Unfortunately, the blog is the first thing that goes when I get swamped with work, so once again, it’s apologies for the lapse since my last post.
The big story of the weekend is the proposal to impose a windfall tax on the banks, something that is enthusiastically embraced by Labour and LibDems and “not discounted” by the Conservatives.
I argue that the Conservative leadership should tread very carefully before supporting such a move - let me explain why…
The last 24 hours have been rather news-heavy, with the two big stories being Europe and this morning the Kelly Report.
I’ve written numerous pieces on expenses, so I will deal with that in due course, but suffice to say, I have been banging on about ending the Communications Allowance and having a rental allowance for so long, that I am feeling somewhat vindicated in the positions I took.
More fundamental and important is the question of Britain in Europe. I understand that David Cameron will be making an announcement at 4pm, so I deliberately wanted to make my opinions clear before then, rather than just writing out another reactive piece after the fact.
Below is the text of an open letter I have sent to Dr Cable in relation to an article that was published on the LibDem website on Wednesday 21st October and was taken down after a number of complaints from residents.
Any reader who wishes to see a pdf of the original article must e-mail me directly at deborah@deborah4twickenham.com.
A lot has been written about the potential move to women-only shortlists for Conservative seats selecting in the new year. Because of the unusually high churn in seats caused by the expenses scandal, it is likely that some of these seats will be “safe” Conservative seats or ultra-marginals that we could be expected to win.
This would result in an automatic increase in the number of women MPs on the Conservative benches if the actual General Election results reflect our current poll ratings.
Gordon Brown has just announced that he is going to sell off ~£16bn of state-owned assets, such as Tote and the Student Loan Book to plug his spending gap. Reluctantly, the Conservatives and to a lesser extent the LibDems have agreed that this is necessary.
In old money, £16bn, was a lot of money. It still is, but in the Alice In Wonderland world in which we live, we should not forget that for August 2009, the budget deficit was £16.1bn.
This means that Gordon Brown’s sale will only raise enough money to pay off 1 month’s borrowing.
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