Dear Artists,First of all; we are really glad to hear that you are interested in getting your music onto Spotfiy. We appreciate your patience since you signed up to the Spotify Artist and Label list. The reason why we haven’t gotten back to you earlier is that we haven´t been ready to launch our own uploading-platform. Our time and energy has gone into uploading thousands of tracks every day from our existing partners which is a continuous process. However, getting independent artists music onto Spotify is important to us so we’re working on various solutions to assist artists.The current solutions we offer indie artists offer are CDBaby,Ditto Music and Record Union. They are artist- aggregators, who we’ve recently made an agreement with, and we highly recommend to you as a method to get your music onto Spotify. With them you can create a standard agreement and upload your music onto Spotify as well as deliver your music to other great services such as 7digital and Amazon. So if you want to join Spotify as soon as possible we strongly recommend you to go one of the following sites:http://cdbaby.com/ http://www.dittomusic.com/ http://www.recordunion.com/ We’re really looking forward to having your music on Spotify soon!Regards,The music team at SpotifyThanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogUpload your music onto SpotifyRelated posts:Spotify to halve free music allowanceMusic business models for internet artistsEmbedded music player from last.fm
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Upload your music onto Spotify
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/07/16/upload-your-music-onto-spotify
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July 16 2011, 12:59am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Portuguese learn price of €78bn debt bailout
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/04/portuguese-learn-price-of-e78bn-debt-bailout
Health and education spending in Portugal to be cut by €745m, state pensions reduced and major building projects axed
This article titled “Portuguese learn price of €78bn debt bailout” was written by Giles Tremlett, for The Guardian on Wednesday 4th May 2011 15.20 UTC
Portugal woke up to the price of its €78bn (£70bn) bailout on Wednesday as new airports and high-speed rail lines were sacrificed in a package of austerity measures and the government pledged to freeze pensions and shrink the civil service. Lisbon’s new international airport, already on hold, and the building of a high-speed rail link between Lisbon and Oporto will now be put back until after 2013, according to state news agency Lusa. Health and education spending will be cut by €745m, civil service pay and pensions will be frozen, and people on state pensions above €1,500 a month will have them reduced. Civil service staffing is to be squeezed by 1% a year in central government, while regional administrations and town halls will be told to shed 2% of their employees annually. Portugal’s banks will take up to €12bn of the bailout funds to rebuild their capital ratios, according to reports. The banks would have to raise their core tier one capital ratio – a gauge of higher quality capital that mainly comprises equity and retained earnings – to 9% at the end of this year and to 10% by the end of 2012, Reuters said. The country will also carry out a fire sale of the nationalised Banco Português de Negócios (BPN) bank. “The authorities are launching a process to sell BPN on an accelerated schedule and without a minimum price,” according to a memorandum of understanding seen by the Guardian, which added that the sale should be finished in July. Portugal is expected to reduce public spending by 3.4% of its GDP this year and raise an extra 1.7% of GDP by raising taxes on cars, tobacco and electricity and getting rid of income and corporation tax loopholes. A detailed investigation of public-private partnerships (PPPs), which have been used for building hospitals, roads and rail lines, will be carried out to see if they are hiding extra government debt. New PPP projects will be suspended. José Sócrates, Portugal’s caretaker prime minister, announced the areas that would remain untouched when he explained the bailout during a television address to the nation on Tuesday night. These included pensions for the worse-off and the retirement age. But he failed to reveal what austerity measures came with the bailout package, beyond saying they would be similar to those rejected by parliament in March. The March defeat brought down his minority socialist government and a snap election was called for 5 June. Polls show the opposition Social Democrat Party (PSD), which rejected the March austerity package, may win that vote. Representatives of the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank met Social Democrat leaders on Wednesday morning to seek their backing for the plan. “The PSD will give its opinion on what it has read and heard late today or early tomorrow,” said Carlos Moedas, the party’s economics advisor, after the meeting. Social Democrat leaders had already indicated they might change elements of any bailout-related austerity package if they were elected to government, although always with the aim of hitting this year’s target of reducing the budget deficit to 5.9% of GDP. The IMF said: “We have said from the start that it is important that any agreement have multi-party support and we shall continue in our efforts with opposition parties to show that this is the case.” Portugal managed to raise €1.12bn euros in three-month treasury bills today with demand almost doubling the offer, but investors insisted on a 4.65% interest rate – up from 4.05% two weeks ago. Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics in London, said the bailout might not be enough to stave off restructuring: “It won’t put an end to speculation that – along with Greece and perhaps others – it will sooner or later need to undertake some form of debt restructuring.”
