News that Merkel may well be about to exercise one of her skidding U-turns on growth doesn’t seem to have filtered through to our George. Even if he’s the last one in Europe, including dominatrix Merkel herself, to have accepted that austerity isn’t working and slumps require spending on jobs and growth, he’s not going [...]
Posts Tagged ‘George Osborne’
Osborne sticking to austerity: will the last one out turn off the light?
May 9th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.
The best graphs are the ones Osborne doesn’t publish
Apr 30th, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.Last year on the 13 December 2011 Newsnight asked a group of economists to identify the most important chart of the year. I chose this one, which had appeared in the first paragraph of the British government’s Budget Report of 23 March 2011. It shows, as you can see, the extraordinary high levels of UK private debt – but [...]
Tax lawyers make monkeys out of the government
Apr 11th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.As John McEnroe famously said at Wimbledon, ‘You cannot be serious?’ How can Osborne pretend he’s serious about saying ‘aggressive tax avoidance’ is ‘morally repugnant’ when a mere 2 weeks after his budget imposing a 15% stamp duty rate on tax avoiders who put expensive property in an offshore company (so that when they sell, [...]
Osborne stokes the cancer of British politics
Apr 9th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.After unveiling an anti-tax avoidance deal with the Swiss two weeks ago, the day before the budget, with the self-righteous puff “I regard tax evasion as morally repugnant”, Osborne is now under pressure to backtrack fast. What he did not say is that the tax rate he negotiated with the Swiss authorities that would be [...]
Tory privilege
Apr 4th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Words that we will never hear again will continue to resonate the caustic hypocrisy of Tory politics. ‘We’re all in it together’, a piece of flagrant brazenness when it was first trailed by Osborne in 2010, has now become a millstone around the Tory neck. Everything they have done in the last two weeks contradicts [...]
The true face of Toryism is now being exposed
Mar 26th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.The reporting this weekend is very revealing. A few months before the election Cameron asserted that “secret corporate lobbying…. (was) the next big scandal waiting to happen”, but he would run a sleaze-free government. We now know he apoointed 3 weeks ago as Tory party fundraiser a man who made nearly a £1bn fortune from [...]
Who are the super-rich beneficiaries from this Budget?
Mar 25th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.There can be no doubt that the nation’s revulsion against awarding a £10,000 tax break to the top 1% of earners and no less than a £40,000 tax cut to 14,000 millionaires was dramatically sharpened by the fact that it was funded by depriving 4.5 million pensioners of £83 a week. But even if that [...]
Osborne has at least shown every right-wing myth is false
Mar 24th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.After a dreadful budget we should be grateful for small mercies. But one large one is that his tenure over the last 2 years has shot just about every fox in the right-wing locker. Cutting tap at the top would benefit the whole country because the benefits would trickle down to the rest of the [...]
A budget that ignores reality: ideological and macro-economically hollow
Mar 22nd, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.Since 2009 the economy has struggled to recover from the mire of a slump caused by the banking sector. But each time economic activity quickens, it hits a series of buffers. These buffers are well known , but denied by the Chancellor: a vast overhang of private debt now slowly being de-leveraged; a banking sector [...]
Budget: initial responses
Mar 21st, 2012 by Jon Lansman.On 50p tax Richard Murphy HMRC say net 50p tax revenue is £100 million – I repeat my claim -that’s a lie – and the evidence is he has not scrapped the rate altogether. Bookmarks Hide Sites
