GDP figures – ho hum.

Osborne and Cable are now starting to pay the price for not addressing structural reform in the economy early in this Parliament. We need to reform

-banks
- tax
- legislation

If they had hacked into these earlier – especially the bank lending to SMEs – they would be seeing a benefit coming through each month. It probably would have kept them marginally in the black last quarter, while supporting future prospects.

The lefties have a point in saying the govt hasn’t got a growth strategy. It hasn’t.  Of course Lefties’ “growth”  means pissing more borrowed money up the wall just for the sake of it. However from an industrial and commercial perspective which aims to create real wealth, the government is dabbling at the margins and hoping good treasury management will solve the problem. In a recessional world it just won’t.

Dave needs his arse kicked, Cable needs put out to grass.

From 2012 all state funding of all teaching of all arts and humanities courses at all universities will be abolished.

Public funding of R&D will be cut by 12% over the course of this Parliament.

Actually I would have it done by actually cutting government spending instead of the 0.4% rise we just had, and extra taxes on consumption (raise VAT to 22 or 23%). No need to borrow any more to fund tax cuts.

Austerity alone doesn’t work, but coupled with growth inducing supply side reforms it can be made to work. The problem is that this government are worried about the politics of cutting spending and then being seen to be cutting taxes for big business. Basically they are all a bunch of pansies who need to grow a pair and stop worrying about what people think. If we can get the economy growing and creating jobs, people won’t care that spending was cut to give businesses tax breaks.

Perfect summary

RT @PhilippaNews: Nifty Newt Gingrich line on #Obama ‘ he has shifted from Yes We Can to Why We Couldn’t’.

bollocks ,  sour grapes as usual

So you think ROTUK would be willing to be the lender of last resort for Scotland without having control over fiscal plans?

If it was anyone apart from Ed I think you would be right. Because its Ed I’m sure it will be a such a shocker even today’s figures won’t drown it out.

What has Vince actually done about stimulating business growth? 

I don’t want to be unfair to him, but I can’t think of anything concrete or even particularly memorable initiatives.

Disappointing GDP numbers – no getting away from it. 

Daved Miliband’s good 2012 is getting better by the day. Another open goal for PMQs presumably.

I’ve listened to the Interview and I don’t think Paxman was very good. He should have let Mr Salmond speak instead of interrupting him all the time.

From what I heard it appears to be devo-max that is being pursued not full independence. 

PB Tory list of blame so far.

1.Cold weather.
2.Warm weather.
3.The BBC.
4.The ONS
5.GDP itself.
6.Vince Cable.

Bob Crow up at Leveson next – anyone know why?

I actually think banking is the only business that the Tories are interested in.

You forgot

7. Labour royally f*cked the economy, 1997 – 2010

Forget 1-6, 7 is the killer for your party….

That’s not fair, I’m a PB tory, and I’ve at least twice quoted the greatest Labour Chancellor since….? 

The govt do have a growth strategy – its been clearly published.  Do you think the shambles of the past can be tuned round just like that?  Growth is going to be dormant for a while, I would suggest for the rest of this year. And thats assuming the Eurozone sort themselves out – which they show no sign of doing. 

The shambles of the banking crisis and the mess its left banks in is a big problem and Osborne has indeed approached it with the credit easing proposal.  So whilst it might be easy to say the govt are doing nothing – the fact is they are and have been within the constrained limits of the possible.  The govt have not really started their cuts agenda until this year so growth is not particularly based on its own spending.  The world is in a mess.

Deserting a sinking ship…what does that make you!!!??

There’ll always be an England

While there’s a country lane,

Wherever there’s a cottage small

Beside a field of grain.

There’ll always be an England

While there’s a busy street,

Wherever there’s a turning wheel,

A million marching feet.

Red, white and blue; what does it mean to you?

Surely you’re proud, shout it aloud,

“Britons, awake!”

The empire too, we can depend on you.

Freedom remains. These are the chains

Nothing can break.

There’ll always be an England,

And England shall be free

If England means as much to you

As England means to me.

The SNP economic policy, post independence, is woeful.  They appear to have no prepared case on how their currency and borrowing underpinning an independent Scotland will be constructed. They just expect to have rump UK take all the risk of another Gordon Brown credit splurge north of the border drag down the pound.  Well, screw you.

I expected better from Salmond.  You can’t wing this sort of stuff, Alex.

He believes the media hacked/illegally accessed into his, senior union officials’ personal and work emails, phones and computers.

Edit: And possibly into his No2EU party’s emails, phones and computers as well.

DMO?

It IS a massive recovery from the state Labour left it in.  There are now grown ups in charge.

