Whats the verdict on Goerge Osbornes autumn statement then. Is it going to help or be a disaster ?
no help
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Humber bridge tolls being cut by 50% will be a help to hauliers around here as will not putting up fuel duty by 3p in January.
A14 to be improved…in 10yrs. time!
I gotta wait till I’m 67 for me state pension gggrrrrrr, thank god I’ve always had a works or private one since I was 18 
Conor:
Lies, damned lies and statistics.Humber bridge tolls being cut by 50% will be a help to hauliers around here as will not putting up fuel duty by 3p in January.
So far, there has been no mention in the autumn Statement 2011 of tolls being cut for anything but cars.
A.47 Humber Bridge — The Government will write-down £150 million of debt on the Humber Bridge, allowing tolls to fall from £3.00 to £1.50 for cars. Alongside the reduction in tolls the Government expects the Bridge Board and local authorities in the region to agree to a radical reform package for the governance of the bridge.
Fuel duty
1.132 Given the current high cost of fuel, to support motorists and businesses, the
Government announces that the 3.02 pence per litre (ppl) fuel duty increase that
was due to take effect on 1 January 2012 will be deferred to 1 August 2012, and
the inflation increase that was planned for 1 August 2012, currently expected to be
worth 1.92ppl,2 will be cancelled. This will ensure that there will only be one RPI increase
next year. The 5ppl discount for the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, the islands in the Clyde and the Isles of Scilly will, in addition, come into force on 1 March 2012. The Government will publish details of the design of the fair fuel stabiliser at Budget 2012.
Roads
A.3 A14 immediate investment — The Government will invest £20 million to reduce
congestion on the A14 including measures to improve junctions and increase resilience.A.4 A14 challenge — The Government will examine ways to increase the long-term capacity
and performance of the A14 with the launch in early December 2011 of a large-scale
engagement programme: ‘the A14 Challenge’. By spring 2012, it will have developed and
assessed proposals including capacity enhancements on the Fen Ditton to Ellington section of the road. The Government will also look at the scope to relieve congestion by improving other modes including local roads, freight facilities and public transport. It will consider whether improvements can be funded through innovative financing mechanisms including tolling. This work will support the proposed development of new homes in Northstowe, Waterbeach and Alconbury. The Government will also consider tolls to fund other road infrastructure if appropriate.A.5 A14 Kettering Bypass — The Government will invest £110 million for widening of the A14
Kettering Bypass between Junctions 7 and 9.A.6 A45/46 Tollbar End improvement — The Government will invest £110 million for the
A45/46 Tollbar End improvement scheme.A.7 Access to Manchester Airport — The Government will invest approximately £165 million in a new dual carriageway road linking the M56 at Manchester Airport to the A6 south of Stockport.
A.8 A453 widening — The Government will invest £160 million for widening of the A453
between Nottingham, the M1 and East Midlands Airport.
A.9 Managed motorway schemes — The Government will invest £270 million for two new
managed motorway schemes: to use the hard shoulder to increase capacity on the M3 in Surrey;
and the M6 along part of the route between Birmingham and Manchester. (y)
A.10 M25 and M1 junctions — The Government will invest £100 million to accelerate the
current major projects planned on the M25 (Junctions 23-27) and the M1 (Junctions 39-42). Together these will deliver 48 miles of additional capacity.A.11 M1/M6 Junction intersection — The Government will invest £150 million for major road
improvements on the M1/M6 Junction intersection.A.12 Local transport projects — The Government will provide an extra £170 million of
funding for local authority major transport projects to enable all the projects in the development pool for the Spending Review 2010 period to go ahead, subject to them passing the Department for Transport assurance process. As of 29 November 2011, 20 individual projects have passed this process including £76 million for the Kingskerswell Bypass in Devon and an additional £50 million on the bypass road to the east of Lincoln.A.13 Lower Thames crossing — The Government is committed to building a new crossing
across the Lower Thames and has identified three possible locations for a crossing. The
Government is launching its analysis of the relative merits of those options to inform a public consultation in 2013, and will be exploring the options for tackling Junction 30 of the M25 and pressures on the A13 corridor.A.14 A1 Elkesley planning permission — The Government has approved the planning
permission for the A1 at Elkesley.A.15 Road Pinch Point fund — The Government will provide additional funding of £220
million for smaller projects which will ease local bottlenecks and improve safety and road layout. This fund will also invest in driver information, signage and closed-circuit television, to improve incident clear up times and assist road users, particularly road hauliers.A.16 M4 improvement — The Government will engage with the Welsh Government on
improvements to the M4 in South-East Wales.