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Related posts:Ireland forced into new £21bn bailout by debt crisis Portugal bailout fears rise as credit rating cut Portugal’s PM calls on EU for bailout
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May 4 2011, 10:30am | Comments »
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Never has London’s atmosphere as a rich city-state felt so extreme
Geographically, never mind socially, we are not all in this together. Life in London feels different to anywhere outside. By London, though, we are only talking about a small area of central, west and north london. Out in the banlieu, you might as well be in Bradford.
This article titled “Never has London’s atmosphere as a rich city-state felt so extreme” was written by Ian Jack, for The Guardian on Saturday 16th April 2011 07.30 UTC In Bradford on a winter’s night 25 years ago, I stood in front of an estate agent’s window and made a calculation. For the price of our terrace house in north London – two up and two down and a bit of garden at the back – I could buy 10 similar houses in Bradford. This month I read that Burnley has the lowest property prices in England, and made another calculation. For the price of our London house I could buy 40 houses in Burnley that were averagely cheap and 80 of the very cheapest. This doesn’t mean that the differential in house prices between London and northern England has grown by more than 400% since 1986. I live in a bigger house now, and Burnley isn’t Bradford. But the gap is certainly widening: according to Halifax figures, houses in Newcastle-on-Tyne cost on average 28.8% less than they did in 2007, while in Islington they’ve risen 9.7% in the past year after changing very little – up or down – in the previous two. I look at pictures of the cheap houses in Burnley. They’re Victorian terraces. Their doors open straight on to the street, but they look solidly built from Pennine stone, no frills, but handsome. I imagine workers came home to them from cotton mills. Our house is certainly more imposing, three floors rather than two, with bow windows and ornamental red brick. But it has shallow foundations in London clay, so whether it’s sturdier is doubtful. I imagine someone who earned money in a suit, a senior clerk or a shopkeeper, first moved in when the terrace was completed in 1890. Without substantial inherited wealth, not even two-income families in the modern equivalent of those jobs could move in now. Newspapers sometimes write that the coalition cabinet contains “18 millionaires” as though it were a peculiar outrage, but everybody who’s paid off their mortgage in my street is a millionaire, if property is counted among their assets. And I stress that this is an ordinary street; until 30 or 40 years ago, a schoolteacher or a Fleet Street sub-editor could have afforded a house here. What explains my good fortune? To some extent many of my generation share it, especially if they worked in a trade or profession that blossomed in the 1980s (better, on the whole, to have been a national-newspaper journalist than a mechanical engineer). Most people I know have grander homes than their parents, no matter where they live in the United Kingdom. If they live in favoured parts of cities such as Edinburgh and Leeds, their homes are often enviable for their architecture and space. Only the very grandest of them, however, could be swapped for 40 cheap houses in Burnley. Above every other consideration – career, age – the combination of judgement and happenstance that made me a London house-owner is what explains my relative wealth. To a certain degree, this is an old story, and common to every metropolis. Moving to London four decades ago, I discovered one-bedroom flats were double the price of those I’d left behind in Glasgow. But then the 1980s arrived and the British economy’s centre of gravity shifted sharply (and to date, permanently) south. Between 1979 and 1986, jobs in manufacturing industry declined by almost two million; 94% of jobs lost in every sector in those years were north of a line drawn between the Wash and the Bristol Channel. The traditional idea of Britain – one taught in school geography books – was a country that made its money in the midlands and the north (including Scotland, and not forgetting Wales) and spent the profits mainly in the south. But now both the generation and consumption of wealth grew concentrated in the same place, and the north-south divide suddenly marked something more fundamental than dialects and traditions. It was during this time, soon after the miners’ strike, that I stood with a notebook in a Bradford street and worked out the house price ratio. I wondered then if it could last. It didn’t seem possible that it could get worse – and for several years around the turn of the century it didn’t. Public spending financed by European grants and taxes raised in the City of London secured for many northern towns at least the suggestion of a viable future, if viability is measured in warehouse conversions, art galleries, warm cappuccino and rising property costs. The crash has since jeopardised all these simulacra of metropolitan living. The odd thing – the unfair thing, considering where the crash originated – is that the metropolis itself is immune. Geographically, never mind socially, we are not all in this together. Life in London now feels different to anywhere outside, as though you leave through city gates at turn-offs on the M25. Never has its atmosphere as a rich city-state felt so extreme. “Revenues have bounced back and we are again seeing strong sales growth. The outlook for the UK as a whole may be gloomy but I think the long-term prospects for London, especially with the Olympics, are very good.” These