Posts Tagged economy
7 March, 2009 at 1:43 pm
· Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged banks, economy, Gordon Brown, Labour, public expenditure
UPDATE: in deference to Paul Walter (see comment below) this is the post formerly known as ‘£1.3 trillion we won’t see again’.
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I blogged before about the waste of £31M a day on the useless VAT cut.
Now here’s a piece on how much better the £1.3 trillion squandered by Gordon Brown on bailing out the banks could have been spent – 40 new hospitals, 500 new schools, and so it goes on.
Despite the bailout, the banks are still sacking staff, adding to the unemployment benefit bill and depressing the retail economy. Whereas investing in new infrastructure would create jobs, and give us the money to keep our shops afloat.
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19 January, 2009 at 10:33 pm
· Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged banks, economy, Labour, RBS
We look forward to Planet Obama tomorrow, but tonight’s news is depressing.
RBS, who have a big office at the Angel, have the dubious honour of a record share price collapse. There’s another bank bailout from Labour, evidence that the previous one failed; the only certainty is that we’re now underwriting the banks, not the other way round. To quote Robert Peston, “this is not a bank rescue plan. But if it had been, it would have failed miserably.”
Vince Cable is arguing for an honest approach: nationalise the banks openly, so we can share the profit as well as the pain.
And what does the PM have to say? Remember the dim groupie in This is Spinal Tap talking about ‘Dubly’ surround sound? She came in as the partner of the lead singer, then took over the band’s management with disastrous results.
Well tonight here’s Gordon Brown on the news blaming RBS’s share price collapse on their acquisition of ‘ANB Amro’? Reassuring, isn’t it….
With Labour’s poll ratings moving the same way as bank shares, no wonder the PM’s looking so glum.
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21 November, 2008 at 12:02 pm
· Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged economy, Guardian, Islington, jobs, Labour, Liberal Democrats, RBS, recession, Vince Cable
My latest Guardian blog – on recession, RBS and responsibility – is now online.
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16 November, 2008 at 8:14 pm
· Filed under Movies, media, music & culture ·Tagged economy, humour, recession, TV
Another brilliant show from Bremner, Bird and Fortune tonight.
In Silly Money, Rory Bremner and team destroy Labour’s claims to prudence, while making us laugh out loud. I particularly liked Alastair Darling in Dragon’s Den, negotiating ever worse deals for the taxpyer…
If you’ve missed Silly Money, you can catch up with it online for the next couple of weeks.
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31 October, 2008 at 7:43 pm
· Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged economy, Kings Cross, Peter Mandelson, transport
My latest Guardian blog – covering the economy, Mandelson, and a bit on transport (including pressing the case for the Battlebridge bridge) – is now online.
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2 October, 2008 at 1:18 pm
· Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged Conservatives, economy, Heathrow, politics
My latest Guardian blog – touching on the banking crisis, the Tories, and Heathrow – is now online.
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25 September, 2008 at 5:59 pm
· Filed under Consumer, Going green ·Tagged banks, economy, investment, recycling
Investment advice forwarded by a friend today:
If you had purchased £1,000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95.
With HBOS, earlier last week your £1,000 would have been worth £16.50.
£1,000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5.
But if you bought £1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £214.
So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle.
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28 August, 2008 at 1:53 pm
· Filed under Consumer, Liberal Democrats ·Tagged conferece, economy, housing, policy
Party conferences are memorable for all sorts of reasons.
I’ll always associate the Harrogate conference of September 1992 with ‘black Wednesday’. The day interest rates went through the roof, I was worried about losing mine. I’d moved to Islington earlier that year and we had a big mortgage to support. A group of us abandoned plans for a restaurant meal and contemplated life in negative equity over jacket potatoes instead. There was a chill in the air that was nothing to do with the north Yorkshire weather.
Now with falling house prices, but rising housing costs, it’s happening again. Last year there were more repossessions than for 15 years. So more families are facing the horror of losing their homes – and joining the long queue for affordable rented housing.
Islington’s housing market is relatively buoyant – in fact I think a modest fall in prices here relative to other areas would be a good thing. House prices are over-inflated and too many people are priced out of ever having a home. But there’s a big difference between a soft landing and a crash.
So while estate agents and developers try to talk up the market, it’s good to see that at this year’s Lib Dem conference, Vince Cable will be setting out plans for people who are getting left behind.
It’s not about subsidising mortgages, but practical measures to help people stay in their homes with help from housing associations; and help councils get more social housing too.
Once again Vince is providing excellent free advice to the Government: but is Labour listening? Unlikely given the complacency of Ministers reported by the FT…..
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22 August, 2008 at 3:11 pm
· Filed under Consumer ·Tagged economy, house prices, housing, Islington
London house prices are plummeting according to the latest monthly report from property experts Rightmove. But not in Islington.
Islington property prices have gone up by 5.2 per cent on last year, while London prices are down 3.8% and the national fall is 4.8%.
I’m an Islington home owner (leaseholder) myself, so you’d perhaps expect me to be pleased that local property values are holding up against the trend. After all, the rest of the economic news is pretty dire.
But I’m not so sure. Unless you’re planning to sell up and leave Islington, being more expensive than most other places is not good news. And it makes our community more economically polarised than ever.
The Islington Gazette reports that the average house price in Islington is now £542,935, up from £516,306 in the same month last year.
So you now have to be earning the price of an average home in the Midlands to get a mortgage for an average home in Islington.
I’m not sure that’s good news for anyone…
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24 April, 2008 at 7:21 am
· Filed under Language ·Tagged economy
There was a ‘toxic chicken’ alert on Radio 4 this morning. Bird flu? An environmental disaster?
No, it’s the striking phrase chosen by Robert Peston to describe the state of the economy; toxic chickens coming home to roost…
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