The CBI is getting desperate for some coherent policy to emerge. But
if you see the Treasury minister’s utterance at lunchtime today
there’s no hope of that! As Ken Clarke puts it “Public debt going
"off the Richter scale"
The only report of Brown today was from Reuter who reported - - -
“Brown invites pope to visit Britain
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Thursday
he had invited Pope Benedict to visit Britain.”
Hoping for a miracle ?
xxxxxxxxxxxx cs
===============================
FINANCIAL TIMES 19.2.08
if you see the Treasury minister’s utterance at lunchtime today
there’s no hope of that! As Ken Clarke puts it “Public debt going
"off the Richter scale"
The only report of Brown today was from Reuter who reported - - -
“Brown invites pope to visit Britain
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Thursday
he had invited Pope Benedict to visit Britain.”
Hoping for a miracle ?
xxxxxxxxxxxx cs
===============================
FINANCIAL TIMES 19.2.08
CBI attacks Brown’s recovery plans
By Jean Eaglesham, Chief Political Correspondent
Gordon Brown’s economic recovery plans “lack a coherent strategy and
timeline” and have yet to offer noticeable help to most companies,
the UK’s leading business organisation warned on Thursday.
The CBI launched an outspoken attack on the “welter” of recent prime
ministerial initiatives to try to combat the recession, saying they
lacked clarity or any sense of fitting into an overall strategy.
These initiatives – including multiple proposals in last month’s
second banks bail-out and measures to support small business and car
manufacturers – have left business confused without delivering
noticeable aid, the business body asserted.
”The government appears to have been fighting a series of forest
fires rather than building a platform for economic recovery. There’s
little sense of a coherent strategy about what’s happened to date,”
Richard Lambert, CBI director general, stated.
“It’s hard to remember – let alone distinguish between – the welter
of initiatives that it has launched in the past couple of months. The
big ones that could really make a difference....have got lost in a
thicket of much less ambitious announcements,” Mr Lambert said.
“There’s not nearly enough precision about when all this noise is
going to get converted into action. Very few of the initiatives have
yet been given clear start-up dates.”
The CBI called on the government to set up a US-style website to
track its assorted plans, saying Barack Obama’s www.recovery.gov
offered an “excellent template”.
The business attack will delight the Tories, who have accused the
government of behaving like “headless chickens” in offering too many
initiatives with too little focus on ensuring they actually work.
Peter Mandelson, the business secretary, this week acknowledged that
the government was in an “uncomfortable place” where the expectations
generated by the plans for recovery had yet to filter through to
changes that voters could appreciate.
Mr Lambert said on Thursday that if business people round the country
were asked whether they had “noticed anything actually happening at
the coal face [as a result of the measures], the chances are that
most of them will shrug their shoulders”.
=====================
Government comments:
Angela Eagle, Treasury minister
BBC News and The World at One, and Sky News at lunchtime
“We can do that now precisely because we paid down debt during the
good times,” she said. [Well that’s a lie for a start! - cs]
However, she said that the government had already set out a
“sustainable pathway” towards restoring the public finances after the
recession. [Not according to the CBI! -cs]
“We will return the public finances to a sustainable pathway after
the recession is over and we’ll do that in a fair way,” she said
[right now the finances are getting very much worse =cs]
She added: “What’s also important is that we don’t let outdated
dogmas say we have to slash public expenditure now when what was
actually have to do is support the economy.” [By borrowing even more
- they’re clearly deranged -cs]
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