are the words of Des Gunewardena, who runs a chain of expensive restaurants (Le Pont de la Tour, Quaglino’s) and I read them last week in the Evening Standard, underneath the headline, “Surge in dining out feeds a flurry of restaurant launches”, next to a picture of Sienna Miller arriving at Sheekey’s. Each in the list of a dozen new restaurants still to open has the name of a chef attached. One of those already opened, the Pollen Street Social in Mayfair, took 5,000 calls looking for reservations in its first day. Beyond the hope that manufacturing industry can rebalance the economy, and the faraway prospect of a high-speed rail line to Birmingham, no government strategy exists to spread this wealth further north. The political tone is southern – look at the party leaders, or many of the Labour candidates parachuted to northern seats. It has been left to the BBC to do a little social engineering by – bravely or foolishly – relocating departments to Salford, Cardiff and Glasgow, so that half of its output will be produced outside London by 2016. Will better programmes result? Very few BBC staff seem to think so; on the evidence of BBC2′s Review Show, now made in Glasgow, extra expense in travel and hotel costs looks the likeliest difference. But three formerly great industrial cities will have BBC budgets and salaries added to their troubled economies; there will be job opportunities; the middle class in each place should grow a little larger. The staff who refuse to go are easily mocked. Haven’t they heard about the better quality of life, the Lowry, the easily accessed countryside, the “creative buzz” that’s now reported along the banks of the Clyde and the Manchester ship canal? Their reluctance to move is usually expressed in personal and professional terms: of not wanting to interrupt their children’s education, or being too far away from their show’s guests. But perhaps among their worries there’s something less easy to define; that by quitting London they’re removing themselves from its cultural, political and economic heft, which has grown so remorselessly and, whether or not BBC Breakfast gets done in Salford, will carry on regardless. The country’s centrifuge: both awful and interesting.
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Related posts:Compensation is only for the rich To us, it’s an obscure shift of tax law. To the City, it’s the heist of the century Arc Royal to extend London City Airport
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April 16 2011, 11:21am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests
The UK Uncut Campaign group are claiming that the police are trying to disband it following arrests at Fortnum and Mason sit-in.
This article titled “UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests” was written by Mark Townsend, for The Observer on Saturday 2nd April 2011 20.44 UTC Protest group UK Uncut signalled its intention to continue occupying high street stores as police released images of individuals wanted in connection with violent disorder. A spokesman for the tax avoidance campaigners insisted they would not be cowed, despite concerns that the Met is intent on disabling the group’s command structure and has “politically targeted” its ringleaders. The Met has charged 138 people – practically the movement’s entire leadership – with aggravated trespass after a UK Uncut occupation of Fortnum & Mason in central London during the anti-cuts march. A meeting of UK Uncut supporters heard that those charged have had their phones confiscated. The mobiles contain details of the group’s secure networks and email accounts used to mobilise and organise its actions. The group believes the decision to charge all those inside Fortnum & Mason was an attempt by police to crush the movement. Only two of its chief ringleaders were outside the store at the time. “Practically the entire UK Uncut was inside, but it’s definitely not the end of that tactic because most people can see that this is political policing,” said the spokesman. The group is baffled why Scotland Yard, which rejects claims of politically motivated policing, decided to charge its members while previous peaceful occupations had seen officers take no action. Video evidence reveals a senior police officer assuring protesters on the day that they would not be detained upon leaving the store. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard has released 18 images of protesters, unconnected to UK Uncut, that they are keen to identify in the wake of the disorder. The investigation, Operation Brontide, is expected to publicise more images, mainly from CCTV. The Met is eager to disrupt those engaged in “black bloc” tactics, and is believed to have footage showing anarchists removing black clothing, bandanas and scarves before changing into civilian gear to evade detection. Detective chief superintendent Matthew Horne, leading Operation Brontide, said: “A significant minority came to London to cause violence and damage. There is an extensive operation to identify these people.” Fresh claims of politically motivated policing have also surfaced in a report alleging that officers prevented Muslims from attending counter demonstrations against a major English Defence League rally. Leicester constabulary operated a policy of stopping elements of the Muslim community protesting against the EDL during a high-profile march in the city last October, according to the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol). It said that the force attempted to dissuade Muslims through mosques and schools from protesting against the EDL demonstration at an authorised protest by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) on the same day, and issued leaflets advising that young people