Tag Archives: George Osborne

First minister warns of pain to come in Wales

By Ed Jacobs | Published: May 23, 2013

The first minister of Wales has issued a stark warning of painful financial decisions to come ahead of George Osborne’s spending review at the end of next month.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged , , , | 1 Response

Ignore the rhetoric: the deficit is growing

By James Bloodworth | Published: May 22, 2013

According to the latest ONS borrowing figures, the deficit for April was £6.3bn, around £2bn lower than expected. Public sector net borrowing for the previous year (2012/13) was revised down from £120.6bn to £119.5bn (compared to a deficit of £120.9bn in 2011/12).

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged , , , , | 3 Responses

Stephanie Bottrill: The treasury ‘does not comment on individual cases’ (except when it can use them to demonise the welfare state)

By James Bloodworth | Published: May 14, 2013

Having gained notoriety for his bizarre lifestyle, Michael Philpott caused outrage after he was found to have caused the deaths of six of his children in a fire which he started deliberately.

Memorably, the case was jumped on by the right-wing press as “a vile product of welfare UK”. George Osborne even chipped in, saying it raised important welfare “questions”.

Posted in Good Society | Also tagged , , , , | 12 Responses

UK performing worse than all but one G7 country in ‘global race’

By James Bloodworth | Published: May 8, 2013

The UK is experiencing a slower economic recovery than 23 of the 33 advanced economies monitored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is lagging behind all but one G7 country on exports, wage growth and manufacturing, according to new analysis published today by the TUC.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged , , , , , | 11 Responses

CO2 levels are about to hit their highest level in human history

By Guest | Published: May 2, 2013

In the next few days, and for the first time in human history, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will hit 400 parts per million (ppm), a level long seen as critical in measuring the damage done to the earth by man-made pollution.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged , , , , | 6 Responses

George Osborne fails on George Osborne’s terms

By James Bloodworth | Published: April 26, 2013

George Osborne fails on his own terms.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged , , , , , | 10 Responses

Has the deficit really gone down?

By James Bloodworth | Published: April 23, 2013

As Ed Conway has noticed, if you exclude the effects of either Northern Rock asset reclassification or the profits of the SLS from today’s public sector borrowing figures, the deficit was actually higher this year than last.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged , , | 1 Response

Osborne dodges a bullet but debt continues to rise

By Will Straw | Published: April 23, 2013

Economic data is coming thick and fast. Sandwiched between last week’s poor unemployment data and Thursday’s forthcoming results for GDP in the first quarter of the year, public finance figures were published today. They show that George Osborne has dodged a bullet.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged , , | 1 Response

IMF calls on Osborne to ease up on austerity

By James Bloodworth | Published: April 16, 2013

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut the UK’s growth forecast more than any other major economy and called for the government to spend more to stimulate growth.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged | 2 Responses

Economy to continue flatlining this year

By James Bloodworth | Published: April 10, 2013

The graph below, produce by Canadian-based bank Scotiabank, shows the evolving nature of GDP forecasts as applied to the UK economy.

As we can see, this is the third consecutive year where the consensus for growth has started out at around 2 per cent before gradually being pushed down towards zero as time has passed.

Posted in Sustainable Economy | Also tagged | 11 Responses