Lots of brouhaha the past few days about the apparent M&S policy (later back-tracked upon) of allowing Muslim staff not to serve pork or alcohol. Why, though? M&S presumably has orthodox Jewish staff whom it does not insist must work on Saturdays? Why would we be any more outraged if it let some staff not
Tomorrow we finally move from generalities to specifics. No need to argue any more about whether the losers will be up in arms or will it all be a damp squib. Tomorrow we get the gory detail. At the time of the Emergency Budget we were told to expect cuts in non-ring-fenced departments of 25
Recent events in the Eurozone have led a number of commentators to suggest that we are nearing some repeat of the financial crisis that followed the nationalisation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in August 2008 and the subsequent (and consequent) bankruptcy of Lehman’s. In my view, the current situation is rather different from that
In the table below, we consider how the budgets of various departments grew over the last Labour government. It spells out the very large rises in Health and Education (together, the rises in these two departments accounted for 61 percent of the total rise in departmental expenditure over the period). And we can see that
Policy Exchange has repeatedly urged that the country’s fiscal problems should be addressed principally by spending cuts, combined with some tax rises. We have recommended a ratio of 80 percent spending cuts to 20 percent tax rises. The “structural” deficit in the UK (i.e. the bit of the total deficit that will still be there
This morning the inflation figures were released for September. They show that the economy is in ongoing deflation, as it has been since March 2009, with the annual change in the Retail Prices Index (RPI) standing at -1.4 percent. At the same time, the policy index used by the Bank of England to determine its
Public spending is currently accelerating at an unprecedented pace — more swiftly, even, that during the total loss of control during the 1970s. Spending is due to rise £120bn, 20%, in just three years from 2007/8 to 2010/11, taking it from 41% of GDP to above 50% — a much more rapid rise than in
