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.
MIKE THATCHER | Taxpayers in England and Wales are far from happy. Not only are their jobs on the line and their homes at risk of repossession, but they also face council tax increases equivalent...
PHILIP JOHNSTON | In normal times, the Budget would be taking place in under a fortnight. The second week in March has become the Treasury’s favoured date over the years, to the annoyance of MPs...
MIKE THATCHER | Blink, and you might have missed it. This week the Conservatives launched Control shift, their long-trailed green paper on returning power to local communities. It generated only a...
HELEN DISNEY | Being in charge of welfare-to-work in a recession is something of a poisoned chalice. Nevertheless, the Conservative Party this week made the government’s welfare task even grimmer...
