[kreuzberger]

This Murdoch-financed slop has no place on this site, surely, unless we create a thread entitled "Murdoch-financed slop".

I gently remind you of the name of this site, our very raison d'être is discussing right-wing media slop.

I was taking the piss. Implying that that slop bears no relation to actual journalism ...

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I imagine cabinet ministers say all sorts of things in private that they don't say in public. I don't see why you and Malcolm are acting so affronted at what I said.

I'm not affronted. I think you put unquestioning faith in highly dubious sources. I would advise caution, is all.

See my post on reliability of sources...

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think it's worth giving up on people like this on the left, even though this one is a (Corbyn) Labour peer. Biggest single anti-child poverty policy ever, is "managing decline". There've been plenty of taxes on the rich and business in the two budgets, as well he knows, and other measures to boost low incomes. The whole "take it off the rich, they don't spend it" thing is also economically dubious. They don't put the cash under the mattress, they invest.

There's a parallel with Tony Benn here in the seventies, who said the same things about post war governments, Labour and Conservative. This is a trope which is always going to end badly for the Left, because the things that lots of people, because when people think in terms of national prestige, incomes of poor families isn't always the first thing that comes to mind. As the Left soon found out.

[The Weeping Angel]

Scandal!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g ... 1KWUHGSUUQ

Downing Street has denied Rachel Reeves misled the public about the state of the public finances ahead of this week's Budget.

In the run-up to Wednesday's statement, the chancellor repeatedly talked about a downgrade to the UK's predicted economic productivity that would make it hard for her to meet her spending rules.

But in a letter to MPs sent on Friday, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) revealed a forecast of higher wages - which she had not mentioned - would help her meet the rules.

The Conservatives have accused Reeves of giving an overly pessimistic impression of the public finances as a "smokescreen" to raise taxes.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the letter showed Reeves had "lied to the public" and should be sacked.

In a letter to the Commons Treasury select committee, external, OBR chairman Richard Hughes revealed that he told the chancellor on 17 September that the public finances were in better shape than widely thought.

The letter also reveals that on the 31 October, the OBR told the Treasury it was on course to meet its main rule of not borrowing for day-to-day spending, albeit by £4.2bn, less than the £9.9bn in "headroom" she had left herself last year.

On 4 November, Reeves used a rare pre-Budget speech in Downing Street to warn the UK's productivity was weaker "than previously thought" and that "has consequences for the public finances too, in lower tax receipts."

Then, on 10 November, she told BBC Radio 5 Live: "It would, of course be possible to stick with the manifesto commitments, but that would require things like deep cuts in capital spending."