uk politics
Ashcroft – “dead horse pong gets worse”
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 pm, March 5th, 2010 - 15 comments
Only days ago, British Conservative leader David Cameron told journalists they were “flogging a dead horse” when asking about Tory deputy chair Lord Ashcroft’s donations and tax status. Now new information has come to light about destruction of documents, tax avoidance, and offshore funding of the Conservative party.
Ashcroft owns up to “non-dom” tax status
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, March 2nd, 2010 - 7 comments
Lord Ashcroft, the British Conservative party’s major donor, has admitted that while he is “permanently resident” in Britain he is not domiciled there for tax status.
As a result the Conservative party may have to repay donations totalling several million pounds.
Poll shows race closing in Britain
Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, February 23rd, 2010 - 20 comments
Britain could be heading for a hung Parliament, according to the latest Guardian poll.
With no more than three months to go until polling day, the Conservatives have fallen to 37%, down three, while Labour’s support, at 30%, is up one. The Lib Dems are unchanged on 20%.
Brown promises electoral reform in UK
Written By: - Date published: 4:35 pm, February 4th, 2010 - 28 comments
The British PM Gordon Brown has announced he will push through legislation giving citizens the chance to vote on whether to dump First Past the Post (FPP) in favour of Alternative Vote (AV). According to The Guardian: Brown staked his authority on committing his party not just to a referendum on the alternative vote, but […]
Billy and the Baroness
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, September 23rd, 2009 - 10 comments
In an extraordinary coincidence, the Attorney-General in the UK is about to lose her job for pretty much the same rort as Bill English has been pulling here: [Baroness Scotland] receives a £38,280-a-year “night subsistence allowance” widely understood to be for ministers whose primary home is outside London even though she owns a large house […]
‘Green-shoots’ wither in UK
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, July 27th, 2009 - 11 comments
Like New Zealand, the UK has had a deluge of ‘green-shoots’ news from the corporate media and the financiers desperate to jawbone the economy into recovery. The spin became so pervasive that the consensus among economists was the UK economy would have shrunk only -0.3% last quarter and would be growing by now. It shrunk […]
Brits aim assistance to the low income
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, March 30th, 2009 - 22 comments
The irony of this article struck me when this week the well-off get the biggest boost to their wallet. From the Guardian : The chancellor is preparing to channel cash to poorer families in his budget as part of a mini-fiscal stimulus to kick-start the economy and protect the vulnerable. Senior cabinet figures are backing […]
Education lesson from UK
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, February 21st, 2009 - 59 comments
Last year we saw how unpopular National’s “national testing” policy was going to be. Now a major study in the UK is highly critical of what appears to be a similar policy. The Guardian says: Children’s lives are being impoverished by the government’s insistence that schools focus on literacy and numeracy at the expense of […]
All the facts
Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, November 25th, 2008 - 81 comments
National’s David Farrar has been running a series for some time trying to paint NZ Labour as out of step with Labour Parties around the world when it comes to their attitude on tax cuts. His intention, of course, is to portray Labour as extreme left and his mates in National as centrist and middle […]
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