Archive for the ‘British current affairs’ Category
So the budget really is regressive
August 25th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Shortly after the Chancellor set out his emergency budget, I did a series of blog postings arguing that the measures were not progressive as claimed but regressive, that is that they will hit the poor harder than the rich.
Now we have confirmation of this from the widely-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). In a new, [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Birth and death in Cornwall
August 24th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I was interested in the news that, while on holiday in Cornwall, the Prime Minister’s wife Samantha Cameron has unexpectedly given birth to a baby girl, their fourth child, who arrived at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.
My wife’s father – the Czech wartime night fighter ace Karel Kuttelwascher – was taken to this hospital [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
How big should a parliamentary constituency be?
August 24th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Here, in the UK, currently we elect 650 Members of Parliament to the House of Commons on the basis of one MP per geographical constituency using the electoral system called first-past-the-post (FPTP).
But the Coalition Government has plans that could change this. It intends to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600. Currently the [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)
The Government’s “Spending Challenge”
August 20th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
You might laugh; you might cry; you might become angry. I refer to the 44,000 ideas that the great British public has put forward for cutting expenditure on which the Government is now kindly inviting us to vote on its “Spending Challenge” website. Is this any way to run a country?
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)
Why Labour lost
August 3rd, 2010 by Roger Darlington
“Voters were turned off by Labour’s main election message on pubic services, according to new polling evidence commissioned by the independent think tank Demos, released today. The poll shows that voters who deserted Labour at the last election felt Government spending had reached or even breached acceptable limits and no longer [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Excess and the City
August 1st, 2010 by Roger Darlington
In an earlier blog posting, I asked: how big should income differentials be? I return to the subject now because this week the Financial Services Authority reveled information on earnings last year in the City of London.
While most people in Britain struggled to cope with the economic recession caused by the irrational exuberance of those [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
The cull of UK quangos
July 27th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
The term ‘quango’ has come to be almost an insult, but it is simply an acronym – short for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation. Most of these organisations do really good work and give value for money, although there is always a case for looking at roles, rationalisation and savings.
Perhaps some of the functions [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)
Why the budget is regressive rather than progressive (3)
June 27th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
As more and more study is made of the totality of the government’s measures to tackle the deficit – so, not just the tax and benefit changes in the budget, but also the likely impact of spending reductions – it becomes clearer and clearer that the poorest will suffer the most.
A piece in the “Observer” [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Ask Ed Miliband a question
June 26th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
My son Richard is currently working for the think tank Demos on its Open Left project. The project is running an online question & answer session with each of the five candidates for the Labour Party leadership.
In the first of the Open Left’s online Q &As, Ed Miliband, the Shadow Climate Change Secretary and MP for [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Why the budget is regressive rather than progressive (1)
June 23rd, 2010 by Roger Darlington
As the dust settles on the budget statement and the implications start to be understood, it is clear that, while this Conservative Chancellor has made more effort that his Tory predecessors to be fairer to the poor (presumably under pressure from his coalition partners), the overall impact of the measures will still be regressive.
In a [...]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)