could be picked up and held in “safe areas”. Val Swain of Netpol said: “This is a strategy that we have seen up and down the country, and it appears to have been sanctioned at the highest levels. “The way in which the police are interfering in communities to deter people from organising and participating in lawful, legitimate protest is deeply disturbing. It is not for the police to decide which sectors of society are allowed to protest and which are not.” Saqib Deshmukh, a youth worker in the East Midlands, said it appeared that officers were willing to facilitate the EDL’s right to protest at the expense of the Muslim community, adding: “Certain groups of people are being denied the right to protest. It seems that the government is far more worried about the mobilisation of Muslim people than they are about the EDL.” Police in Lancashire adopted another tactic, imposing a limit of 3,000 on both an EDL march and one by counter-demonstrators in Blackburn to reduce the possibility of violence. The report by Netpol claims the reaction by Leicester constabulary could breach articles 10 and 11, the freedom of assembly and expression, of the European convention on human rights. It also reveals widespread disquiet over why the EDL was allowed to congregate in city centre pubs before the march and move close to Muslim areas. One community worker described their treatment as a “policy of appeasement”. The Leicester force has previously stated that it adopted polices to reduce the risk of public disorder and that it engaged with the Muslim community and acted in its interests.
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April 2 2011, 4:17pm | Comments »
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Why we must make the adder count
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/why-we-must-make-the-adder-count
More research into adder genetics may prevent small isolated colonies from dying out. Our only venomous snake is an important part of UK wildlife heritage.
This article titled “Why we must make the adder count” was written by John Baker, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 2nd April 2011 09.00 UTC One of only six reptile species native to Britain, the adder is a fussy creature. Its restriction to specific habitats, and its frequent disturbance by human activity, well-meaning and otherwise, have made its populations isolated and prone to the effects of inbreeding. The Institute of Zoology, Natural England and Oxford University is undertaking a survey of adders (also known as vipers) to identify whether their population in the UK is suffering from a lack of genetic diversity. This is encouraging, and I fully support further research into adder genetics. Two of the other reptile species in Britain, the sand lizard and smooth snake, have always had limited natural ranges here. Because of this, they have strict legal protection and have been the subject of conservation programmes to protect and manage the few sites where they occur, and to reintroduce them to places from where they have disappeared. The adder is one of the remaining four species that we call “widespread” because they have much larger natural ranges in Britain. The adder can be found from the very south-west of England all the way north to Scotland. This does not mean that Britain is brimming with them or any other reptile species: within their apparently large ranges, they are restricted to certain types of habitat. The adder prefers grassland, scrub and woodland edge, primarily on sandy soils. There are also other factors that make it a particularly vulnerable species. Back in 2004, English Nature (now Natural England) contacted naturalists around the country who had good knowledge of adder populations and asked them to evaluate the health of “their” adders, with some interesting results. In their opinion, “disturbance” was the greatest threat. But analysis of the data revealed some other trends. A third of the adder populations were small (estimated as fewer than 10 adult snakes), and more than a third of the populations were isolated. Population declines tended to be more frequent among these small or isolated populations, as is to be expected due to chance fluctuations, but also as you would expect from inbreeding. Amphibian and Reptile Conservation co-ordinates Make the Adder Count, a project encouraging local adder conservation and long-term monitoring of populations, pooling information from a small but dedicated band of adder-watchers around the country. They, too, have consistently reported that the greatest threat to adders is disturbance. On further questioning, it become apparent that disturbance can have different causes. In some cases it refers to destruction of habitat – something that can happen even on protected sites, unintentionally, through “habitat management”. Adders are also still being killed by humans, through overly heavy-handed management of some of the areas they inhabit. Sometimes disturbance can also result from people visiting well-known adder sites. So, can the general public help at all? Certainly. They can visit the Sliding Scales campaign website, a project for recording current or recent distributions of any snakes, as well as visiting the Add an Adder site – which aims to collect “records from the past” (both from personal experience and anecdotes from friends and relatives) to get a better idea of not only where adders are, but also where they used to be. If people find shed skins (or “sloughs”) of adders, they can also be sent to the ARC Trust – those will be used in a research project to better understand adder genetics. The animals we love face a range of threats. We herpetologists wait with interest to learn more about the genetics of our adder populations.
