A budget package in December may not be Autumn, but it certainly had a real chill for those least able to afford its consequences. This was a classic Osborne budget statement. Massive real cuts, sugar coated by handing back a few pennies in the form of announcements on the NHS and infrastructure. Yes, Scotland will […]
Posts Tagged ‘Autumn Statement’
Even by Osborne’s standards this is the most dishonest budget since the war
Dec 6th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.This was the thinnest Autumn Statement (mini-budget) in living memory. There was nothing new in it of any significance except the change from the slab system to the stepped system for stamp duty. But on the key issue which underpinned the whole statement, namely that this year the deficit is rising, not falling, there was […]
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George Osborne’s careless Autumn statement
Dec 4th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Would you trust someone with the economy when they don’t know what season it is? Well, the British electorate did as as it’s winter that means Autumn Statement time! How exciting. Alas, a bravura performance from George Osborne it was not. Forced to backpedal on collapsing tax revenues and missed deficit targets, while throwing in […]
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Osborne checkmated by his own austerity
Dec 3rd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Politics has a curious way of coming back to haunt politicians in a way they never intended or expected. Osborne is a case in point. The whole thrust of his austerity strategy, as he repeatedly told us, was to eliminate the structural deficit in this Parliament. On that basis he predicted in 2010 that the […]
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The Autumn Statement and Long-Term Austerity
Dec 15th, 2012 by Michael Burke.George Osborne’s Autumn Statement brings home the stark reality that on current policy settings economic stagnation and ‘austerity’ will be a permanent feature of the British economy for many years to come. The Office for Budget responsibility (OBR) has a hopelessly over-optimistic track record in forecasting GDP growth. Fig.1 shows the actual outturn on GDP […]
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Is this the brownest government ever?
Dec 7th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Osborne, in his Autumn Statement, ratified 30 new gas power sites and gave the green light to major shale gas exploration. The aim is to ensure that gas-fired power provides half of generation capacity by 2030. Some 26 gigawatts of new power capacity will be needed to replace nuclear and coal-fired plants closing down before […]
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Osborne’s Autumn Statement won’t rid Britain of his ideological hang-ups
Dec 5th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Today’s mini-budget statement is really Osborne’s last chance to fix Britain’s dire economy before the election. The IFS has just predicted that austerity will last till at least 2018 – a lost decade like Japan. The re-balancing of the economy, the’March of the Makers’, which Osborne lauded has simply not happened. Neither the government’s Funding […]
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It’s not the public, but the private finance sector, stupid.
Dec 5th, 2011 by Ann Pettifor.The Autumn Statement revealed but one thing: the Chancellor and his advisers are both ill-advised and dangerously ill-prepared for the forthcoming prolonged Depression. And if you think I exaggerate, let me remind you that 20 years after the Japanese debt bubble burst, Tokyo house prices are still falling, and the stock market is worth 60% less […]
