The OECD’s economists wants Britain’s government to slow its reforms but with its first year wasted, this government is running out of time to prove before the next election whether its policies work.
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Good news or bad, Greece won’t leave the euro. The eurozone is a club that countries can join but not leave.
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Ed Miliband objects to the “Tesco-isation” of Britain’s high-streets and thinks local people should have more say in which retailers trade there. Someone should tell the Labour Party leader that local people already have the power: they decide where to shop - and have chosen Tesco Plc (LON:TSCO).
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Should a government tell us when we can shop? It seems ministers have again bottled out of relaxing the Sunday trading laws, even though a large part of the population would like to be able to buy things throughout the whole weekend.
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Surprise, surprise: a Conservative culture minister waives through News Corporation’s (NASDAQ:NWSA) bid for BSkyB. The conspiracy theorists never thought otherwise. But the compromise creates an unsustainable Sky News that surely will end up fully inside the Murdoch empire in time.
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Handling a crisis can set the seal on a new government – possibly even make or break the administration. The UK coalition’s reaction to the Libyan revolt has not shown clear leadership or decisiveness or even good analysis of the situation.
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Of course in was in Britain’s business interest to release the Lockerbie bomber from jail, but that does not mean it was wrong. Tough decisions like that are adult politics, and the carping from current prime minister is playground politics at its most juvenile.
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If there is one lesson that the UK Conservative party should have learned from when it was last in power it is that jobs are very easy to lose and very hard to create. Yet two decades on it is making the same mistakes again.
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Perhaps the government is not deliberately pushing up inflation – perhaps – but it cannot be unhappy with the rate of price increases. Inflation is the easiest way to solve its budget problems.
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If you wouldn’t put the lunatics in charge of the asylum, you’d be mad to put the doctors in control instead. Yet that is what the UK government plans in its NHS reform programme.
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