Tag Archives: george osborne

Sarah Teather blasts George Osborne’s “irresponsible” comments on Philpott case

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 4th April 2013 - 9:53 pm

George Osborne has said some crass things in his time, but his comments today, as reported by the BBC, that there should be a debate on whether “the state should subsidise lifestyles like that” were awful, giving a whiff of credibility to the demonising headlines in the Daily Mail that my co-editor Stephen Tall wrote about earlier. Does this make Osborne a “trollemicist?”

Stephen sensibly said:

The welfare state was no more to blame for their deaths than capitalism would be to blame if they’d done it to claim on insurance. The motive was greed; the result a tragedy.

I think, though, …

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Posted in News | Also tagged Philpott case and sarah teather | 21 Comments

Budget 2013: Osborne crosses fingers and hopes ‘steady as she goes’ will come good by 2015

By Stephen Tall | Wed 20th March 2013 - 8:05 pm

Move along, nothing to see here… This was a steady-as-she-goes budget at a time when the economy is anything-but-steady.

Of course as Lib Dems it’s great to welcome the final push towards lifting all those paid less than £10,000 out of income tax. As my Co-Editor Caron Lindsay notes here, this is a policy direct from the front page of our 2010 manifesto to the Coalition’s budget. That’s no mean achievement — we know that because the Tories keep trying to claim it as …

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Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged budget 2013, featured and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 13 Comments

Budget 2013…..Live Blog

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th March 2013 - 12:34 pm

George Osborne is about to get to his feet to deliver his Budget.

In Parliament Square this morning, Enough Food IF campaigners gathered to remind him to stick to the 0.7% overseas aid pledge.

Join us for our budget live blog.

“It was of course inevitable that debit reduction would impact on growth, but what the independent OBR figures show quite clearly is that other factors – namely the weak international picture and higher-than-expected inflation – have had a much greater impact on economic growth. Given the risks of not …

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Posted in News | Also tagged budget, IF and oxfam | 11 Comments

UK loses its triple-A rating – George should’ve listened to Danny

By Stephen Tall | Fri 22nd February 2013 - 10:40 pm

The BBC reports tonight’s predictable news:

UK’s AAA credit rating cut to Aa1 by Moody’s
The UK has had its AAA credit rating cut by Moody’s, based on its expectation that growth will “remain sluggish over the next few years”. The ratings agency became the first to lower the UK from its highest rating, to Aa1. … The UK’s net sovereign debt was the equivalent of 68% of the country’s annual economic output, or GDP, at the end of last year. All three major credit agencies last year put the UK on “negative outlook”, meaning they could downgrade its rating if

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged credit agencies, Danny Alexander and economy | 54 Comments

‘Please give generously’: Tories mail-shot supporters asking for donations to fight Lib Dem mansion tax

By Stephen Tall | Sun 9th December 2012 - 10:05 am

That’s the story in the Guardian this weekend:

The Conservative party privately sent letters to Tory donors and wealthy homeowners promising to defeat Liberal Democrat plans for a mansion tax at the same time as their coalition partners thought they were negotiating on a version of the proposal ahead of the autumn statement, it emerged on Friday. … The letters were sent by the Conservative treasurers Lord Fink and Michael Farmer in November, when Lib Dem cabinet ministers privately believed there was hope that the Conservatives would agree to two extra higher-rate council tax bands as a way of raising

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged ConservativeHome, david cameron, mansion tax, nick clegg, tax and vince cable | 5 Comments

Autumn Statement: the good, the bad and the ugly

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th December 2012 - 2:17 pm

So, the Chancellor has given his Autumn Statement. Liberal Democrat reaction is likely to be at best mixed. Will people feel that the balance of tax and benefit measures is sufficient to support our claims that we are making the system fairer?

Osborne painted a fairly gloomy economic picture. The growth forecast is under 3% for the next 5 years. Austerity will continue way beyond the next election. It’s in that context that his measures must be judged.

