From the Guardian, this morning: The current recession is even deeper than had been thought – and started more than a year ago – as statisticians today revised the drop in national income in the first quarter of the year to 2.4%, the biggest fall since 1958. The annual drop in output in the January
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FT.com / UK / Politics & policy – Green groups to sue over RBS investments. Environmental groups on Monday night launched what could be a landmark lawsuit against the Treasury to force it to ensure that taxpayers’ money invested in the Royal Bank of Scotland supports only projects that satisfy minimum green and human rights
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David Drew, MP for Stroud in Gloucestershire has tabled amendments to the Parliamentary Standards Bill which should put the cat amongst the pigeons. The first says: (1)    This section applies without prejudice to any rules made by the IPSA pursuant to section 5. (2)    A person to whom this section applies must file an Annual
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From the Guardian (edited): Gordon Brown unveiled a manifesto entitled Building Britain’s Future and a draft Queen’s speech containing 12 bills. The overall aim was to downgrade Whitehall public service targets in favour of individual rights, with some enforceable by the community and others by individuals. There’s a problem in this. People don’t want rights,
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There’s a new entry on my ‚ÄòEnough Economics’ blog this morning, entitled  ‚ÄòInputs and Outputs: Best in Balance.’

From this morning’s Guardian: Banks benefited from a spate of positive reports yesterday, with Lloyds Banking Group the biggest riser in the leading index after an upgrade from Goldman Sachs. Goldman raised its rating from neutral to conviction buy and lifted its price target from 61p to 107p. "We see Lloyds as a key beneficiary
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Brendan Barber has written on the TUC blog, saying: We’ve been examining the voting records of institutional investors for seven years now at the TUC, through our Fund Manager Voting Survey (2009 full survey here), and we’re noticing a worrying trend- we’re now down to 40% of fund managers responding to our survey, compared to
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Yes, addicts need help. But all you casual cocaine users want locking up | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian . I know people who drink fair-trade tea and coffee, shop locally and take cocaine at parties. They are revolting hypocrites. Every year cocaine causes some 20,000 deaths in Colombia and displaces
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The FT reports: The BT Group Pension Scheme – the UK’s largest private sector retirement fund – had only enough money at the end of 2008 to pay about 57 per cent of promised benefits if the telecommunications company were to become insolvent, and said it intended to pare back sharply its future investments in
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