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April 2 2011, 2:33pm | Comments »
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Ireland, Portugal … Britain? George Osborne only has Plan A
The chancellor George Osbourne believes the only way to keep the ratings agencies happy is to stick to his tough deficit reduction programme … but after Ireland and Portugal, the UK needs a Plan B
This article titled “Ireland, Portugal … Britain? George Osborne only has Plan A” was written by Larry Elliott, economics editor, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 24th March 2011 12.59 UTC Portugal loses a government and sees bond yields soar. Ireland announces a third straight year of economic contraction. Britain suffers a slump in high street spending as consumers get cold feet. The ratings agency Moody’s says the UK’s coveted AAA rating could be at risk if the weakness of the economy derails plans to put the public finances in good order. A leading Bank of England policymaker says rising inflation is putting the Old Lady’s credibility at risk. As far as George Osborne is concerned, making sense of this welter of post-budget news is simple. The lesson for Britain is that the only way to avoid becoming the next Portugal or Ireland is to stick to Plan A, the four-year deficit reduction programme that will run for the rest of the parliament. Yes, it will be tough. Yes, there will be occasional setbacks, but the only way to keep Moody’s, S&P and Fitch sweet is to stay the course. The chancellor remains confident that growth will gradually pick up during the course of the year and be better balanced than it has been in the past. That said, the news from Ireland, the warning from Moody’s and February’s sharp fall in retail sales do highlight the risks for the government. Like the UK, Ireland used to be the poster child for the deficit hawks at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund, who ladled praise on Dublin for their courage in cutting the budget deficit. Today, Ireland provides evidence of the deflationary pit that a country can dig itself into if it cuts too hard too fast. In the UK, the assumption is that the economy can withstand the medicine Osborne has in store for it, but the 0.8% drop in spending last month was evidence of the weakness of consumer confidence following the slowdown in the economy in the second half of 2010 and the jump in VAT at the start of the year. It added to doubts among economists about the ability of Britain to meet the growth forecasts made for the chancellor by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. In the past, Britain (along with other countries) has bounced back rapidly from recessions, but not this time. At 1.3% in 2010 and a projected 1.7% in 2011, the UK is, at best, on course for an extremely sluggish recovery. The risks to these forecasts are to the downside, because high inflation is squeezing real incomes, public sector workers are being laid off and next week sees taxes increased and benefits cut. There will be some pick-up in growth in the first quarter of 2011 following the weather-affected 0.6% drop in the final three months of 2010, but the portents are not good for the second and third quarters of 2011, particularly if the Bank does start raising interest rates in May as the City expects. Spencer Dale, Threadneedle Street’s chief economist, explained his decision to vote for a quarter-point increase in bank rate to 0.75% by saying that despite relatively weak growth the risks were that there would be an overshoot to the government’s 2% inflation target in the medium term. Two other members of the MPC – Andrew Sentance and Martin Weale – also favour higher borrowing costs, but the chances of them securing the five votes they need for a rate rise have lessened in recent weeks as evidence has mounted of the economy’s vulnerability. Add this all together and what do you get? The economy will grow less quickly than the government is hoping for. Interest rates will rise more slowly than the City believes. The deficit will prove stubbornly high, leading to more warnings from Moody’s et al. Calls for a Plan B will grow.
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March 24 2011, 1:41pm | Comments »
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Portugal bailout fears rise as credit rating cut
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/16/portugal-bailout-fears-rise-as-credit-rating-cut
Portugal is being lined up as the next victim for the IMF treatment. So far the only country that has managed to resist has been Iceland.
