George Osborne clearly intends to put a brake on community-led solar power schemes just at the point when they are cutting carbon, reducing green energy costs, creating jobs and winning public support. Unfortunately, his Treasury-led, austerity-led pla…Read more…
The Global Money Addiction (interest rate dilemmas in context)
“Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money”, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his inaugural address, 4 March 1933 Debate around UK monetary policy recognises all is far from normal through the idea that when rate rises finally come, they will be limited in extent….Read more…
The ghost of check-off past – Danny Alexander returns to haunt Matt Hancock
Cabinet Office Minster Matt Hancock MP took everyone by surprise with today’s last-minute addition to the Trade Union Bill. In revealing plans to abolish check-off (the process by which employers deduct union subscriptions directly from wages) arrangements for union members in the public…Read more…
Monetary policy committee minutes betray worries about the economy?
In spite of fevered speculation about rate rises in the not too distant future, only one member of the MPC voted for interest rate rises (Ian McCafferty of the CBI). The minutes betray some concerns about the underlying momentum of the economy going forward. On GDP the Committee note that…Read more…
Government’s union membership changes are aimed at undermining public service workers’ rights
The Trade Union Bill keeps getting bigger as the Government find more ways they can rebalance power away from the workforce. The rapidly increasing package of measures contained in the Bill seeks to reduce the capacity of unions to represent people at …Read more…
Government fails to address BIS Select Committee’s concerns on TTIP
Last week the Government slipped out its response to the previous BIS Select Committee report on TTIP released last March. In light of the fact that one of the criticisms the BIS Committee’s report raised was the lack of engagement by the government with stakeholders concerned by TTIP,…Read more…
Government’s own polls show rising opposition to shale gas fracking
Public support for fracking in the UK has fallen to an all-time low, according to the government’s latest survey of public attitudes towards energy of various kinds – ranging from shale gas and new nuclear to renewables. A clear majority support investment in carbon capture technology. DECC Energy…Read more…
Ten charities challenge Cameron’s pre-election green promise
Leaders of ten leading UK charities concerned with protection of the environment have written to the Prime Minister, alarmed that: “early policy choices being made are running counter to the strong intentions you outlined in your pre-election climate pledges and in your manifesto, to…Read more…
Crude caps on public servants’ redundancy payments are not value for money
Despite a settlement on redundancy terms agreed with the last Minister for the Cabinet Office, Matt Hancock’s Cabinet colleague, Francis Maude, which he described at the time as “for the longer term” the government seems intent to rush yet another change less than five years after the…Read more…
Still easily the slowest recovery of GDP per head on record
In the coverage of the GDP figures last week, some attention was paid to the ONS observation that on a per head basis GDP in 2015 Q2 is likely to be back to the pre-crisis level. This may be all well and good, but is hardly a measure of economic performance. The relevant measure is…
The post…Read more…
No support for abolishing the Child Poverty Act
The government can’t be accused of pussy-footing about. In this Parliament we’ve already had the most radical Budget for 20 years, an attack on trade unions that out-Tebbits Norman Tebbit and cuts to tax credits that will force thousands of low-paid workers and their children into…Read more…
Bank of England lending data echoes reliance on consumer demand, with corporate borrowing falling again
Bank of England lending data issued earlier this week (here) showed a reduction in the pace of growth of lending to the private sector for the third month in a row. But as lending to financial and non-financial firms fell, lending to households expanded. Lending growth, month on a year ago As the…Read more…
TUC Economic Quarterly Report 7
This quarterly TUC report provides an analysis of UK economic developments over recent months; focuses on the current labour market compared to pre-recession levels; and includes a spotlight feature on productivity since 2008. Summary Economic activity appears to have weakened a little from the…Read more…
Consultation on Modern Slavery Act
In the last days of the coalition Government the Modern Slavery Bill became law. As I reported in my blog, at the time, the Government was consulting on the reporting requirements for businesses in relation to the Transparency in Supply Chain clause. T…Read more…
Enter the new kid on the block – a “sustainable free market”
I dont know if we have a climate sceptic Chancellor. But global surface temperature are now passing more than 1 °C of global warming, relative to the second half of the 19th century. Is this the right time for the Treasury to cast out the UK’s ten key green energy policies for an untried,…Read more…
Burnout Britain Mapped: employees missing out on paid holidays by nation and region
New figures indicate that 1,669,000 employees are missing out on their minimum legal entitlement to paid holidays. That’s an average of 6.4% of workers not taking up their legal rights. But this problem isn’t uniform across the UK, nor across all sectors, as you can see below. Missed…Read more…
Fossils are go! as Labour hopefuls miss Osborne’s energy omnishambles
Business Green argues today that the government is pushing through without an effective response from Labour’s leadership hopefuls a new energy policy with renewables shoved to the margins. But across the Pond, Hillary Clinton’s pledge to install half a billion solar panels and generate enough…Read more…
“Want work” levels and women’s labour market participation
Women Want Work is a new TUC briefing that argues that the official unemployment figures under-state the jobs shortage; in particular they minimise the number of women who aren’t in employment but ideally would like a paid job. This is because of the way unemployment is defined for the…Read more…
Revival in GDP quarterly growth figure disguises increased imbalances
GDP quarterly growth was back up to 0.7% in 2015 Q2 from 0.4% in Q1, and was in-line with market expectations. The main reasons for the revival in growth were a surge in energy extraction and use and a rebound in service activity. Acting in the opposite direction was the first fall in manufacturing…Read more…
Andy Haldane: Shareholder primacy is bad for economic growth
Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s Chief Economist, has said that the UK’s shareholder model of corporate governance is holding back business investment and hurting economic growth. In a fascinating interview on Newsnight with Duncan Weldon (formerly TUC Senior Economist), he said that firms…Read more…