Logistics
A.35 Major rail freight terminals — The Government has published a Written Ministerial Statement to support the development of, and investment in, strategic rail freight interchanges (SRFIs). This statement is supported by a detailed SRFI guidance document.
A.36 SRFIs: Network Rail support — The Government has asked Network Rail to support the
development of a network of SRFIs, working with the wider logistics industry to: speed up the delivery of SRFI sites to meet business demand; assist with funding; and establish appropriate delivery vehicles for rail infrastructure elements of such proposals.A.37 Strategic Rail Freight Network (SFRN) — The Government will support Network Rail
to invest £55 million in the SRFN to help deliver schemes that remove bottlenecks and improve capability and longer-term connectivity to the UK’s major ports. This will include the Ely-Soham doubling scheme to remove a bottleneck on the Felixstowe-Nuneaton route, and gauge clearance of additional rail freight routes in the Midlands between Syston junction and Stoke.A.38 Long-duration incidents and delays — The Government will deliver the
recommendations from the Motorway Incidents Review to ensure it can reduce the frequency of long-duration incidents and delay to heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). This includes a £3 million fund to assist police forces to purchase laser scanning equipment to help speed up the investigation of serious incidents.A.39 Semi-trailers — As announced on 11 October 2011, the Government will carry out a trial of longer semi-trailers. The trial will commence in January 2012 and last up to 10 years, with the anticipated value of the trial being an estimated £33 million to operators.
A.40 Operator licensing regime — The Government will explore opportunities to support
green technologies through changes to the operator licensing regime, to reflect the increased costs to industry from low emission technologies that increase the overall weight of the vehicles.A.41 Fuel efficiency technologies for the logistics industry — The Government is on
29 November 2011 launching an industry-led task force to promote use of fuel efficient, low emission road freight technologies. This will help to broker successful engagement between industry, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and local authorities on trialling and implementing measures that support the use of low emission technologies and behaviours at minimal burden to the industry.A.42 HGVs: low emission technology — The Government will invest £8 million to pump
prime the procurement of low emission HGV technologies and their supporting infrastructure. The Government will work with the Technology Strategy Board to launch a competition for this funding in March 2012.A.43 Quiet night time deliveries — The Government will consider the need for further
guidance on quiet night time deliveries as part of a forthcoming wider review. The Government will ask the Noise Abatement Society and the Freight Transport Association to: build on the Quiet Deliveries Demonstration Scheme by further developing the existing scheme’s best practice guidance into a toolkit that includes standards for quiet night time deliveries; and identify whether further government guidance is needed to promote uptake.A.44 Inclement weather conditions preparation — The Government will work with others
to trial the temporary use of snow ploughs attached to certain types of heavy duty vehicles. Where necessary, the Government will consider relaxing certain weights and dimensions legislation to facilitate this.A.45 Skills for Logistics — The Government will provide £4 million to Skills for Logistics
to improve training approaches to increase the competitiveness and productivity of the
logistics sector.
A.47 Humber Bridge — The Government will write-down £150 million of debt on the Humber Bridge, allowing tolls to fall from £3.00 to £1.50 for cars.
Alongside the reduction in tolls the Government expects the Bridge Board and local authorities in the region to agree to a radical reform package for the governance of the bridge.
A.48 Metal theft — The Government will invest £5 million to set up a nationwide taskforce to target metal thieves and scrap metal dealers who illegally trade in stolen metal.
A.49 East London river crossing — The Government will work with the Mayor of London and
Transport for London to explore options for proposed additional river crossings, for example at Silvertown.
