ZoomClouds: John Redwood MP for Wokingham

... on the heels of the government™s decision to halve the amount Northern Rock has lent on mortgage over the next couple of years in order to repay the money owing to taxpayers. In recent days mortgage rates have been rising, even though the Bank of England™s message on interest rates has ...

... ard, follow. Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a contradiction in that rapid repayment of the Treasury money requires contracting the business, whereas fattening the business up for resale requires growing it? It is quite difficult to understand how the...

... the government announced a one third cut in the workforce, and a halving in the size of the business, along with confirmation that the bank will lose money in each of the next three years. That prospectus for the nationalised business suited no-one. MPs from the North East, along with the rest of us...

... The Bank needs some of its old powers - and information - back from the FSA so it can understand banks’ positions more quickly and respond in money markets appropriately. ing to own up to the magnitude of the cash requirements of their new acquisition. Last night the Opp...

... loist was Grant Doyle. The next song in the cycle explains that in the tavern they gamble to excess as welll as drink too much, and that is where the money goes. The songs are based on the poems of the wandering scholars or goliads of the Middle Ages, who sung of Fortune’s turns, of love, sin...

... nd are about to see some of them on our doorsteps asking for our vote. It is a good time to remind them that above all we want them to seek value for money in what they do spend, and reduce the Council Tax they impose on us. To do this, in many cases they could cut the Tax by: 1. Telling their o...

... et is not agreed to along with extra tax to pay for it. I have never met a Council CEO who thinks they can deliver as good or better service for less money (in the way industry has to to stay in business) and volunteers a cut in the Council Tax for the first budget draft. If cost control breaks down...

... have gone up, because market interest rates have gone up. The MPC has not met. It has not wanted rates to go up. It has expressed no view on the way money market rates these days may be up to 1% or 100 basis points higher than the rate they recommend. It should be the Bank of England̵...

... ime of year when we feel especially harried by our rapacious government. The Council Tax bill comes as a nasty shock, when you discover just how much money they want to take off you for emptying your dustbins. For all those who who do not have Council street lights, who do not have children at s...

... the Chancellor and the Bank of England that presided over the collapse of Northern Rock, not the FSA. Remember what happened. In the summer of 2007 money markets dried up in an unprecedented way. Some of us went hoarse telling the Bank of England they needed to make more money available so the mon...

... me one hour of unexpired time on his parking ticket. He meant it kindly. I had just a few seconds to respond. Should I accept gratefully and save my money? (No, I was not going to reclaim it!). Should I offer the white lie that I needed longer than one hour to avoid the dilemma? Or should I explain...

... d. Most of you disagree strongly, believing the current inflation will persist, and if the authorities do too much by way of cutting rates and making money available will trigger a faster one. I see no evidence that inflation is passing from energy and commodities into wages. We instead seem to be e...

... ter to ask for a donation. 8. The MP™s party organisation offers a meal with the MP at the Commons as a raffle prize in an expensive raffle to raise money at a fund raising event. The MP hosts the dinner for the prize winner. 9. The MP offers a meal for two at the House with him as host to a local...

There is much debate about moral hazard. If the Bank of England offers more money to the clearing banks when they need cash, isn’t that bailing out banks who have lent too much to the wrong people? Won’t they just do it again and again? No, that is not the case. The money markets have ...

... s and increasing prices because they are inundated in the wake of Northern Rock’s withdrawal from the market, not because they have run out of money. The system as a whole, however, is cutting back on its volumes because it is rightly being more cautious about how much money it can raise from...

... e need to do so at home and in the office as well as on the road, in the air and on the tracks. We need a government which takes its duty to save us money on its own energy bills much more seriously: the public sector should pioneer new and old ways of saving energy and cutting emissions. This is n...

... llion of near cash to the banks in return for some of their mortgages. How is this done? The government itself will borrow the money, by issuing bonds “ IOUs “ on the taxpayer.It will lend this money to the banks. It will secure these loans with banks™ mortgages. It will requi...

... o lots of representatives as they do now , they should have the pleasure of paying for them. 3. Many English people want fairness in allocating the money. Constituents want to know how it is that Scotland can afford a better deal on student finance, and in some cases a bigger range of pharmaceutic...

... as PM. If Gordon had accepted, it would have broken his power base at the Treasury, which was used to associate Gordon with the large sums of public money being spent on causes dear to the hearts of the Labour MPs whose support the would be Leader needed. It was also the power base he used to block...

... people. I do not want the universities to be the supplicants, the tatterdemalions of the educational world, wearing themselves out by arguments over money and purpose. Universities are not just part of the process of modernising (the UK) and raising the standards of the workforce. They are not just...

... £310,244. The Minister responsible for allocating these funds has said there will be no strings attached on how local authorities decide to use this money, provided it is used to address issues related to flooding in the community. Speaking about the announcement of the awards, John Redwood said:...