Let’s take a brief look at the key points from a Liberal Democrat activist’s point of view:

The good – Lib Dem gains

Steve Webb’s Pension …

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Posted in News | Also tagged Autumn Statement 2012, economy and nick clegg | 38 Comments

What did George Osborne agree to do that Nick Clegg refused to do?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 22nd November 2012 - 3:25 pm

(You can like and share this graphic via LibDemVoice’s Facebook page by clicking here.)

Compare and contrast:

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Posted in News | Also tagged featured, mps expenses and nick clegg | 8 Comments

Opinion: Let’s unite against George Osborne’s employee rights grab

By Tracy Connell | Tue 30th October 2012 - 9:54 am

George Osborne has many faults, but we have to thank him for one thing – uniting the Liberal Democrats. There are groups within the Lib Dems holding different, even opposite views. However, many Lib Dems are united in their opposition to Osborne’s idea of exchanging workers’ rights for shares in their company. If you agree, please help us by taking part in the consultation on these proposals which ends on 8^th November.

Whilst the Lib Dems are fully behind the idea of Employee Share

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged consultations and employment rights | 16 Comments

Vince Cable MP writes… My view on George Osborne’s employee ownership scheme

By Vince Cable MP | Mon 15th October 2012 - 2:18 pm

Last week at the Conservative Party conference the Chancellor announced a new equity ownership scheme. His proposed scheme, targeted at small companies, is entirely voluntary and cannot be forced upon employees. It would offer employees shares (from £2,000 to £50,000) in their business in exchange for certain employment rights. The shares are Capital Gains Tax free – which if the company grows extremely fast is a valuable offer.

The scheme has had a mixed reaction. However a few

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged adrian beecroft, capital gains tax, employee ownership and featured | 76 Comments

Opinion: Shares for Rights? An open letter to Nick Clegg

By Nigel Quinton | Fri 12th October 2012 - 11:52 am

Dear Nick

Like most people I have spoken to this week I had imagined that Osborne’s announcement of “shares-for-rights” was for the Tory conference audience, and would not see its way into government policy, not at least while the Liberal Democrats are part of the government.

Yet today I read in Tim Gordon’s weekly update that we actually are supporting this as a promotion of employee ownership! Nick, it is anything but!!

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged employment rights, featured and nick clegg | 32 Comments

There are no easy choices when it comes to reducing the deficit

By Nick Thornsby | Tue 9th October 2012 - 12:11 pm

George Osborne’s statement that senior Liberal Democrats have agreed in principle to a further £10bn of welfare cuts in 2015-16 has prompted a strong reaction from many party members and a TV rebuttal from Nick Clegg.

But the issue is one worth pausing on, for it raises some important questions for Liberal Democrats.

Starting at the beginning, the first question raised is how we wish to close the deficit that will now exist in the first years of the next Parliament following the Chancellor’s decision in last year’s autumn statement to push back the period in which the

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged deficit and welfare | 30 Comments

News snippets from the Conservative conference: tax, Europe, migration and more

By Mark Pack | Sun 7th October 2012 - 10:28 am

Trouble ahead on tax as Osborne opposes a mansion tax:

We are not going to have a mansion tax, or a new tax that is a percentage value of people’s properties.

Before you rush to spot the loophole in that – what about adding extra higher bands to Council Tax? – he opposed that too. Given Osborne made much of his reputation as was by opposing changes to inheritance tax, perhaps it is on capital gains tax that there will be room fro an agreement with the …

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Posted in News | Also tagged council tax, david cameron, equal marriage, european union, mansion tax, railways, tax and theresa may | 13 Comments

LDVideo: George Osborne booed at Paralympics

By Stephen Tall | Tue 4th September 2012 - 6:45 am

This was the scene last night when Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne turned up at the Olympic stadium to present the medals at the 400m T38 victory ceremony:

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged london 2012 and paralympics | 3 Comments

Julian Huppert MP writes… Britain deserves an affordable railway

By Julian Huppert MP | Thu 23rd August 2012 - 11:20 am

Our rail fares are among the most expensive in Europe, and they keep going up. Between 1997 and 2010 rail fares went up by an astonishing 66% – well above inflation.

