Whether it’s all those extra hours spent at the hairdressers that have suddenly made George Osborne aware of the plight of Britain’s low earners is a question that can only be answered by the Chancellor himself, and his extensive team of stylists.
In a Budget, a Chancellor’s language often obscures the impact of the policies. A Budget that a Chancellor proclaims to be “bold” turns out to be cautious. A Budget that is presented as cautious is seen later as historically courageous or reckless. In contrast, George Osborne’s language helps to cast light on the mountain of policies unveiled in his Budget.
George Osborne’s message to British business – big and small – was clear: you can keep more of your profits through lower taxes and more dividends, but you’ve got to share the proceeds with your colleagues by paying the living wage.
The general consensus among anti-hunting campaigners – and indeed among many pro-hunters – is that the current ban isn’t working at all well.
In macroeconomic terms the key features of the Budget are the rapid move to budget surplus, and a rapid increase in the minimum wage. (It is best to ignore changes compared to the March Budget, which was a fiction of a dying coalition.)
The vote which the Government plans to hold on fox hunting is so bizarre that it is no wonder it was arranged for the news to leak out on Budget Day, to keep publicity to a minimum.
George Osborne must delight in commentators describing him as a “political Chancellor”, because each time he comes to the dispatch box to present a financial statement he grows even more “political”.
Today’s Budget has confirmed that ‘welfare reform’ is surely the greatest euphemism of our age. The empty expression first cropped up on Conservative campaign trail this election, as ubiquitous as the blue rosettes, without any of the Tories ever quite setting out what it means.
George Osborne has come up with a really smart idea to court popularity and save the Government money at the same time. It’s called “Pick a perk and make the provider pay”. The Government invents a perk, then sloughs off the cost on to the provider, who didn’t have any say in the making of the policy.
There are plenty of people who mock the legitimacy of the European Parliament, and plenty more who can think of better ways to pass a morning than tuning in to a session in the hemicycle. But with 751 MEPs, there is a diversity of political opinion unlikely to be found in any other chamber in the world, and the eccentrics love little more than a feisty debate on the potential breakup of the eurozone.
With five polls in the days before Sunday’s Greek referendum pointing to a photo finish, the size of the No vote was as unexpected as it was momentous. It was one more pointer to a level of polling fallibility that has caused heart-searching this year, from Israel – where even the exit polls failed to predict Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisive victory– to, of course, the UK.
Oh, but it shows such a lack of ambition. And greed. Enormous greed. And a poverty of imagination.
Greece’s referendum on Sunday was a first for reasons hardly mentioned. On no other occasion has a country’s population been asked to approve or disapprove the conditions laid down by creditors for a country.
The strike by Tube drivers on London Underground this week – the first time ASLEF has been on strike across the network since 2002 – will bring the capital to a grinding halt. Finn Bevan, a Tube driver for 23 years, and now the lead negotiator for the union, explains what the dispute is really about and responds to criticism of his members’ actions.
The budget announcement of a “pay to stay” scheme for tenants in social housing, forcing anyone earning just £30,000 to pay a higher rent to stay in their home (or £40,000 in London), is yet another in a long list of Tory proposals that do nothing to ease the housing crisis and will eventually bring about the death of social housing.
Keep kids from babies to pre-teens safe and comfortable in the back. IndyBest buckles up
Last year, Rebecca's husband Nick was hit by a car and seriously injured. Here, in one of a series of columns, she writes about the aftermath of his accident
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We all know the feeling of panic when you look at your phone and it's on 1 per cent, but while most of us would just sigh and accept the sad absence of Candy Crush on our journey home, one Broadway theatre-goer proved that he would quite literally do anything to get his beloved mobile some juice.
1. Budget day today. A big day for Frank Field, the Labour chairman of the Work and Pensions select committee and long a critic of Gordon Brown’s huge expansion of tax credits.
On the cusp of the first Ashes Test in Cardiff comes confirmation from the visitors’ homeland of the time-honoured iron rule I made up some moments ago: under no circumstances should the star of one sport ever dip a toe into another. The one-time Australian Olympic swimming “legend” Dawn Fraser has disobeyed this, and finds herself in strife.
Images of a weeping pensioner collapsed outside a bank in Thessaloniki moved one man to track him down and help put him back on his feet
Regional theatres facing huge funding cuts may have found an unlikely saviour in the West End impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh, after he announced plans to open a London home for great drama from around the UK that “would otherwise vanish”.
The energy market is rigged in favour of the established Big Six firms, which have consistently ignored calls from politicians and consumer groups to play fair with customers. They have set their own prices – overcharging us by around 5 per cent, according to a damning report published by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Small businesses come off even worse, paying 14 per cent over the odds for their gas and electricity.
Usdaw or Asda? The Chancellor today takes the risky political step of launching a consultation period on changes to Sunday trading.
Oleg Tabakov, the Olivier of Russia, was nine when Stalingrad fell and the Russians sent small groups of defeated German soldiers across the country to show the exhausted Russian people that Aryan Supermen didn't exist. He tells the story with no show of emotion, the same way he acts, allowing the truth to breathe. "I lived with my grandmother by the frozen Volga river. Huddled men in the remains of enemy uniforms were exhibits in a bizarre zoo, objects of contempt and humiliation. My grandmother saw them and... Читать дальше...
