Day: March 16, 2025

UK News: Calls for chancellor to exclude defence from rules or raise taxes in response to spending pressure at spring statement

Leading economists are urging Rachel Reeves to bend her fiscal rules or raise taxes instead of cutting welfare when she responds to growing spending pressures in her spring statement later this month.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is expected to downgrade its forecasts for the UK when they are published on 26 March, wiping out the headroom to meet the chancellor’s rules. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/TJYM8q

UK News: Co-leader says deprioritisation of net zero is ‘extremely dangerous’ as he rejects ‘nimby-in-chief’ characterisation

Labour’s push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is “extremely dangerous”, the co-leader of the Green party has said.

Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament last July in their best ever result. He said and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be as disappointed as they have been. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/TJYM8D

Home Office told Manikarnika Dutta to quit Britain for spending too many days abroad for study

A high-achieving academic has been threatened with deportation from the UK because the Home Office says she has spent too many days conducting her research requiring access to historic Indian archives stored in India.

Manikarnika Dutta, 37, a historian, conducted the research as part of her academic commitments to the University of Oxford, which involved studying archives in cities in India and attending a series of international conferences. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/TJYM5f

School leaders attacked as ‘an unaccountable elite’ after years of below-inflation pay rises for teachers

A record 775 heads of school academies in England were given pay packages worth more than £150,000 in 2022-23, sparking allegations of an unaccountable “gravy train”.

Figures published last week by the Department for Education (DfE) reveal that nearly a third of academy trusts (30.8%) rewarded at least one staff member with a pay deal worth in excess of £150,000, including pension payments and benefits. This compares with just 12% in 2018-19. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/TJYM5b