Regulation
A.84 Unfair dismissal qualifying period — The Government will increase the qualifying
period for unfair dismissal from one year to two years from April 2012.A.85 Employment tribunal claims — The Government will require all potential claimants to
submit their employment tribunal claim to the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
(ACAS) so that early conciliation can take place.A.86 Determination of claims — The Government will look at whether and how a ‘Rapid
Resolution’ scheme to provide quicker, cheaper determinations in low-value, straightforward claims (such as holiday pay) could be introduced as an alternative to the current employment tribunal process.A.87 Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) regulations — The
Government has launched a call for evidence on the effectiveness of the TUPE regulations
protecting employees’ rights and smoothing the process of business restructuring. Should the balance of evidence call for possible changes to the current regulations, there will be a formal consultation on any proposed changes in 2012.A.88 Collective redundancy rules — The Government has called for evidence on the collective
redundancy rules, including the consequences of reducing the current 90-day consultation
period for over 100 redundancies to 60, 45 or 30 days.A.89 Employment tribunal Rules of Procedure — Mr Justice Underhill will lead a
fundamental review of the employment tribunal Rules of Procedure. In the meantime, the
Government will change the rules on witness statements and expenses, cost and deposit orders and judges sitting alone in unfair dismissal cases.A.90 Mediation — The Government will work with industry and key stakeholders to change
attitudes to mediation and embed it as an accepted part of the dispute resolution process. As a first step, the Government will explore with large businesses in the retail sector how they might share their mediation expertise with smaller businesses in their supply chain. The Government will also pilot local mediation networks for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).A.91 Financial penalties — The Government will introduce a provision for employment
tribunals to levy a financial penalty on employers found to have breached employment rights (payable to the Exchequer), but will allow judges the discretion about whether to exercise this power to ensure that employers are not penalised for inadvertent errors.A.92 Compromise agreements — The Government will develop a model agreement for use
by smaller businesses, consult on a legislative change to enable compromise agreements to
cover all existing and future claims, and rename agreements as ‘settlement agreements’.A.93 Protected conversations — Subject to consultation, the Government will introduce a
system of ‘protected conversations’ which will allow employers to have a conversation about any employment issue with their employees.A.94 Employment tribunal fees — The Government will shortly publish a consultation on the
introduction of fees for anyone wishing to take a claim to an employment tribunal.A.95 Dismissal processes — The Government will begin a call for evidence on two proposals
for radical reform of UK employment law. First, the Government will seek views on the
introduction of compensated no-fault dismissal for micro-businesses with fewer than 10
employees. Second, the Government will consider how it could move to a simpler, quicker and clearer dismissal process, potentially including working with ACAS to make changes to their code or by introducing supplementary guidance for small businesses.A.96 Employment and recruitment sector — The Government will consult in spring 2012 on
streamlining the current regulation of the recruitment sector.
A.101 Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks — The Government will deliver universal
portability of CRB checks with an immediate checking service for employers via an online facility available from 2013.
A.103 Implementation of EU Directives — The Government is publishing a report which includes 16 specific cases, highlighted by businesses, for EU regulatory reform to improve UK business growth. These cases reinforce UK aims to reduce the overall EU burden, foster EU innovation, complete the internal market and remove gold-plating. The Government is continuing to work to reduce the burdens imposed by EU regulations. Directives include: the Clinical Trials Directive; Classification Labelling and Packaging of Chemicals; the Working Time Directive; Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of Chemicals; proposals related to the Posting of Workers Directive; the Air Quality Directive; National Emissions Ceilings; and the freshwater legislative framework.
A.105 Health and safety regulations — The Government has accepted the recommendations of Professor Löfstedt’s review of health and safety regulation including:
– exempting self-employed people posing no risk to others from health and safety legislation;
– simplifying guidance and codes of practice;
– taking measures to ensure businesses see consistent and predictable regulation across the UK including a power for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to direct all local health and safety regulatory activities;
– the HSE taking steps to clarify the legal position of businesses to ensure they are only held accountable for those things they can realistically manage; and
– the HSE negotiating a risk- and evidence-based approach to health and safety regulation
with the EU.
There are lots more things to annoy, entertain, or generally give you something to talk about in the RDC.
I leave this motion to the house.
Dave the Renegade:
Whats the verdict on Goerge Osbornes autumn statement then. Is it going to help or be a disaster ?
It all depends on what happens in euroland.
The 5.2% pay rise for welfare (An insult to many hard working people whose pay has been frozen) confirms my view that these torys are plastic, not the true blue of a Maggie Thatcher or a Norman Tebbit. 
pavaroti:
Dave the Renegade:
Whats the verdict on Goerge Osbornes autumn statement then. Is it going to help or be a disaster ?It all depends on what happens in euroland.
