The Guardian tells us today that Matthew Elliot of the TaxPayer’s Alliance is to head up the campaign for a no vote in next May’s referendum on the Alternative Vote. The TUC has no policy either way on AV as yet, though we were asked to stimulate a debate on electoral reform at our last [...]

Filed under: Electoral reform, Public services | No Comments »

Here’s an important poll on attitudes to the cuts. It was commissioned by the BBC for their Newsnight special on the coalition, from ComRes. The full tables are here. I think the questions here are much better worded than those in the YouGov polls I linked to in my rather lengthy post on resisting the [...]

Filed under: Public services, Public spending, polling | 1 Comment »

Given how often we are told that public sector pensions are more generous than those in the private sector, there is some irony in the growing employer campaign to level down private sector pensions to public sector levels. This flows from the Government’s decision – announced in the budget and covered here and  here on [...]

Filed under: Pensions | 2 Comments »

There’s a terrific piece by Robert Skidelsky What do deficit slashers wear under their hair shirts? on Comment is Free. Back to Keynes!

Filed under: Economics, Recession | 1 Comment »

There’s a shorter version of my cuts article at Liberal Conspiracy with a lively discussion thread.

Filed under: Blogging, Public services, Public spending | No Comments »

The dominant political issue for the life of this government is going to be public spending. Almost all their policies will flow from, or be constrained by, their overwhelming belief that we need to deal with the deficit by cutting spending and doing it quickly. Some coalition supporters will do this reluctantly. They will recognise the [...]

Filed under: Economics, Politics, Public services, Public spending, polling | 4 Comments »

Pensions Minister Steve Webb has announced in a written ministerial statement (that I’ve not yet found online) that the government will in future use CPI indexation for occupational pensions and pensions paid by the PPF and FAS. While occupational pensions are free to set their own increases they must meet a minimum increase in line [...]

Filed under: Budget, Pensions | 4 Comments »

I have no idea why he went, though like most commentators I find the official explanations hard to believe. If he was always going to go now, you might think they would have had a successor lined up. There is nothing wrong with bringing some genuinely independent scrutiny into public policy making, but Budd’s departure [...]

Filed under: Budget, Economics, Recession | No Comments »

If you can’t face reading all my long posts here on the IoD/IEA Pensions Commission, here’s a succinct one I’ve written at Left Foot Forwards

Filed under: Pensions | 3 Comments »

The short answer is no. The vast majority of its members have an easily traced and extensive track record of opposing public sector pensions. The Institute of Directors has a well established position on public sector pensions. It is set out in a paper by the secretary to the Commission Corin Taylor Pensions Apartheid. It [...]

Filed under: Pensions, Public services | 5 Comments »

Today’s see the launch of the latest attack on public sector pensions. This one comes from a so-called independent Public Sector Pensions Commission set up by  the Institute of Directors and the Institute of Economic Affairs. This is another example of the clever pincer movement used so well by the shrink-the-state right to attack public [...]

Filed under: Pensions, Public services | 2 Comments »

Today’s IoD sponsored report on public sector pensions combines pensions envy with the standard deployment of big scary numbers about the unaffordable costs of public sector pensions – each one bigger than the previous report. The numbers in this report have been somewhat undermined by the change in the indexing of pensions in payment announced [...]

Filed under: Pensions, Public services | 2 Comments »