Who says?  Mr Market, that is who.

paulmasonnews Paul Mason

11) “Blame Osborne” simplistic. Blame Merkel just as much. Blame Lehman. Blame the old FSA. Blame every1 who did “buy to let”. Its strategic

Have you forgotten already?

Growth is going to be dormant for a while

Dormant?! That’s a new one!

The economy is only sleeping.

I think I am going to have to follow pmqs via cover it live on Guido today. The thought of watching it on tv and hearing ed’s absolutely fcking awful nasal whine as he trots out some line such as “let me tell him” or “let me give the prime minister a lesson” like one of those grade A tossers at school who thought because they had a samsonite briefcase and glasses they were really top intellectuals when in fact they knew nothing and were frankly lucky not to get beaten to death in the playground. It is going to be absolutely unbearable.

Still, at least he was not involved in any way in the running of the economy in the recent past that helped lead us into this mess, oh……

Take a look at the rate we are borrowing at – we are out of the danger zone.
Take a look at the IMFs projection of Italian growth.  we are out of the danger zone.

The BBC isn’t called the Bolshivec Broadcasting Corporation for nothing. It’s inherent left anglophobic political agendas are there for all to see. Perhaps the government should privatise it, because it’s a useless parasitic marxist organisation we could do without.

Very sensible.

The mood here in Asia is just so utterly different to that across Europe. Despite Thailand’s massive floods it will grow about 3% this year, next year it will be 5-6%. And so forth. 

A country that is growing at 5% a year *feels* palpably different to one growing at 1% or less.

There is an optimism. And an energy. And its warm and sunny. And the penang chicken curries are great. Shanghai will be even buzzier, of course, though not quite as tropical.

every time I see a Nat claiming they are the party of competence I just roll about laughing. The claims they have spent years looking at this are just baloney. They haven’t even got to first base on most of it.

How does one cut taxes for the groups you have mentioned by easing up on austerity? Where then does the money come from? The debt markets? No, they barely believe the chancellor about the deficit reduction plans as it is. Your plan is to soak the rich, tax them until the pips squeak, yes, that worked out so very well in the past.

No, we need to cut government spending much faster and give all business better incentive to invest their money in the economy, which means a massive capital investment allowance, something like £5bn. It means cutting health and safety regulation and easing up on employment law for small business, it means, and you’ll hate this one, allowing entrepreneurs to become filthy rich.

The government can’t directly invest in any of the areas you have mentioned, they can only give tax incentives to do so and without extra borrowing they can only come from extra money saved. I get the feeling Osborne is going to have some kind of detail on the credit easing programme and extra cuts to fund some kind of tax breaks for the groups you have mentioned and for big business. It’s the only measure that will make any difference. It’s companies like the one I work for that will create the jobs that get us out of the mess, only we aren’t being given any incentive to create those jobs. We may do so anyway, but it won’t be as expansive as we want.

Just as a quick, real world, example. Sony want to build an optical disc replication plant in Europe, they already have one in Austria, but they are worried about the state of the EU economy. This is high tech manufacturing and the plant in Austria employs around 3,000 highly paid engineers and technicians. The company approached the government about locating it somewhere in the UK, but they wanted a deal, one where they could offset the money invested in the economy on the first five years of operation of the new production centre. The government said no. Sony decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and expanded the Austria plant (they just finished), and in the process created 2,300 positions directly, and a further 1,000 jobs in the supply chain of plastics and organics.

The UK lost 3,300 jobs and money invested because, and this is the reason I have heard from not just us, but so many businesses all over, the government can’t be seen giving tax breaks to big business while cutting spending for ordinary people. I’m sure the 3,300 people who would now have jobs and the 1,000 people who would have worked on construction wouldn’t have given a damn. The Treasury would now be taking in income tax and indirect taxes from an extra 3,300 highly paid people (we’re talking £50k and up) and from 2016, the offset would have ended and corporation taxes could also have been applied. But we’re a big business, so we can’t get tax breaks.

Pardon my ignorance.  I realise Ed Balls has a first in PPE, but I understood it to be a rather basic principle of economics that low interest rates stimulate growth…

Is he saying that higher interests would improve growth??

The Boy
Master Strategist
Coulson
Dave
Andrew Lansley
NHS
Michael Gove Bible

That should enable Tim to go and have a rest for a couple of days as I’ve now saved him the job of posting the above ad nauseam as is his unfortunate, psychologically disturbing wont

The more light is shone on Salmond and his ‘policies’, the more his pitiful inadequacies show up.

