IAIN MACWHIRTER | Scotland’s large public sector has cushioned it from the worst effects of the recession so far. But faced with a big grant cut next year, it will need to be allowed to raise taxes...
MIKE THATCHER | Something has to give. With the public finances in disarray, a number of ‘big-ticket’ public projects face cancellation whoever wins the next general election.
MELISSA BENN | It was not the stuff of banner headlines. Potentially dodgy economic dossiers took that particular crown. But Alistair Darling’s Budget day announcement of 50,000 new traineeships in...
MARTIN EVANS | The current tough economic conditions and cuts in public expenditure will test to the limit local authorities’ ability to manage their money effectively.
MIKE THATCHER | 'You can grow your way out of recession; you cannot cut your way out,’ warned the chancellor as he outlined the government’s spending plans in this week’s Budget.
JUDY HIRST | This, we are told, is going to be an austerity Budget. The chancellor will be forced to row back from even the bleak forecasts set out in the Pre-Budget Report. Record levels of...
HELEN DISNEY | Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government these days brings to mind the image of the proverbial headless chicken. It keeps on running wildly, lurching from side to side, even after...
Where on earth has local government minister John Healey been to form the view that the Local Government Pension Scheme is sustained by actuarially-based contributions?
Paul Cook hits the spot. While global finance goes into meltdown, we have to count up the number of hours of unused flexitime and annual leave as of March 31
PETER HETHERINGTON | For those children of Thatcherism fed on a diet of red-blooded capitalism, civic entrepreneurship — indeed, anything reeking of public sector initiative — was seen as an...
MIKE THATCHER | Presidents and prime ministers found their way to London this week to discuss ways to save the global economy. Up for discussion were bail-outs, fiscal stimuli and greater...
PETER WILBY | The phrase ‘two nations’, which dates back to the title of a novel by former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, used to mean rich and poor, North and South or rural and urban. Now it...
