three times as high as intended. How many times higher would it have to be for you to admit that he has failed?
Using the profits to gradually work off the bad debts is what the banks have been doing for the last 5 years. They have been considerably assisted by virtually free money from the BoE and interest rates that steal from those who were daft enough to save when everyone else (including the banks themselves) was going crazy.
It isn't working, or at least it is not working fast enough. Bank balance sheets continue to shrink. Private borrowing has contracted for several years in a row, mainly because of the lack of credit. This reduces demand even when our government is borrowing far too much. Basle II requirements simply make this worse because states are understandably nervous of whether they could afford to bail banks out again if we had a repeat and want banks to hold more capital. New banks without the inheritance are the answer but it is not a pain free option.
The target needs elasticity. Your solution would be to nail the elastic down to a fixed position in time and then move forward with the other end in your hand. In these circumstances I would predict a painful outcome.
You are dreaming of a Miliband government, tim.
It is when you hear that the Tourist Information Centre in Middlesborough or Stockton on Tees is closed that you know it really is for real.
If you're wrapped in cotton wool - you learn nothing about risk. A gardener of mine used to play a prank on new starters. He'd wait until there was a dew on the grass, trickle petrol on it and then get the newbie to stand near by when he threw a match on it.
It'd race across the grass but fizzle out in seconds -but the message was clear - don't be careless with matches or fags nr grass. I've almost set fire to my own hedge and had to put out grass fires on more than one occasion - but I was prepared because I knew the dangers - and stopped it in its tracks. The more we know how to deal with issues - the better off we are.
Well Richard, I think we agree on some points there, that there are few direct comparisons to the UK, we can see bits in other countries but nowhere where it all comes together. However where we disagree is on what Osborne has done on economic reform, both the pace and the quantum. imo the UK has no chance of getting things moving until we face up to the 16 years of political dabbling and the need to substantially overhaul the banking system. Since these are hard to do they will not be now done in this Parliament, politically it's not possible. Yet every day we leave it we just mark time.
[edit: for clarity's sake, what is contained in the annex to budget 2016 which contains the OBR's fiscal forecasts and the previous year's hard data]
It is designed to prevent a government embarking on a course of current account borrowing (i.e. excluding infrastructure investment) which could not be paid down (or balanced by receipts) within a future five year period.
So far, George has operated consistently within his fiscal mandate.
The fiscal mandate does not require the CACB to be in surplus by a given date, just that it be projected to be in surplus within the five year period: two very different objectives!
Another way of putting it is that it is a credit limit on a payment card and not a commitment to pay off the outstanding balance.
Or a mandate to never borrow more than you cannot pay off in five years.
*Innocent Face*
There are certain life skills that my wife and I have tried to give our children.
Basic household electrics - change a plug and fuses.
Basic plumbing - dripping taps and loo overflows and to find the house stop cock know when to call a plumber.
Cooking - at a minimum spag bol, chilli, roast dinner.
Healthcare - take a temperature, use OTC medicines wisely, stop superficial bleeding, know when to call 999
With these we feel that they can at least make a start at independent living.
[edit: for clarity's sake, what is contained in the annex to budget 2016 which contains the OBR's fiscal forecasts and the previous year's hard data]
It has to be the "Public Sector Net Borrowing including financial interventions" as published by the ONS (not OBR) in the first issue of the National Accounts following the close of the 2015-16 financial year.
You will want the measure to be PSND ex(cluding financial interventions) but this would deny my argument that George will pay down overall net debt through sale of bank shares.
We need to be careful here LIAMT to ensure we are singing off the same Order of Service.
However, I did mend my own jeans last night (for the fourth time), and made a pair of gloves last about 5 years longer with darning/sewing up seams.
Basic sewing and ironing.
It's great that you managed to get more mileage out of cloths by repairing rather than chucking them out - I wish more people did that.
I really cannot believe you posed such a question. The whole point of planning restrictions on what you can build in your back garden is to make sure that what you do does not unreasonably infringe on the rights of your near neighbours e.g. preventing someone building a terrace which allowed your neighbour to peer into your bedroom or to build a huge extension which blocked out your light or caused harm to your home or your enjoyment of it. It's a question of allowing both parties' views and interests to be taken into account in a way which enables a decision to be reached with which both are content.
The government's proposals are the wrong answer to the wrong question. They should use the bloody nose they've been given as an opportunity to rethink this stupidity and come up with something that works and which addresses the real housing needs of the country.
A week or two back Mr. Brooke, gent of this parish, posted a threat that if I did something he didn't like he would come down here and shoot my cat. Of course, I took his "threat" as a bit of light-hearted internet banter but I did tell my cat about it - we have that sort of relationship. Sitting together on the sofa we can spend hours exchanging news, gossip and the amusing things that have happened to us; well to be honest I spend hours talking to him and he purrs quite a bit and pretends to stay awake.
Anyway, no harm done until this morning when Toby, a new member of the local Temperance Association, called round with some papers about a possible future trip (I am Hon Sec of the Outings Committee). It was a miserable, overcast and chilly morning so naturally I invited him in for a drop of something medicinal to ward off colds and any fevers that might be about. The Brute was lying fast asleep on his favourite day-time chair until he heard Toby speak. Toby is an Ulsterman, you see. The Brute was up, off his chair and out through the cat-flap faster than you can say, "Provisional".
