“The Speaker’s coat of arms has been developed by the College of Arms. The design includes: a ladder, representing Mr Speaker’s family’s humble beginnings; four roundels representing Mr Speaker’s interest in tennis and Mr Speaker’s ex officio role as the Chairman of the Boundary Commissions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; scimitars or seaxes as used on the coat of arms of the county of Essex where Mr Speaker went to university. The motto, “all are equal”, is separated by pink triangles representing the Speaker’s championing of LGBT rights, and rainbow colours on the scroll represent the flag of equality.”
Glad they cleared up what the ladder was all about…
Ed Miliband says…
“I don’t support strikes because they are always a sign of failure.”
MPs are going to suffer this Wednesday. Catering staff are going on strike, so no £15-for-three-courses subsidised meals on expenses for them. It is tough at the top…
When we were anonymous we were cowards, now we have come out from behind the mask we’re publicity seekers. No pleasing some people. The GQ editors have done their list of influential men again, this year Guido is joined by Neo-Guido at 28, just ahead of Jeremy Hunt and behind Hugh Grant. The list is sponsored by Macallan, don’t suppose…
Growth is anaemic, that much of the Balls critique is true, the cause is not the government’s spending cuts, they are a mere 1% of GDP. Osborne has made mistakes, hiking VAT hit the High Street by taking money out of the real economy whereas QE at the moment only puts money into high finance money markets. Back in June the IMF issued a report recommending
“…tax cuts are faster to implement and more credibly temporary than expenditure shifts and should be targeted to investment, low-income households, or job creation to increase their multipliers… Simultaneous adoption of deeper long-run entitlement reform would be desirable to safeguard fiscal sustainability and market confidence…”
It also pointed out that
“The level of public spending as a percentage of GDP in our forecast has reduced by about half a per cent of GDP as compared to the previous fiscal year. However, it remains very far above the pre-crisis levels of spending and represents a long-term high in spending. It’s important to maintain that perspective”
Plan B, the Balls plan for bankruptcy and bond market collapse, is for higher taxes and more spending, this can be dismissed. Osborne is right when he says the international bond markets would crucify Britain if he switched to Plan B, for as Jeff Randall points out this morning
“At the moment, the Chancellor is pulling off a brilliant confidence trick: persuading the markets that Britain remains a triple-A credit, able to borrow on the same terms as Germany, while managing an economy with an inflation rate 66% higher than the eurozone’s average, and a national debt that is forecast to hit £1.32 trillion in 2015, nearly 40% greater than today.”
Tricky. Gordon Brown inherited an economy in a sweet spot and left an economy drowning in debt, Osborne believes he must bear down on the deficit to keep the confidence of the bond markets. Yet a paper produced by Dr Tim Morgan of bond brokers Tullett Prebon argues that if the government is going to miss its deficit reduction target anyway, what option would placate the bond markets more?
- “Britain has missed its deficit target because growth hasn’t happened”
- “Britain has missed its deficit target because the government failed to cut spending sufficiently”
- “Britain has missed its deficit target because taxes have been cut in pursuit of growth”
We’re currently in the first situation, the second situation is unpalatable to the government, the LibDems don’t have the stomach for a shock doctrine style short term austerity programme. Balls advocates stimulus in the form of higher spending, no one in government is advocating the alternative, which is to stimulate the economy by cutting taxes instead. Of course if we also rolled back government spending there would be more room for tax cuts to boost consumer confidence and the economy, without matching spending cuts the deficit will rise. Osborne is going to miss his deficit target regardless of which option he takes, it wouldn’t scare the bond market so much if cut taxes in pursuit of growth…