Throw him out of the door – and slam it in his face.  He’s the avuncular boor in the corner of the pub.  he buys the first couple a drink, then gradually getting a wider and wider circles around him – all buying rounds in turn, before he suddenly takes his leave, having bought 2-3 drinks and swallowed 10-12.

Old con trick – you might get bitten once, but never again.  Salmond’s fall from grace has been spectacularly fast – a pity the BBC are still in full ‘hero/deity worshipping’ mould.

Paul Mason is a rather good left wing economist, even his assessment blames 50% of the problem being caused by external factors.  He doesn’t break down which Chancellor in his opinion is more to blame for the UK financial position.  Perhaps it’s Osborne and is 0.2% quarterly contraction or…perhaps, maybe Mystic Meg who had spending plans built around projected growth of 3% for 2009 and instead saw negative 3.5% growth.

Who would you blame, just looking at the figures.

Of course he’s not, the Twitter fools are confused.

But the reason why interest rates are so historically low in Britain isn’t good news. As the head of the National Institute has said, the reason is because our short term interest rates are expected to stay very low indeed because our economy is flat lining, unemployment’s rising and there’s no prospect in the short term of the Bank of England changing course.

Righties should stop getting so defensive it’s time to look in the mirror and ask why the govt is so slow on reform.  It’s a national crisis, it’s the time when you have to move faster and break a few eggs, The banks went tits up in 2008 that’s 3 years ago and still no-one in govt. is advancing reforms – expcept to play about with  bonuses as its politically sensitive.  Why if the taxpayers have bailed out the banks, and have taken a hit on their savings via the BoE is lending not getting through to the real economy ? How much longer do we wait for Sir Humphrey and Rip van Cable to come up with some ideas ? Or better still some actions ?

To put this in context in our last national emergency after 3 years of crisis we had just won at Alamein. To date after 3 years of the banking crisis there is no sign we are anywhere near the turn of the tide.

Just goes to show – Labour haven’t got a CLUE what they would do right now. 

They are risible as a political force.

pkelso Paul Kelso
Uefa announce total losses across European top-flight clubs in 2010: 1.6bn Euros, up from 1.2bn. Total debts 8.4bn

I didn’t.

Yup, I provisionally accepted the position. I’ll be leaving a sinking ship to get on one that’s going great guns!

Nor would I describe my country as a sinking ship. 

very true, but pragmatism is needed all round and thinking outside the box.

So… Djokovic selfishly won. Ferre had a couple of mini-breaks in the set 2 tie-breaker but managed to lose it anyway, then got thrashed in set 3. Oh well.

Government spending increased QoQ by 0.4%. There is no austerity.

The UK’s ship will only sink if we let it. The fact that you are going to Shanghai shows that you work for a company that sees the opportunities and has the products/services to take advantage of them. British companies can do that too, if they show the will and make the necessary investments. Given the huge advantages this country has there is no reason why we cannot climb out of our current hole. The only thing that can stop us is ourselves.

You’ll have a great time in Shanghai. But look out for invites to tea festivals/ceremonies etc. They are all scams. I should know, I fell victim to one last time I was there.

And don’t worry about language. You will pick up what you need and the folk you work with will have great English.

Take a coat!!

I refer you to my comment upthread. There is no austerity, let alone an overly “harsh austerity”.

Government spending is still going UP, partly to pay the interest on Labour’s spunkfest with the nation’s credit card. It’s just not going up quite as fast.

What do you suggest we do? INCREASE the rate of borrowing so our debt goes even higher?

Soon as we do that, we lose our credit rating, and we can’t borrow any more, unless it is at exorbitant rates, and we go bust. Alternatively we print many trillions of pounds and get 3000% inflation. And go bust.

Do you not understand why Balls and Miliband have had to agree to the Tory cuts? Because there is no choice. 

The only choice is whether we should now start cutting much harder and much faster, as other countries are doing, before we are shafted by the markets. 

That’s your choice, lapsis – this government, or an even more austere, more rightwing government. All else is bullshit, and voodoo economics.

Careful the ex-MP who wanted to lock people up for 90 days without charge will first give you a history lesson and then accuse you of labelling Max as being unpatriotic.

Byrne just talked about benefit costs increasing thus making the debt worse. Didn’t his party in the Lords not just prevent a benefit cap?

David Smith on today’s GDP figures:

http://www.economicsuk.com/blog/001585.html

I’m sure the glee and euphoria with which todays figures are being greeted by Labour will be noted by floaters.

EdM would never have made it past Doncaster.

Nearly 100, is that across the whole of Scotland?  Enjoy your Céilidh.

Fighting talk.