Cuts Watch: The consequences of Mr Osborne
George Osborne used his emergency Budget to cut public spending by an additional £32 billion by 2014-15. The growing list of cuts underway makes for painful reading.
public spending
BMA: Cuts to Scotland’s health budget will be a “seismic shock”
The British Medical Association in Scotland has told finance secretary, John Swinney to stop being naive and admit that cuts will have to be made to the NHS north of the border.
The economic madness of abolishing the UK Film Council
The abolition of the UK Film Council a curious decision; indeed, the government’s decision to scrap the UKFC is not just an act of artistic philistinism – it’s a case of economic vandalism too.
The false economy of the Coalition’s short sighted cuts
We heard the shriek of ‘Noooooooooo!’ in the North East. The Government’s ideological decision to renege on support for Forgemasters in Sheffield triggered anger but also bewilderment among people I know in Yorkshire.
How will vulnerable children fare under the Coalition’s cuts?
About one in ten children in the UK suffer abuse or neglect, according to figures by charity Kids Company, who work to protect the capital’s homeless, abused, and vulnerable children.
The paradoxical stability of welfare expenditure (and why we should be spending more)
Whether they express their views in the élite language of economic or fiscal ‘unsustainability’ or the demotic of ‘welfare scoungers’, everyone apart from a handful of unreconstructed egalitarians seems to agree that welfare spending is too high.
Legal aid training scheme cuts will hit the poor hardest
The Junior Lawyers Division, Young Legal Aid Lawyers and the shadow legal aid minister Lord William Bach joined forces yesterday to condemn the Government for scrapping the legal aid training contract grants scheme.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland facing more cuts
The Scottish Government’s Chief Economic Adviser, Andrew Goudie, has warned that following the UK government’s emergency budget, the funding squeeze facing Scotland is now much larger than was previously thought. In April, Dr Goudie reported that Scottish expenditure would betest
G20 summit masks US-EU tensions on economic recovery
The G8 and G20 summits may have seemed a damp squib, but the final communiqué, always drafted so that everybody can go away saying that they’ve won, only masks the fundamentally different approaches to economic policy by the US and by European countries.
Are the arts being targeted as an easy hit for spending cuts?
In his Budget statement last week, George Osborne set an ambitious goal for October’s comprehensive spending review, namely an average 25 per cent reduction in spending across all Whitehall departments; in light of such stretching targets, are the arts being lined up as an easy hit?