If next year’s planned rail fare rises go ahead, some passengers will hand over up to 15% of their wages for the pleasure of travelling to work.

Since the Labour party introduced above inflation fare rises in 2003, these increases have become a yearly occurrence. Indeed, Labour Party policy is still to have above-inflation rail fare increases every year.

We say that rail fares are already too high. We would cap rail …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged railways | 14 Comments

LibLink: John Pugh MP – With hindsight, Cable’s deficit reduction plan looks better than Osborne’s

By NewsHound | Tue 21st August 2012 - 1:20 pm

Lib Dem MP John Pugh has written a thoughtful, balanced piece on economic policy for the New Statesman website. He freely admits he has voted for every part of George Osborne’s economic strategy brought before the Commons (“I did not know if it would achieve all its major objectives but I certainly did not know it would not”) but says the facts are plain: it’s not working. Here’s an excerpt:

Yes, jobs are being created in the private sector, unemployment is not moving upwards, the deficit is down, our export markets are engaging with the emerging economies, inflation is low and

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged economy, john pugh and vince cable | 23 Comments

Opinion: Is this the start of Plan A+?

By Adam Corlett | Sun 12th August 2012 - 9:25 am

It looks like the coming months will see new initiatives to boost the economy, following the second quarter contraction (now revised up slightly to -0.5%) and a record trade deficit.

As The Spectator reports,

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david cameron, economy, ed miliband, eric pickles, housing and nick clegg | 4 Comments

Danny Alexander: UK’s triple-A credit rating “not be-all and end-all”

By Stephen Tall | Mon 6th August 2012 - 9:05 am

Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander has signalled an interesting shift in the government’s economic approach, downplaying the significance to the economy of the UK’s continuing triple-A credit rating. Here’s what he told the BBC (courtesy of PoliticsHome):

“The credit rating is not the be-all and end-all. What matters is have we got the right policy mix for the country to get people back into work, to support economic growth, to deal with the huge problems in our public finances and the credit agencies reflect on those things and the ratings they give are a reflection of

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged credit agencies, Danny Alexander and larry elliott | 1 Comment

LibLink: Matthew Oakeshott – The Treasury needs a new team to stop this slide back into recession

By Mary Reid | Fri 27th July 2012 - 2:55 pm

In The Guardian Matthew Oakeshott writes:

Britain’s economy after this week’s grim GDP figures looks like an old steam train struggling up Shap Fell. George Osborne, the driver, is doing his best but there’s just not enough coal in the firebox, the train’s lost momentum, and it’s slipping back down the hill. We need two massive growth locomotives, called housing and banking, with a new team on the footplate to stop the slide.

That’s why I’ve been saying we need a bold plan A+, making banks lend, especially RBS,

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged matthew oakeshott and treasury | 14 Comments

Vince Cable on the economy, George Osborne and his own ambitions

By Mark Pack | Thu 26th July 2012 - 9:14 am

From last night’s Newsnight:

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Posted in News and YouTube | Also tagged economy, matthew oakeshott and vince cable | 3 Comments

Daily Mirror: ‘Time for Plan V’ (aka ‘Vince for Chancellor’)

By Stephen Tall | Thu 26th July 2012 - 7:50 am

The front page of this morning’s Mirror newspaper may bring a smile to the face even of that most sober of politicians, Vince Cable:

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Posted in News | Also tagged matthew norman, steve richards and vince cable | 8 Comments

Leaked letter shows Osborne is pressurising Ed Davey on green energy

By NewsHound | Mon 23rd July 2012 - 12:23 pm

Jim Pickard in the FT carries details of a leaked letter from Gerge Osborne to Ed Davey laying down the law on crucial green energy issues. The letter includes the demand that Davey sends a “strong signal” that the government is in favour of “unabated gas”:

…I have been handed a letter from the chancellor to Ed Davey, energy secretary, which suggests that the wind subsidies are only

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Posted in News | Also tagged ed davey and renewable energy | 6 Comments

LDVideo: Chloe Smith’s car-crash fuel duty Newsnight interview

By The Voice | Wed 27th June 2012 - 8:05 am

Yesterday saw George Osborne execute his latest U-turn, postponing from August until January next year the 3p-a-litre rise in fuel duty. Here is that U-turn, by the way:

Budget 2012: Fuel duty increase gets go-ahead (21 March): ‘Chancellor George Osborne has said a 3.02 pence per litre fuel duty increase will take effect on 1 August as planned.’
Government postpones planned 3p fuel duty increase (26 June): ‘Fuel duty will be frozen for the rest of the year, Chancellor George Osborne told MPs, adding that this would benefit families and businesses.’