This article titled “Portugal bailout fears rise as credit rating cut” was written by Graeme Wearden, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 16th March 2011 10.11 UTC City analysts warned on Wednesday that Portugal is moving closer to the brink of seeking financial help, after Moody’s cut the country’s credit rating by two notches. The ratings agency concluded a review of Europe’s weaker economies by warning that Portugal’s growth prospects are poor, and questioning whether it can keep borrowing from the financial markets for much longer. The downgrade, from A1 to A3, leaves Portugal with Moody’s seventh highest credit rating, just four notches above “junk”. It brings Moody’s into line with the other ratings agencies, and piles more pressures on Portugal ahead of its next debt auction. Moody’s said that Portugal faces “subdued growth prospects and productivity gains” over the next few years until its structural reforms kick in. It also warned that the Lisbon government could fail to implement its austerity measures, which are opposed by other political parties, and might also have to pump more money into its banking system. It also maintained a negative outlook on Portugal’s sovereign debt, saying there is more chance of a further downgrade than an upgrade in the next two years. Portugal’s treasury secretary, Carlos Pina, said that Moody’s decision was “hasty”. Arturo de Frias, head of banks research at Evolution Securities, warned that Portugal’s banks are still relying on €42bn (£36.5bn) of lending from the European Central Bank. “The Portuguese government has given an April 30 deadline to the banks to strengthen their capital,” said de Frias. “It seems increasingly likely that they will fail to do so, and the government will eventually end up having to provide capital. This might trigger the sovereign bailout,” he added, Challenging path ahead Portugal is resisting pressure to seek a bailout from the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), insisting it can cut its deficit and reduce its borrowing needs independently. Last week it announced a new swathe of cutbacks and reforms in an effort to boost market confidence. It is scheduled to auction up to €1bn of 12-month debt on Wednesday morning. But the interest rates on Portugal’s debt remain at levels that are widely seen as unsustainable. The yield on five-year Portuguese bonds rose to almost 7.5% on Wednesday morning. “The cost of market funding is likely to remain high until the deficit has been reduced to a sustainable level and the prospects for economic growth have improved,” Moody’s warned. “If the government seeks funds from the EFSF rather than capital markets, Portugal would likely gain access to liquidity at lower cost than it currently faces in the capital markets and limit some of the potential increase in its debt servicing costs, but the path to regaining market access at favourable terms would remain challenging,” Moody’s cautioned. Portugal’s opposition parties have blasted the latest austerity package, and vowed to oppose it. Jane Foley, senior currency strategist at Rabobank, warned that this could thwart the Lisbon government’s efforts to avert the need for a bailout.
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March 16 2011, 6:01am | Comments »
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April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it
Forthcoming cuts and pain which nobody is really prepared for. Will Wisconsin and Egypt come to Britain?
This article titled “April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it” was written by Polly Toynbee, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th February 2011 07.30 UTC Forget snow – every part of the Office for National Statistics report on the economy was bad news: household spending, business investment, services, finance, construction, even previously hopeful manufacturing figures – all revised downwards – plus declining house prices and anything else you can measure. The one shard of hope is that the lunatic tendency on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (Andrew Sentance) may be silenced on raising interest rates. Rising inflation is almost entirely beyond British control – oil and commodity prices. While real pay falls for all but bankers and FTSE boardrooms (up 55%), there is no home-grown wage inflation. Imagine the mayhem in raising the cost of mortgages and business borrowing just as hundreds of thousands more lose their jobs. If things are this bad before the serious austerity has begun, what lies ahead? April will indeed be cruel – and frightening as the great £81bn axe falls. This is a real-life economic experiment, one last chance to prove that Herbert Hoover was right after all and Franklin Roosevelt and Keynes wrong. Or that Churchill was right about the gold standard – except these days its equivalent is the deficit. The Treasury’s breezy “don’t care” riposte to the new figures was alarming in tone and content: “It doesn’t change the need to deal with the nation’s credit card – the country is borrowing more this year than is spent on the entire NHS.” That is cheap propaganda, not economics – a