One of our favourite blogs no 1

One of our favourite blogs is False Economy - a great site that shows the devastating impact and false economy of the government's failed austerity measures.

The site is run by Clifford Singer, the person who brought us all the wonderful My David Cameron website.

Check it out - it is well worth a read.

UNISON says - time for Plan B Mr Osborne

Responding to reports that government borrowing increased in July, while tax receipts dropped in the same period, UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said:

It beggars belief that this Tory-led government persists with a cuts and austerity agenda that is patently not working and is doing far more harm than good. This increase in borrowing and declining tax receipts is more evidence that the cuts agenda is the wrong way to go about solving the UK’s economic woes, the stagnating economy is moving the Coalition even further away from its deficit reduction plans.

The government needs to wake up fast to the fact that we need a plan B for real economic growth; that means creating jobs and investing in the public sector to get the economy going once more.

The West Midlands is being particularly badly hit: the recent announcement of the fall unemployment nationally was not mirrored in the West Midlands where unemployment actually went up 7,000 to 235,000.

More bad news for the UK economy

After the recent gloomy news that GDP had shrunk by 0.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2012, today the Financial Times reports the long term outlook for the economy is not good. The FT reports:

The UK economy will shrink by half a per cent this year and grow only anaemically next year as it grapples with the weakness of its biggest trading partners, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has forecast.

The institute predicted the economy would contract by 0.5 per cent this year and grow 1.3 per cent next year, a significant reduction from its forecast three months ago of zero growth this year and 2 per cent next year. 

The NIESR are a credible, respected and independent economic think tank. What they say carries weight, and their recent predictions have proved to be right. To see the full NIESR press release go here.

But you don't need to be an economics experts like those at the NIESR to realise George Osborne is wrecking the economy with his ideologically driven austerity measures. Time for Plan B.