Last night, Conservative Treasury minister did a tour of the media studios to defend the decision. Unfortunately for her, that included facing Jeremy Paxman live on BBC2′s Newsnight. You can watch the fairly excruciating result below (from approx. 6m:15s in):

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged bbc newsnight, budget 2012, chloe smith, fuel duty and jeremy paxman | 26 Comments

Government’s search for an alternative to PFI takes another twist with growth bonds

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th June 2012 - 7:55 am

Labour’s PFI and PPP schemes turned out badly in so many ways, it is easy to forget quite why they were so popular to begin with, both with politicians very much of the central government public spending school (e.g. John Prescott) and also with senior public sector managers wanting to get funding for their areas (e.g. at Transport for London).

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Posted in News | Also tagged economy, nick clegg and tax | 7 Comments

Clegg calls for Coalition to “shift up a gear” on the economy

By Stephen Tall | Fri 25th May 2012 - 7:45 am

Nick Clegg has said the Coalition Government’s economic policy needs to “shift up a gear”, following news yesterday that the UK economy shrank by 0.3% in the first three months of the year, down on the initial estimate from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing a contraction of 0.2%. Here’s Nick speaking on BBC2′s Newsnight last night:

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Posted in News and YouTube | Also tagged economy, gavin kelly and nick clegg | 14 Comments

Opinion: The government is in real trouble and needs a new chancellor

By Lev Eakins | Mon 21st May 2012 - 10:24 am

In the last two months, the government has been presented with four major problems:

1. The Economy – It’s not growing, despite good signs in manufacturing and a recent drop in unemployment, we’re back in recession and could even face another almighty shock if the Euro crisis deepens.

2. Ministers mucking things up – May, Hunt and Osborne have provided the government with a fatal combination of not getting the basics right (Abu Qatada and airport queues), the smell of sleaze (Murdoch) and the fallout from …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged economy | 24 Comments

Politicians’ fathers and spouses – fair game?

By Paul Walter | Mon 23rd April 2012 - 1:23 pm

There’s always a debate as to the extent that politicians’ family should be fair game for media coverage. There seems to be a general consensus that their children should be off-limits. Mind you, that didn’t stop Caroline Spelman’s 17-year-old son being pitched into the national limelight recently. (However, in that case there appear to be justifiable reasons for coverage).

Over the last week, we have seen a number of stories concerning UK politicians’ fathers and wives (or, more correctly, wife).

The …

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Posted in News | Also tagged caroline spelman, david cameron, miriam gonzalez durantez and nick clegg | 18 Comments

The Tories’ and Labour’s collective tax omnishambles

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th April 2012 - 8:55 pm

Labour is against reducing the 50p top-rate tax to 45p for those earning more than £150,000. What could be clearer? As it happens, quite a lot could be clearer.

First, the omnishambles…

Given how widely predicted George Osborne’s decision to reduce the top-rate was you would have thought Labour would have anticipated it and worked out their line. They failed to — as Mark Pack noted here, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna contradicted himself within 24 hours, while Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls declined to declare his hand.

When Labour did …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged conservative party, featured, labour party, nick clegg, tax cuts (Lib Dem) and taxes | 3 Comments

LDV Caption Competition: Osborne, Clegg & Alexander “Three Musketeers” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 14th April 2012 - 5:30 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…

Here is Tory Chancellor George Osborne flanked by the two Lib Dem members of the ‘Quad’, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about them?

And the winners of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Tim Farron & Prince Charles “I want that hat” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | Also tagged Danny Alexander and nick clegg | 14 Comments