#Budget2012: Is there actually very much Stormont can or wants to do?

Nice piece from last night’s Hearts and Minds by Julia Paul (“Don’t touch the things…”) which a number of experts… running from Newton’s verdict that they can take no big decisions in welfare and taxation… To Paddy Hillyard says that we pay £260 million for water and that if that was taken out of public expenditure that money could be released for schools and other public services… And Newton Emerson says there has been a deal on the table to …

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Budget 2012: Cutting top rate tax, raid on pensioners and postponement of debt repayment schedules till after #GE15

Well, it looks like George Osborne is going down the US Republican route of cutting taxes for the top wage earners (though he is taking £3 billion out of pensioner’s threshold funding to pay for it)… And Corporation Tax (something he flagged as long ago as 2006) is coming down to 22%. This second is, according to Paul Mason, his biggest pro growth measure: @paulmasonnews OBR: Corporation tax cut increases growth by 0.1%, through 1% rise in business investment. — …

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Can the Chancellor unlock those mountains of corporate cash?

Tomorrow the Chancellor of the Exchequer faces a number of problems, the greatest of which is the poor growth figures the UK is experiencing… Such cuts as have been delivered have hit local government in England… and probably a great deal harder than the public figures suggest… As Howard Davies points out in the FT, it’s not as though there’s no cash around: UK companies are flush with cash. They have benefited from low interest rates and, indeed, from spending …

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The difference between FF and FG? Twelve months.

Anyone who watched the anodyne post-budget chat between Michael Noonan (FG) and Michael McGrath (FF) on RTE’s PrimeTime on Tuesday must have been reminded of Pearse Doherty’s comment during Sinn Féin’s response to the budget in the Dáil earlier that day that the difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is twelve months. In retrospect the kites that were flown prior to the budget provide a cynical benchmark of the extent to which the government tried to instill fear in the public to condition them for some of the changes …

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Austerity in two halves: #Budget2012

Early next week will finally see the introduction of #Budget2012 to the Dáil, in a novel format with two speeches, one by Brendan Howlin on Monday and one by Michael Noonan on Tuesday. The budget has been heavily trailed, with endless kite-flying over the last few weeks. A brief guide to (some) of the proposed changes was given by Caroline Madden in the Irish Times last Monday. For ease of reference, most of the main suggested budgetary changes are given below. It will be interesting to compare the …

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Did Taoiseach submit #Budget2012 to Berlin for approval?

The Irish government is under pressure this evening as it is having to deny Press Association reported rumours that it has allowed the German government to inspect the budget before it is brought to the Dáil next month (i.e. well before the democractically members of Oireachtas get to see it). The Irish Independent says that Reuters also had the same story, prompting swift denials from Government officials today. With market driven crises prompting the replacement of existing leaders with technocrats in Italy …

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