He hasn't been seen since. It is now an hour after his tea-time and I am going to have to go out and try and find him.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2013/04/16/97002-20130416FILWWW00497-plats-cuisines-la-viande-de-cheval-surtout-presente-en-france.php
Not quite the same, but I've had to search for a dog or two in the past and it's not the happiest way to spend an evening.
I want to bet on the figures by which the OBR judge whether the supplementary target has been met. You do not. That is fair enough. I am afraid we are indeed singing from different orders of service.
If you chose a measure that excludes the impact of the sale of bank shares then you are stitching me up!
p.s. I am not certain without looking it up how the receipts of bank share sales will be treated in the National Accounts let alone by OBR. It is quite possible that they will draw down the PSNDex figures on the grounds that the sale completes the temporary intervention. This would be logical but I have learnt from experience that the National Accounts do not necessarily follow the rules of logic.
I will research. There is plenty of time yet to complete a bet. The payout would be late 2016 whoever won!
They go on talking about Labour "spending", quitely forgetting that Cameron & Osborne had promised to match Labour spending.
Put not your trust in princes or for that matter economists.
I think you are on the wrong scent.
It is evidently the season for offering you well-intentioned advice. Since I spend rather a lot of time finding out how the voters see things, I thought you might appreciate a view from the other side of the fence.
Most of the advice you have been getting is pretty good. David Blunkett is right that Labour must do more than articulate grievance. John Reid is right about the need to move beyond protest towards offering solutions. Tom Harris is right about the importance of showing you are the Labour Party, not the Benefits Party. Peter Mandelson is right that Labour should not try to duck the major structural challenges and choices facing Britain. Alan Milburn is right that people will soon want to know what Labour is for, not just what it is against. And above all, Tony Blair is right that Labour must move out of its “comfort zone” and offer leadership if it is to win.
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2013/04/a-memo-to-ed-miliband/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-memo-to-ed-miliband&utm_source=Lord+Ashcroft+Polls&utm_campaign=8635cb6d4f-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22156159
Annotated version of Margaret Thatcher's Funeral Order of Service.
http://blogs.espnf1.com/The_Inside_Line/archives/2013/04/cool_as_ice.php
Deloitte's have surveyed the country's leading financial executives:
Finance chiefs of Britain’s biggest companies are upbeat about future corporate growth despite a flat economy, according to a new survey.
The quarterly survey by financial services group Deloitte found business confidence among chief financial officers has soared as fears about economic and financial uncertainty fell to its their lowest level for two and a half years.
Improving financial conditions, rising equity markets and easy monetary policy has led to growing optimism in corporate Britain, Deloitte said.
The company surveyed 120 chief financial officers (CFOs) during March, including 26 from the FTSE 100 and 44 from the mid-cap FTSE 250.
Not even a whiff of an excel error in this one.
Funny story here:
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-04-16/judge-fines-himself-after-his-phone-disrupts-trial/
Are you related to M Moseley ?
This is currently being reviewed by Graham Allen's Select Committee on constitutional reform and it's worth submitting comments if you have a view.
I hope you are out on the streets of London tomorrow morning turning your back on Maggie.
Your attitude to corporate profits is redolent of Red Robbo, British Leyland and the 1970s.
Increased corporate profits mean that UK companies have higher reserves to invest in new products, markets and research and development.
They can also mean higher dividends and share prices thereby further attracting funds for investment.
Both are very good outcomes and underpin most recent indicators that a strong revival is on its way in the UK economy.
No wonder the FTSE 100 has ignored the wobbly M. Blancmange from the IMF and risen strongly today.
Now rejoice at that news!
Highly significant wouldn't you say?
LoL (Lots of Love).
'No wonder the FTSE 100 has ignored the wobbly M. Blancmange from the IMF and risen strongly today."
What are you taking Avery? Share it with the rest of us Master.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDl0qPfkSRw
sorry to hear about your cat. I'm sure it will return. It could be worse I might have left it with tim, he just loves cats ;-)
When I last checked the FTSE 100 at lunchtime it was soaring but it seems to have taken a dip this afternoon.
DJIA is up a trifle though.
So you have a minor victory!
It was echoed by YouGov today.....but, yes, we'll see. Anyway, you would do well do suspend that particular obsession for a while. Oh, and George appears to be climbing back in favour too. Hey ho, you can't win them all.
I couldn't POSSIBLY comment on your second point. No way. Would be totally disloyal. Tee hee....
Like all good parents she packed them off to public schools so she could spend more time with Denis.
Agreed. I quite like Carol Thatcher. About her sibling, the less said the better. There was once some good news. He was lost in the Sahara. Sadly.......
He's then promised them a tombola with a first prize of dinner with Sir Mark at The Gay Hussar on one of his 'tax days'. (the last bit might be an invention)
"As a mark of respect, the BBC will fall silent for the entire day."
I wish.
In my dreams.
The problem was to get it to play in synch with the sixty other copies being played in boarding school bedsits.
I bet you know Peter Blake.
My brothers were minor and minimus.
Now tell me what a fourth and fifth brother would be called.