There is a widespread view that future growth in the UK economy will be more sustainable if it is driven by net exports and business investment and not by household spending. The third quarter GDP numbers provided mixed news for supporters of this view.
On the day the coalition unveiled its formal legislative proposals to give Holyrood greater tax varying powers, a group of business leaders in Northern Ireland have called for Stormont to be given the power to set its own corporation tax.
Iain Duncan Smith has again misused statistics on Britain’s welfare bill. He wrongly told The Sun that the out-of-work benefit bill was a “huge reason” for the deficit.
Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham today told the Commons he had written to the UK Statistics Authority to look at the government’s use of statistics in school sport. Mr Burnham was speaking during the Opposition Day School Sports Funding Debate, in which he implored education secretary Michael Gove to rethink his decision to abolish School Sport Partnerships.
Yesterday marked the continuation and escalation of a campaign led by the decentralised activist network UKUncut against major UK businesses who fail to meet their full tax obligations. The first target, Vodafone, was actioned at numerous sites across the country and done with a level of organisation and effectiveness that came to many as a surprise while also eliciting genuine support.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Douglas Alexander gave a speech to Demos today in which he acknowledged Labour’s mistakes in communicating their response to the recession and criticised Conservative attempts to portray the opposition as hoping for a double dip recession. He explained that Labour had made the right decisions during the economic crisis by preventing a recession from becoming a depression.
The GMB has uncovered shocking evidence of the damage caused by the coalition’s cuts, with a national average of 2.6 claimants for every job vacancy. This is a situation that is likely to get worse as the sacking of 500,000 public sector workers begins to bite harder in 2011.
MPs will this afternoon get the chance to debate education secretary Michael Gove’s decision to end the ring fencing of the schools sports budget. Today, the House of Commons will debate a motion tabled by the Opposition critical of a decision which could see drastic cuts to funding for school sport in the in the run up to the Olympics.
Ed Miliband’s attempt on Friday’s Today programme to define the ‘squeezed middle’ has made some people question the point of the term. Shadow chief secretary Liam Byrne tried again on Sunday to pin down the concept. But the big question remains: is the ‘squeezed middle’ just a political slogan – as meaningless as ‘the deserving majority’ – or does it refer to something real, and a big, new challenge for political leaders?
Imagine the letters “NHS” were removed from your local hospital’s name. Would that worry you as a prospective patient? This scenario has not happened yet – but is getting closer. Last week saw the announcement of England’s first district hospital where all clinical services will be run by a private company. With the coalition’s Health Bill imminent, concerns about NHS local care becoming a franchise for big private operators are moving centre stage.