... tax, that means the average taxpayer has to pay well over £10,000 a year if you add up all the taxes you contribute to. So what do you get for your money? Is it a good deal? I just get my dustbin emptied once a week, and am allowed to use some inadequate roads. I don’t mind being asked to ...

... ankind had such power! The more interesting question is what benefit in our understanding of the universe will we be getting for the huge outlays of money and time on the particle railway under the Alps? It looks like a train set from an earlier age, which just took a long time to build. Let’...

... strator have to ground all the planes and pilots of the affected airline rather than using them to sort out the mess as the first claim on the bonded money? I understand that the Directors of the company are to blame for getting into the financial mess in the first place. From the moment they adm...

... ng on the news ,as on this occasion the US authorities have not offered to rescue it directly. I am not surprised they have declined to put up the money. There have to be limits on how much the US taxpayer can support. The massive rescues of Fannie and Freddie stretch even the long pockets of Unc...

Apparently governments are made of money. Today Germany has taken far reaching action, following more problems at Hypo Real Estate. The pressure is on the UK by the media to announce a similar guarantee. That is what we were effectively offered when the run on Northern Rock became serious. At s...

At last the authorities have woken up to the scale of the problems in the money and banking markets. Any sensible person this morning wishes the government’s plan well and hopes it will succeed. Let me begin with some supportive points. It is good that more money will be...

To many people the bank share purchases by the government is the last straw. They see it this way: the government takes money off us in taxes, gives the money to the banks, who then might lend some of it back to us for interest and a fee if we are lucky. Yesterday in Parliament I point...

Two news items today - The Audit Commission (public body dedicated to getting value for money for taxpayers) placed £10 million in a couple of Icelandic banks and tells us this accorded with its investment guidelines. Wouldn’t an apology and a mea culpa have been more in order? We learn t...

... I went to the shops today. In one leading retailer there was a queue at the returns counters where staff at three tills were busy refunding the money. Many tills in the leading stores were unmanned, and there was no queue at most of the other tills that were being used. There were not that man...

What a fuss about nothing. If the Conservatives had taken money from a British company (legal) as a conduit for money from an overseas resident (illegal) that would have been an interesting story and a complex web to untangle. Fortunately we learn they showed judgement and took no such donation. ...

... t has already bought a railway company) 2. Revenues will fall as the private sector makes less profit, carries out fewer transactions and earns less money. 3. Expenditures will increase as more people need unemployment and related benefits. 4. The government may increase spending on projects to ...

... ay is out of control at the BBC. This state pensioner needs to gain some financial discipline quickly, so the licence payer gets better value for the money we are forced to pay. The large numbers of layers of ineffective management, all on very high salaries, would be a good starting place for cut...

... little used. One shop employee told me of the problems they were having with suppliers going bankrupt.It was a good reason for tax cuts, to put more money into people’s pockets so they might go and spend. The cuts in interest rates will have some beneficial impact for those with track...

... e might get somewhere. Now is a good time to bring forward privately financed infrastructure projects, especially if the nationalised banks have any money to lend! I see no sign of it. There may be more announcements “ like the much heralded Crossrail, announced before every general Election but no...

... rn Rock as quickly as possible, taking its loss before it gets bigger. 2. Once this has been done the government should then cut taxes, putting more money into the pockets of those likely to spend more. 3. The government needs to widen the range of stocks its issues to finance its remaining debt, ...

... e all government soundbites, needs examining. A tax cut œpaid for œ by borrowing does not necessarily reflate an economy. It depends who lends the money to the government, and what else they would otherwise have done with it, it depends on how the government spends the money it borrows, and how t...

... hares. If they go ahead with their purchases of HBOS and RBS, taxpayers will be sitting on an immediate loss in excess of £8 billion. At a time when money is scarce and people are overtaxed, is this a good idea? Why not support the banks in a cheaper and less risky way? Shouldn’t the PAC ope...

... to increase the amount of borrowing it needs to do by a huge amount. This means the government needs people to save more to send the money to the government through National Savings, direct bond purchases and investment in bonds through unit trusts and pension funds. The governemnt ...

... t the massive £157 billion the UK government has decided to borrow this year. They seem determined to use the banking system to lend them some of the money, to make it a bit easier to lay their hands on it and to try to keep long term interest rates down. They will also doubtless keep up th...

Financial businesses are different from most other types of business. They entail sending your money to someone else to look after, on the promise they will give it back to you at a later dtae, preferably with some improvement in its value. Because of this I have always favoure...

... rates too high, bringing the pack of cards tumbling down? And when will they admit they are still getting it wrong, pushing huge quantities of money at ever lower interest rates into a system which is still broken, but which one day may ignite inflation again? I would be far happier if...