Jonathan Jones

‘I’ve never seen a government document with a Laffer curve in it before’, declared Ed Balls last week. Well it looks like he might be seeing a lot more of them, if George Osborne gets his way. Yesterday, as James noted, the Chancellor told the Treasury select committee that: ‘I think the Treasury can now, and I've asked this to happen, start undertaking some real research into dynamic scoring, and what the broader economy effects are of changes to taxation’. Now, it’s hard to get all that excited about something with a name like ‘dynamic scoring’. It was never going to make the front pages, especially when there’s a ‘pasty tax’ to get worked up about.

So, once again, we face the prospect of disruption at the pumps, as tanker drivers have voted for strike action over their terms of employment. According to the union Unite, their demands are 'industry minimum standards and industry wide bargaining on pensions, terms and conditions, training and health and safety'. In all, around 2,000 drivers at seven fuel distribution companies voted, with 61 per cent of them in favour. A majority approved strike action at five of the seven firms, while at DHL and Suckling drivers rejected it. The government is, naturally, keen to avoid such a disruptive strike and has been quick to condemn it. Energy Secretary Ed Davey told the Today programme this morning that 'This strike is completely unnecessary. It should not go ahead.

1. Growth. The OBR's forecasts are essentially unchanged from the Autumn Statement, but nevertheless represent a much bleaker outlook than we were given a year ago:  2. Debt. Despite Osborne's talk of 'paying down the debt', he's actually adding to it — by 59 per cent over this parliament. He is, though, on course to meet his second fiscal rule to see the debt to GDP ratio falling by 2015-16: 3. Deficit. Ignoring the effects of transfering the Royal Mail pension deficit, there's hardly any change to the borrowing forecasts since November. Progress on deficit reduction will be much slower than announced in Osborne's first two Budgets: 4. Unemployment. The OBR expects unemployment to peak at 2.

Will Wednesday’s Budget herald the end of the 50p tax rate? It’s looking increasingly likely, with today’s Telegraph claiming that Osborne will replace it with a top rate of 45 per cent. Leaving the economic arguments aside, the consensus is that this will prove an unpopular move that could damage the Tories. Tim Montogmerie tweets that ‘if the post-Budget headlines are about 50p then Tories have a political problem’. The New Statesman's George Eaton writes that it ‘would do more to retoxify the Tory brand than any other measure’. But how dangerous a move is it? Certainly, scrapping the 50p rate doesn’t poll well. Yesterday’s YouGov poll found 60 per cent opposed and just 27 per cent in favour.

So, new jobs figures out today. Which do you want first: the bad news, or the kind-of-alright news? The bad news is that employment’s showing no signs of growth: the total number in work has been stuck at 29.1 million since it fell there in the summer. It’s a touch better than the trough of 28.8 million we hit at the end of 2009, but still half a million below where we were when the recession hit. And we’re showing no signs of getting there any time soon: And the not-so-bad news? Unemployment’s slightly down on last month, which was slightly down on the month before. It’s not a big drop — well within the margin of error — and the number of unemployed still stands at 2.7 million, so this doesn’t exactly count as good news.

Today’s ONS release will make pretty grim reading for students and recent graduates. It shows that the unemployment rate among recent graduates — those who graduated in the last six years — stands at 9.1 per cent, higher than the overall unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent. It’s even worse for those who graduated in the last two years — the unemployment rate among them is 18.9 per cent, up from 10 per cent before the recession. But there’s an even more worrying trend among those recent graduates who do find employment. In 2001, three-quarters of them were in ‘higher skill’ jobs — those requiring more than GCSEs. Now, less than two-thirds of them are: So what does this mean?

YouGov’s new poll for the Sunday Times includes one set of numbers that will be of particular interest to George Osborne at the moment. It asks the public: ‘If the government has money available to cut taxes in the budget later this month which of the following tax cuts would you most like to see?’ Here are the results: With the news this week that fuel prices are at an all-time high and expected to rise further, it’s hardly surprising that the public support a cut in the taxes on it. The AA, among others, has already called on the Chancellor to abandon the 3p rise in line with inflation currently planned for August. Last week, Osborne didn’t sound terribly likely to bow to their demands, but as Pete said on Tuesday, he might surprise us still.

‘Revealed: hidden government plans to privatise the police’, proclaims the Guardian headline this morning. The story is that, in an attempt to protect frontline services in the face of a 20 per cent cut in government funding: ‘West Midlands and Surrey have invited bids from G4S and other major security companies on behalf of all forces across England and Wales to take over the delivery of a wide range of services previously carried out by the police. The contract is the largest on police privatisation so far, with a potential value of £1.5bn over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5bn depending on how many other forces get involved.