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.
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.
I had to check that it wasn’t April Fool’s Day when I read this story on the BBC this morning.
This is interfering nanny-statism of the highest order. Obviously under the guise of “protecting the vulnerable”, it is nothing less than a bureaucratic nightmare for parents, governors and public service professionals in a country where once again we are all assumed to be guilty before innocent.
Because the Libya story has been rightly dominating the news, followed swiftly by the story of the conviction of the plane-bomb plotters, it has been a good time to bury bad news.
Still sleepy-eyed from the long summer break, it appears that the media are slowly coming back to work, before the frenetic activity of the bigger parties’ conferences.
So, following on from a story I wrote back in July, there appears to be more action from the Chancellor Alistair Darling.
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