For the third day in a row, the head of a prominent independent body has given Gordon Brown a kicking. After Lord Turner’s attack on Brown’s regulatory system, and Mervyn King’s comments yesterday, Steven Bundred, the chief executive of the Audit Commission, today laments our massive public debt. His article in the Times (headline: ‘Our
Plenty of interesting comments have come out of Mervyn King’s appearance before the Treasury Select Committee – Reuters collects some of the highlights here. But, after the claims Lord Turner made yesterday, King’s criticism of the regulatory system is particularly eye-catching. Here’s how the Telegraph’s James Kirkup reports it: Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said that financial
The story of Adolf Burger, a Slovakian Jew forced by the Nazis to produce counterfeit British banknotes, is utterly compelling. To a lesser degree, so is this statistic mentioned in the Times analysis accompanying a report of his visit to the Bank of England yesterday: “Counterfeiters continue to ply their trade in Britain and are
In terms of the cash involved, the controversy surrounding Fred Goodwin’s £650,000 a year pension is a mere footnote to the massive RBS bailout announced this morning. But, politically, it could be far more damaging for the Government. Their attempted solution to the problem is beyond parody – as Alistair Darling revealed this morning, the banking Minister, Lord Myners, has left a
Today’s yet another downturn milestone. As RBS announces the largest annual loss in UK corporate history, the Treasury’s set to make the bank the beneficiary of what could be the biggest bailout so far. Robert Peston sets it out thus: “The Treasury has announced that we as taxpayers will provide insurance to Royal Bank against
Ok, so I have a bit of a fascination with space and space travel, which I manfully try not to inflict on CoffeeHousers. But indulge me just this once, as this image taken by the European Southern Observatory – and reported by the Telegraph here – is too stunning not to share. For obvious reasons,
There’s a fascinating table in today’s FT, taken from the new study Towards a more Equal Society (ed. John Hills, Tom Sefton and Kitty Stewart), which I’ve reproduced below. It shows how people’s attitudes have hardened towards welfare over the past couple of decades: I suspect the recession has caused attitudes to harden even
Following the tragic death of Ivan Cameron, PMQs has been cancelled today. Instead, Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable will make brief statements at 1200. You can watch them here.
Here’s complete footage of Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress last night (you can read a full transcript here). Unsurprisingly, it’s economy-heavy and contains plenty of Reaganesque nods to the spirit of the American people, but it’s striking just how much Obama mentions getting the budget deficit down:
O to be a fly on the wall of the Brown Bunker, and watch the grim soap-opera unfold in real time. After the infamous Cabinet meeting over bankers’ bonuses – which triggered much of the Harriet Harman speculation – the Daily Mail’s reporting yet another angry meeting between Brown and his ministers, this time over
With all the subtlety of a bludgeon, Liam Byrne goes on the attack against those warning about the hole in our public finances. His primary target is Iain Martin’s column last week, but he also takes aim at Malcolm Offord’s recent report claiming that £100 billion of public spending cuts may be needed by 2020 to
From Stalin to Mr Bean back to Stalin again? Turns out that Gordon Brown’s new ‘Real Help Now’ website has already been airbrushed to delete references to action being taken by his political foes, in this case the SNP. Here’s how they report it: Efforts taken by the Scottish Government to help the economy through the recession
There’s plenty in today’s papers about Alistair Darling’s U-turn on Northern Rock. The Lombard column in the FT sums it up: the Rock has become a “dangerous laboratory for banking policy”, screeching from reining in its business one minute to expanding back into the mortgage market the next. To my mind, it’s a clear demonstration of
This is as nectar for political anoraks: a new collection of BBC archive videos charting Margaret Thatcher’s rise to becoming Prime Minister. Some nostalgic viewing in there for CoffeeHousers, I dare say. Hat-tip: Conservative Home
Say what you will about soundbites, but there’s little doubting the power they can have. Take, for instance, Tony Blair’s famous declaration that Labour would be “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Not only was it memorable and snappy, but it encapsulated, and still encapsulates, the kind of Broken Windows thinking that’s
Well worth reading the splash story in today’s Independent. It reveals that four “leading environmentalists” have given their backing to nuclear power, despite being opposed to it in the past. One of them – Stephen Tindale, the former director of Greenpeace – relates his experience thus: “It was kind of like a religious conversion. Being
An intriguing insight from Tim Montgomerie, about some potential Lib-Con love after the next election: “I understand that a group of shadow ministers believe that one of Tony Blair’s bigger strategic mistakes was to row back on co-operation with the Liberal Democrats when he won such a large Commons majority in 1997. These shadow ministers
One of the few things missing from our country’s, and Gordon Brown’s, cocktail of woes has been major civic unrest. Sure, we’ve seen strikes – most notably at the Lindsey oil refinery – but nothing as vitriolic, or as large, as the riots in Greece or Saturday’s protest in Dublin. That could be about to
Brace yourselves. It looks as though the next couple of weeks are going to be among Brown’s busiest and – so far as the taxpayer’s concerned – costliest yet. As the Sunday Times sets out, the flurry of initiatives and announcements may include: a call to ban 100 percent mortgages; a cash injection of £10
In case the English Cricket Board isn’t embarrassed enough, today’s Times has a fresh set of revelations about Allen Stanford and his tawdry cricket spectacular: It was an iconic and now infamous moment as Allen Stanford’s helicopter touched down on the perfectly trimmed grass of Lord’s, the home of English cricket. But the alarm bells