The 5.2% pay rise for welfare (An insult to many hard working people whose pay has been frozen) confirms my view that these torys are plastic, not the true blue of a Maggie Thatcher or a Norman Tebbit.
I think all politicians are predictable now, Take Ed Balls for example. What a card.
Did you read his column in The Times this morning? it was at best comedy gold.
He’s finally twigged that voters hate the idea of spending more money, even more than they hate ‘the cuts’. So now he’s trying to rebrand Labour’s strategy.
He still reckons we should cut taxes now, and raise public spending. But don’t worry, because we’ll pay it all back later.
But, Ed, how can we be sure you’ll pay it back? That’s easy. To win the confidence of the voters, Labour now needs to set out “tough rules that the next Labour government will have to stick to — to get our country’s current budget back into balance and national debt on a downward path”.
It’s the old ‘jam today, paid for tomorrow’ promise. Given how useless Gordon Brown’s rules were, I’m surprised Ed has the cheek to try the same trick again. But to be fair to him, he’s far from the only one trying it on…
Politicians and voters have a troubled relationship. Politicians feel they need to promise us the earth so that we’ll vote for them. But they know that we know this. So how can they make those promises credible?
Today’s fashion seems to be to create ‘independent bodies’ to monitor them. That way, politicians won’t be able to break their promises without having egg all over their faces.
There are two problems with this, of course. Firstly, if there are no penalties for breaking the rules, then they’re worthless. Secondly, if you write the rules yourself, then you can shift the goalposts any time you want.
Gordon Brown’s “sustainable investment” rule stated that government borrowing should never rise above 40% of GDP. But in his attempts to stick to it, he just shovelled more borrowing off the books and into the hands of private finance initiatives. And it ended up going above 40% anyway.
George Osborne isn’t proving a lot better. As David Crow in City AM points out,
Osborne’s own ‘rules’ about managing the deficit and the national debt are set up to be moving targets. He can’t possibly fail to meet them.
This same pantomime is being played out in the eurozone right now. It’s even more of a farce there. We’ve got Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy agreeing on new, stricter rules that will save the eurozone from ever ending up in the current mess again.
Among other things, the new rules would include ‘automatic’ punishment for any government that lets its budget deficit rise above 3% of GDP. European states will also have to promise to never again ask private investors to take losses.
It’s almost impossible to list all the ways in which this is utter nonsense. Firstly, similar rules were already in place when the eurozone was formed. Nearly every country has broken them since. Indeed, Greece teamed up with Goldman Sachs to find a way around them before it even entered the eurozone.
Secondly, you can’t guarantee that private investors will never take losses. At least, not unless you allow the European Central Bank (ECB) to print so much money that would save bond investors from ever taking ‘nominal’ losses at least. Germany still seems to be dead against this — but that might change soon, as I’ll explain in a moment.
In the long run, money-printing in Europe seems likely — if the euro survives.
So far the markets seems to be persuaded by this European ‘statement of intent’. But experience suggests that we’ll see another panic before too long.
How do you cope with these rolling crises as an investor or just plain old folk on the street? It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. In the long run, politicians will always pursue the path of least resistance. That means more money printing in Britain — the Bank of England has made no bones about that.
And eventually, I suspect it’ll mean money printing in Europe. The only obstacle is Germany. But if Merkel can promise German voters (and the German media) that budget-breakers will be punished in future, then the pay-off is that the ECB can be authorised to save the day “on this occasion, but never again”.
But sadly there’s no guarantee that European money printing will set off a huge rally to save the day, but ultimately, its us the tax payers that will suffer.
I have just received this letter in an email.
assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/h … review.pdf
It is this quote that is worrying:
The Government will write down £150 million of the bridge debt, which currently stands at £332m. This is enough to allow the toll for cars to be reduced from £3 to £1.50 as soon as possible. Recognising that this is a
substantial write down, this offer is conditional on the Bridge Board and Humber area local authorities agreeing to:
- Radical reform of the Bridge Board to bring in new expertise and give it a sharper commercial focus, so that costs are controlled and opportunities to bring in new revenue are seized.
- The Humber area local authorities taking on full responsibility for the remaining lower level of debt, and sharing it out much more broadly and realistically between them.
New revenue, could that be even higher tolls for lorries?