Opinion

  • Public Finance
    28 Oct 09
    PHYLLIS STARKEY | The communities and local government select committee today publishes the government’s and other official responses to our report published in June examining the framework for the...
  • Public Finance
    27 Oct 09
    JAMES CLOSE | 'This is no time for a novice.' Gordon Brown’s jibe at Davids Cameron and Miliband at last year’s Labour conference was surely one of the better lines of his premiership
  • Public Finance
    27 Oct 09
    JAMIE BARTLETT | More ink has been spilled over the introduction of personal budgets than any reform in health and social care for a generation
  • Public Finance
    26 Oct 09
    CHRIS LESLIE | They used to say that the national obsession was home property values, dominating middle-class dining table conversations up and down the country throughout the 1980s and 1990s. How...
  • Public Finance
    23 Oct 09
    Mike Fogden CB, who died on October 10, was a career civil servant who was dedicated to public administration and what it could deliver for people
  • Public Finance
    23 Oct 09
    DAVID LIPSEY | The Conservatives are suddenly beginning to think of themselves as the party of government. That explains shadow chancellor George Osborne’s speech – labelled ‘brave’ – to his party...
  • Public Finance
    22 Oct 09
    MICK FLETCHER | The closer we get to the election – and to the inevitable period of public spending austerity – the louder the criticism for one of the schemes that has made a difference to...
  • Public Finance
    22 Oct 09
    JUDY HIRST | Pity the poor public sector manager. Pilloried by the press as time-wasting penpushers, the people who plan, run and performance-manage our public services are in the direct line of fire...
  • Public Finance
    22 Oct 09
    STEWART SUTHERLAND | Labour and Tory care proposals were not quite worth the ten-year wait, but they are moving in the right direction
  • Public Finance
    22 Oct 09
    JOHN THORNTON | The ‘G-cloud’ could help achieve the £7.2bn back-office savings required by ministers – but what is it?
  • Public Finance
    22 Oct 09
    As the chair of CIPFA’s housing panel, I was interested in housing minister John Healey’s PF blog, reminding readers of the deadline for the consultation on English council housing funding
  • Public Finance
    19 Oct 09
    We have a short memory. Back in the mid-199os, when the first national tests were introduced, there was a national outcry when fewer than half of 11-year olds pupils reached level 4, a level that...
  • Public Finance
    16 Oct 09
    IAN MULHEIRN | For his next trick Lord Turner has turned his hand to solving climate change. The striking if obvious conclusion of this week’s Climate Change Committee report was the authors’...
  • Public Finance
    16 Oct 09
    HEATHER WAKEFIELD| There will not be a collective holding of breath from 1.5 million local government workers on October 26, when Unison lodges its claim for their 2010/11 pay increase
  • Public Finance
    16 Oct 09
    JOHN HEALEY| Every year the calls to get rid of the Housing Revenue Account – the national system controlling local council housing income – get louder
  • Public Finance
    15 Oct 09
    CARL EMMERSON| At the Labour Party conference, Chancellor Alistair Darling proposed a ‘Fiscal Responsibility Act’ to increase confidence that he would reduce government borrowing
  • Public Finance
    15 Oct 09
    MIKE THATCHER| The public finances are under pressure like never before. Whoever wins the election will be forced to make cuts, to prioritise services and find yet more efficiency savings
  • Public Finance
    15 Oct 09
    CHRISTIAN WOLMAR | While most services face a funding standstill, rail investment chugs off in the opposite direction, and even a change in government is unlikely to derail it
  • Public Finance
    15 Oct 09
    ANDREW COZENS | As social services face higher demand with tighter funding, the sector is having to focus attention on only the most needy
  • Public Finance
    15 Oct 09
    Digby Jones argues that public sector pay has ‘caught up’ with the private sector because the median of the former is £700 higher than the latter
  • Public Finance
    14 Oct 09
    DAVID WALKER | After the privatisations of the Tory era, there isn’t much of the old nationalised stock left to sell
  • Public Finance
    13 Oct 09
    It was absolutely important that two of the main political parties decided to raise high the flag of social care at their party conferences this year, and begin seriously to put social care issues...
  • Public Finance
    13 Oct 09
    JON SIBSON | Although there are signs that the recession might be easing, it has taken a heavy toll on the UK’s public finances, with a structural budget deficit of around 10% of gross domestic...
  • Public Finance
    13 Oct 09
    INSTITUTE FOR FISCAL STUDIES | One of David Cameron's key themes in his speech to the Conservative Party conference was that Labour has "made the poorest poorer", "left youth unemployment higher" and...

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