Friday 31 October 2008

Trick or Treat

(Guest post from David Beresford)

What a treat to hear Comrade Osborne on the Today programme giving a detailed plan for the Conservative solution to the current economic difficulties. Quite clearly Osborne wants to put his personal tricky troubles behind him, but speeches without substance are somewhat pointless. Apart from suggesting that council tax should be frozen and that a tax rise on family cars next year should be scrapped, he said nothing. Sorry that is not true. Five times he suggested that the Bank of England should get on with its job and cut interest rates. The Bank of England does not set interest rates, that is the role of the monetary policy committee. I hope, as a potential chancellor, he understands the difference.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Couldn't you start by spelling the poor wee boy's name correctly?

Another Day said...

Oh dear Mr. B. - I think George Osborne understands it better than you think! The MPC is a committee of the Bank of England. It is a committee set up by the Babk if England to recommend where the Bank should set interest rates. This, it is indeed the Bank of England that decides and sets interest rates - the MPC is merely the internal mechanism for arriving at the decision.

Hence my post yesterday!

George Osborne is not yet the Chancellor. It is irrelevent to the crisis now whether he comes up with 2 or 20 suggestions - Brown and Darling are not going to listen to him. I gave 6 suggestions yesterday, but only the Government are the people who can actually do anything. If you want more detail from Osborne, then we need an election...

Another Day said...

I'll have a word with my guest poster about spelling names!