COLIN TALBOT | While ministers impose tougher constraints on the financial sector, a government paper promises to reduce the regulatory burden on the public sector.
MIKE THATCHER | It is not uncommon for local authorities to take umbrage at Audit Commission reports. The watchdog often finds itself under fire for imposing excessive bureaucracy, for being too...
I agree that those of us who believe in ‘good, politically neutral statistics’ should support Karen Dunnell, the head of the Office for National Statistics.
MIKE THATCHER | How bad can things get? That’s the question on everyone’s lips as unemployment tops the 2 million mark, public borrowing shoots through the roof – and the International Monetary...
PAUL MASON | When International Financial Reporting Standards come into full effect in 2010/11, local authorities will have to include a balance sheet of the position at April 1, 2009.
MIKE THATCHER | It was billed by the prime minister as an opportunity to rethink the role of public services in light of the ‘biggest global financial market failure in history’.
I have to say that the cover of the February 20-26 edition of Public Finance (‘Saving Private Finance’) has to go down as the best and cleverest to date
Council tax is a most regressive form of taxation and, despite Alan Whitehead’s reference to the Lyons’ report, it is certainly far from being a yardstick of ability to pay
IAIN MACWHIRTER | The Scottish Labour Party has come into line with the other major parties in support of borrowing and tax-raising powers for Holyrood.
Reading your recent cover line ‘Busy doing nothing?’ on the Tories’ alternative economic strategy, I was rather looking forward to what I thought would be a forensic analysis from Policy Exchange of...
COLIN TALBOT | The Cabinet secretary believes that mandarins’ crisis management abilities will mitigate the effects of the recession on the civil service.