sign that Treasury civil servants have become a missionary cadre. We can only hope this bravado disguises anxiety – and a readiness to U-turn if nothing improves. But the “no plan B” chancellor shows no sign of it. Only a month to go. The shock in April will be profound. Ben Page of Ipsos Mori says: “People have no idea how their pay packets will change. Three-quarters expect to be affected, but they don’t know how.” Cameron-supporting papers sound no alarm, and television doesn’t begin to convey the coming severity. People are still foxed by a government whose every word belies its actions – Cameron still pretends the NHS, education and Sure Start are protected, and only public sector fat is cut; private companies will pick up the unemployed, banks are being seriously taxed and a “big society” will burst forth. Add “not” to everything he says and then you see how the cuts fall everywhere while charitable giving drops: 30,000 give-as-you-earn payroll donors just dropped out. A survey this week shows most large companies and 70% of small ones won’t employ public sector staff, no doubt prejudiced by the daily Eric Pickles and Francis Maude anti-public servants hate campaign. It hasn’t begun yet. Library and Sure Start doors begin closing in April. Rising NHS waiting times are hidden by not letting GPs refer. From 31 March, 300,000 public-sector staff and more from the voluntary sector start to be fired. And most families earning over £18,000 will find pay packet cuts in tax credits and national insurance, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Child benefit is frozen for three years – a cut of 10% or more at current inflation. Public employees’ pay is frozen for two years. In April the lowered threshold for the 40% tax band brings another 750,000 earners into the higher rate; anyone on £50,000 loses £500 a year, just as wages fall further behind an inflation they see emblazoned outside every petrol station inflation. By 2015 25% of earners will be on the 40% rate, the IFS reckons, up from 11% (though no doubt pre-election tax giveaways will ease that). How explosive will all this be? Ed Balls recalls the disastrous abolition of the 10p tax rate: it passed parliament with hardly a murmur – but when implemented a year later it went nuclear. Mori’s Ben Page says this is unknown territory: the cuts are so deep that public rage may become burned into the national psyche, even if the economy picks up and even with pre-election tax bribes. “They are now 10 points behind. Thatcher, hated for her cuts, was only saved by war and a disastrous opposition.” However, Cameron is still popular and the Tory vote has not dropped: so far Labour scores only at Lib Dem expense. But Page points out that, for the first time, support for cutting the deficit has dipped below 50%: he expects it to fall fast after April. What would you do? That’s the challenge for all critics of the cuts. The most important answer is: not this. If this is the cure then the medicine is more lethal than the disease, economically and socially. Take soaring 16 to 24-year-old unemployment, nearly a million not learning or working. That’s 15% before either the future jobs fund or education maintenance allowance has been axed. Here is the great social deficit, a jobless depressed generation, phenomenally expensive and almost impossible to rescue later. Take away the wiped-out youth services offering help. Take away the Sure Starts, the breakfast and homework clubs, leaving children unhelped until too late. That is the permanent human deficit, more damaging and intractable than fiscal debt, a cost uncounted by blinkered economists. What would you do? Not sit by while Bob Diamond takes a £9m bonus and corporations avoid billions in tax. Make sure everyone really is in it together: sharing pain fairly matters even more than sharing good times well. Be open about who earns what: these cuts fall hardest on many of the poorest. Ed Balls rightly posits extending the 50p tax band down to £100,000, to people like me who will pay relatively little extra. Cuts, yes some, but fewer slower, letting growth over time take the strain. Invest in the infrastructure the CBI calls for and reassure markets by having business onside. Build superfast broadband, railways, green energy, housing, whatever kickstarts recovery. Above all, give back the abolished job guarantee to every young person. What can you do? Last Saturday, I was at UK Uncut’s sit-in at Barclays: many more should join this Saturday’s RBS events – see http://www.ukuncut.org.uk. Enjoy their witty symbolism: taxpayers rescued the banks with a trillion pounds, so until banks are fairly taxed turn them into the libraries, classrooms and swimming pools they caused to be shut down. The Robin Hood campaign shows how taxing 0.05% on every transaction yields £20bn, enough to stop all NHS cuts. A ComRes poll finds 75% of Tory voters want bank bonuses clawed back. The government should expect a turn in the tide after April brings the worst of what the banks have done to everyone.
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February 26 2011, 2:18am | Comments »
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