Et tu, Brute? We have now reached a point where it seems impossible to present a plausible rationale for continuing with the government’s economic strategy (for want of a worse word). Osborne, a nasty piece of work even at the best of times, is now being assailed by all those global or national financial authorities who’ve previously supported him. Even the IMF has officially told him: “Recovery has stalled. Post-crisis repair and rebalancing of the UK economy is likely to be more prolonged than initially envisaged. Confidence is weak and uncertainty is high”.
The latest GDP figures will show the UK economy flatlining now for 2 years and still in recession for the 3 months to June. Manufacturing and construction have contracted and services have failed to grow. Bank lending to industry is now at the worst trend since 2009, with a £3bn fall hitting SMEs hardest. Britain is now the only country in the G20, apart from Italy, which is in double-dip recession. Apart from that, everything’s fine. Continue reading
UK Uncut, the anti-cuts direct action group, has today announced a new plan of action to start shortly before the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations and the Olympic period. The group, best known for targeting tax dodgers, will hold street parties in major towns and cities across the UK in the run up to the Jubilee and Olympics which will ‘resist the cuts and celebrate a future that is decided by us, not a handful of billionaires’. 
This appeal is made by 
Emily Wilding Davison famously threw herself under the King’s horse at the 1913 Derby, in order to publicise the suffragette cause. She died in hospital a few days later. I truly hope her bravery will be suitably commemorated on its centenary next year. 
Austerity isn’t working. The disastrous Tory economic experiment has left the economy stagnating, household incomes falling at their fastest rate in decades and unemployment soaring towards three million.