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Child Benefit: do George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith talk to each other?
Kristian Niemietz
5 October 2010
10 comments

Yesterday, the coalition announced that Child Benefit (CB) will be scrapped for families where one member belongs to the higher-rate tax bracket. A sensible reform idea, even when the details are...
Housing Benefit: Osborne’s approach does not address the dynamics of cost explosion
Kristian Niemietz
29 June 2010
5 comments

Some of the old video recorders made in the 1980s had an annoying kink: they could not hold the freeze frame mode for long. Shortly after pressing the pause button, they would automatically switch...
Emergency Budget: harsh lessons from Canada
Dan Osborne
22 June 2010
5 comments

The coalition government has spoken of emulating Canada’s success in enacting austerity measures. They should go Canadian, but it is important that they grasp all aspects of the Canadian...
A Budget of woes? Where has our imagination gone?
Ruth Porter
21 June 2010
1 comment

George Osborne has the chance to do something really radical tomorrow in his Budget statement. He must cut public spending to shore up Britain’s precarious economic situation – he has no...
George Osborne’s dangerous numbers
Adam Lyons
25 May 2010
8 comments

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.” This is the...
Truth in government
D. R. Myddelton
18 May 2010
comments

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer’s proposal to set up an independent Office for Budget Responsibility sounds like a good idea. But how sad that government ministers cannot be trusted...
Osborne’s National Insurance plans – be sceptical of “efficiency savings” claims
Kristian Niemietz
2 April 2010
12 comments

George Osborne’s announcement that he intends to reverse the increase in National Insurance Contributions has rightfully received applause from a number of business leaders, who called...
Co-operative ownership – the liberal way
Philip Booth
16 February 2010
13 comments

I have written before that co-ops and similar ventures are part of the rich tapestry of a market economy. After all, before the days of statutory regulation, the Stock Exchange was a mutual –...
Half a cheer for George Osborne
Philip Booth
15 January 2010
5 comments

It is good news, at least to some extent, that George Osborne has announced that some cuts will be made in government spending as soon as the Conservatives enter office. But, he should be careful....
Micro-management to continue – the “Brownborne” era
Philip Booth
26 October 2009
comments

It is difficult to know where to start in writing a blog post about George Osborne’s proposals to ban high-street bank bonuses in cash of more than £2,000. Let me, instead, raise a...
Conservative economic policy is timid and unimaginative
Oliver Marc Hartwich
15 October 2009
comments

The International Monetary Fund has just presented perhaps the gloomiest forecast for Britain’s public finances so far. It predicts that by next year, Britain’s debt will stand at...
Regressive Conservatism
Philip Booth
23 April 2009
10 comments

Phillip Blond is director of the Progressive Conservatism project at Demos and it is suggested that his ideas are getting a lot of exposure within the Conservative Party. His thoughts are certainly...
What does Osborne mean?
Philip Booth
4 February 2009
4 comments

On Monday, George Osborne made an interesting speech. It would have been a good opening statement at a dinner party of economists. There was a lot to chew on but the ideas were ill defined. But they...

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