There's nothing in economic theory that says you pause a third of the way through a deficit reduction programme which has gone way off track; nor does the fiscal framework, now effectively defunct with the abandonment of the debt target, dictate this approach.

As well as targeting specific funds to get stalled schemes in our most buoyant cities moving, we need to see more autonomy for cities to drive investment in new housing. By removing the restrictions on councils' ability to borrow money against their existing housing assets to invest in new housing, industry experts suggest councils could borrow an additional £2.8bn to invest in new housing.

Amidst this week's economic gloom were two bright spots of the jobs market. First, new stats from the ONS led to widespread reports that employment had again reached record levels, with the number of people in work rising 131,000 in the quarter to 29.7 million. Then the OBR upgraded its forecasts for employment over the next few years.

The first substantive line of George Osborne's budget speech was: "We've now cut the deficit not by a quarter, but by a third". This might be surprising to anybody who read my earlier blog here, which pointed out that the deficit had (measured on a rolling twelve- month basis) been rising, not falling, for the last year or so.

The ten things you need to know on Thursday 21 March 2013... 1) THE NO-GROWTH BUDGET It's the morning after - and the chancellor George Osborne ...

David Cameron has been rebuked for giving a misleading account of his government's economic record, after he claimed the Office for Budget Responsibil...

In this experimental piece I attempted to convey the confusion associated with domestic violence and leaving a partner you love by speeding up and slowing down the footage depending upon the point in the narrative.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) slashed it's forecast for growth on Wednesday as the Chancellor, George Osborne, warned that austerity coul...

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) slashed it's forecast for growth on Wednesday as the Chancellor, George Osborne, warns that austerity could...

Do you remember George Osborne’s first “emergency” budget in June 2010? The chancellor of the exchequer argued that “in order to place our fis...