Careful budgeting
Will George Osborne’s thinking in his 20th March budget be affected by the coming change of leadership at the Bank of England? Mervyn King, the present governor, leaves in July to be replaced by Mark Carney, head of Canada’s central bank. Carney has indicated that his will replace the inflation targets favoured by King by a system of “flexible inflation targeting.” It sounds like a minor technical difference but if, when Carney takes over, he allows inflation to rise in pursuit of growth, this will have big implications for Britain’s economy—and for Osborne, who must factor this change of philosophy into his spending plans.
And will Carney be welcomed by the Bank’s senior staff? One expert told Prospect that, the new governor will face “entrenched opinion in the form of [Paul] Tucker [deputy governor], [Spencer] Dale [chief economist] and [Charles] Bean [deputy governor].” However by 2014, “these guys will in all likelihood be gone,” meaning Carney will be “in a stronger situation to experiment,” with injecting more money into the economy and setting GDP targets. So long as Osborne is game, of course.
Hutchings hustings
There have been jitters in Tory high command about Maria Hutchings, the Conservative candidate for the Eastleigh by-election prompted by Chris Huhne’s exit. Not only did she cut a description of the town’s Roman past from Wikipedia and paste it onto her campaign site, she has in the past boasted of being an “Essex Girl through and through.” That hardly makes it easier to demonstrate local links as she tries to overturn a small Lib Dem majority. More seriously, HQ is uneasy that, though her views on the EU (leave it) and abortion (cut limits to 10 weeks) might help stop the drift to UKIP, it is not quite the image the party needs.
Latin via Mumsnet
If Maria Hutchings wants to brush up her Latin then she might sign on for the new two-day course run by classicist Mary Beard for the “Mumsnet Academy,” (available for £199 from the website courted so assiduously by David Cameron) a canny attempt to tap into the new passion for the classics by aspiring parents who’ve got bored with feeding Mandarin to toddlers.
Major speech
John Major’s speech on Britain’s role in the EU at Chatham House in February contained a long list of instructions for David Cameron. When speaking to European heads, “the prime minister will need to conduct the negotiations personally. More will be achieved in relaxed circumstances than in formal talks.” Cameron, he said, should appoint a “lead negotiator who sits in cabinet. This negotiator should be seen as the prime minister’s personal emissary,” touring Europe to emphasise the consequences of a British exit. Major accepted that some Conservatives would never be convinced of the pro-EU case, but that “it is essential for the prime minister to rally the persuadable majority.” It’s interesting that Major thinks Cameron requires advice of this sort. So is the implicit suggestion that such advice has not been given before by Major—in private.
The Summers diet
Larry Summers, interviewed at Davos, broke off his prescriptions for the US economy to reveal the diet secrets that have caused him to become dramatically thinner. No bread and no Diet Coke, said Summers, described by Henry Kissinger as one of the world’s leading economists, but known less flatteringly for drinking many sodas a day. Summers otherwise shows less interest in austerity; his prescription, aimed at Obama II, as the new administration is known, focuses on growth and jobs and criticises those who stick only to deficit cutting.
One is cold
When you think of pensioners struggling to pay heating bills, you would not think of the Queen. But as Ed Davey, energy secretary, pointed out at a Prospect roundtable discussion (p42), she qualifies as “fuel poor” as it is now calculated. “The current measure tracks the price of wholesale gas, which is not that accurate and indeed at times the Queen was in fuel poverty under this measure,” he said.
Not heaven sent
It is of course harder for newspapers to monitor unfortunate juxtapositions of ads and editorial in their apps than in print. All the same, it is unfortunate that the Times’s coverage of the trials of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce interspersed many reports in its app version with the Tiffany campaign for diamond jewellery, which declares “Love is heaven sent.”
Will George Osborne’s thinking in his 20th March budget be affected by the coming change of leadership at the Bank of England? Mervyn King, the present governor, leaves in July to be replaced by Mark Carney, head of Canada’s central bank. Carney has indicated that his will replace the inflation targets favoured by King by a system of “flexible inflation targeting.” It sounds like a minor technical difference but if, when Carney takes over, he allows inflation to rise in pursuit of growth, this will have big implications for Britain’s economy—and for Osborne, who must factor this change of philosophy into his spending plans.
And will Carney be welcomed by the Bank’s senior staff? One expert told Prospect that, the new governor will face “entrenched opinion in the form of [Paul] Tucker [deputy governor], [Spencer] Dale [chief economist] and [Charles] Bean [deputy governor].” However by 2014, “these guys will in all likelihood be gone,” meaning Carney will be “in a stronger situation to experiment,” with injecting more money into the economy and setting GDP targets. So long as Osborne is game, of course.
Hutchings hustings
There have been jitters in Tory high command about Maria Hutchings, the Conservative candidate for the Eastleigh by-election prompted by Chris Huhne’s exit. Not only did she cut a description of the town’s Roman past from Wikipedia and paste it onto her campaign site, she has in the past boasted of being an “Essex Girl through and through.” That hardly makes it easier to demonstrate local links as she tries to overturn a small Lib Dem majority. More seriously, HQ is uneasy that, though her views on the EU (leave it) and abortion (cut limits to 10 weeks) might help stop the drift to UKIP, it is not quite the image the party needs.
Latin via Mumsnet
If Maria Hutchings wants to brush up her Latin then she might sign on for the new two-day course run by classicist Mary Beard for the “Mumsnet Academy,” (available for £199 from the website courted so assiduously by David Cameron) a canny attempt to tap into the new passion for the classics by aspiring parents who’ve got bored with feeding Mandarin to toddlers.
Major speech
John Major’s speech on Britain’s role in the EU at Chatham House in February contained a long list of instructions for David Cameron. When speaking to European heads, “the prime minister will need to conduct the negotiations personally. More will be achieved in relaxed circumstances than in formal talks.” Cameron, he said, should appoint a “lead negotiator who sits in cabinet. This negotiator should be seen as the prime minister’s personal emissary,” touring Europe to emphasise the consequences of a British exit. Major accepted that some Conservatives would never be convinced of the pro-EU case, but that “it is essential for the prime minister to rally the persuadable majority.” It’s interesting that Major thinks Cameron requires advice of this sort. So is the implicit suggestion that such advice has not been given before by Major—in private.
The Summers diet
Larry Summers, interviewed at Davos, broke off his prescriptions for the US economy to reveal the diet secrets that have caused him to become dramatically thinner. No bread and no Diet Coke, said Summers, described by Henry Kissinger as one of the world’s leading economists, but known less flatteringly for drinking many sodas a day. Summers otherwise shows less interest in austerity; his prescription, aimed at Obama II, as the new administration is known, focuses on growth and jobs and criticises those who stick only to deficit cutting.
One is cold
When you think of pensioners struggling to pay heating bills, you would not think of the Queen. But as Ed Davey, energy secretary, pointed out at a Prospect roundtable discussion (p42), she qualifies as “fuel poor” as it is now calculated. “The current measure tracks the price of wholesale gas, which is not that accurate and indeed at times the Queen was in fuel poverty under this measure,” he said.
Not heaven sent
It is of course harder for newspapers to monitor unfortunate juxtapositions of ads and editorial in their apps than in print. All the same, it is unfortunate that the Times’s coverage of the trials of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce interspersed many reports in its app version with the Tiffany campaign for diamond jewellery, which declares “Love is heaven sent.”
