Joe Allen

Off-brand Joe Allen. I work at @The_TUC

[The Venerable Jeff of Bingen @petrolemulsion]

Patrick Stewart as gay opera director Alistair Burke in one of my favourite scenes in Frasier. Rest in Peace

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

On immigration and public finances:

"Britain mostly chose not to find out".

[Stephen Webb @stephenfhwebb]

"As the senior Treasury mandarin Sir Leo Pliatzky wearily said of public spending in the 1970s; “It’s like elephants at the water hole. You drive them off, and drive them off, and in the evening, back they come.”
https://t.co/3MWg3syRGM

[Wales Governance Centre @WalesGovernance]

🚨NEWYDD🚨Cyllideb sy'n trosglwyddo'r penderfyniadau anodd yn y tymor byr i Fae Caerdydd: dadansoddiad newydd o gyllideb y DU📖

🚨NEW🚨A budget that hands the difficult short-term decisions to Cardiff Bay: Wales Fiscal Analysis's view of the UK budget📖

https://t.co/1WajB3MNWF

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

The 2016 Drakeford/Gauke fiscal framework deal has proven to be Welsh Government's finest hour to date.

Bringing in over £700m next year alone.

(chart via @WalesGovernance).

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

Lifting 2 child cap will benefit 70k children in Wales and reduce child poverty rate by 3-4 points.

Also the tax devo deal continues to be a rare Welsh triumph:

"total net effect of tax devolution on WG budget next year is set to be £524 million, over 2% of day-to-day spend."

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

@ceritheviking Obviously we have been screwed on funding re HS2, but we could have been a lot further along with parkway if it hadn't been stuck four 4 years in planning - including those 2 years sat with Welsh Gov. All our own doing!

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

Good short paper on how devo now being driven by N England & not the celtic nations.

Touches on "empowerment gap" for city regions outside Eng (more concrete after yesterday's Fiscal Devo Roadmap)

Incredible in this context Welsh Lab have gone silent on national devo question.

[Dan Jackson @northumbriana]

Smart piece by Kevin Morgan and @john_tomaney on the politics of devolution
https://t.co/Qw6y6ZJrgY

[Dan Jackson @northumbriana]

Smart piece by Kevin Morgan and @john_tomaney on the politics of devolution
https://t.co/Qw6y6ZJrgY

[Ben Riley-Smith @benrileysmith]

Interesting knotty problem coming on devolution...

As the IFS briefing points out, letting mayors keep more of their tax receipts that means either...

A) Scotland / Wales / Northern Ireland getting less in Barnett Formula as those tax receipts aren't going into the Treasury then back out again any more

--OR--

B) Ensuring devolved nations still get the money... which means other parts of England not getting money from, say, a booming London and Manchester but Scotland / Wales / Northern Ireland regions benefitting.

Both can't be true. So either devolved nations lose out or other parts of England lose out.

[Science Works @sci_works]

Government’s AI Growth Zone scheme isn’t making a big enough difference. There's no obvious speed-up for projects in an AI Growth Zone vs those outside one.

No Zone is on track to meet the 2030 capacity targets that government was aiming for. Will the Data Centre Covenant help?

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

Fortunately in Wales we've long since transitioned to a well-being economy where things like real income growth are recognised as gauche and old fashioned.

[Faisal Islam @faisalislam]

“Bleak” IFS Chart on living standards by decade…

Who remembers the talk of a “roaring 2020s”?

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

* Slightly different since May as the new Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd is mad and takes in South Powys, East Swansea and Neath. They also came quite close in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf.

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

Problem for the Welsh Lib Dems is they've only had rural MPs or MSs for the last decade*.

So their big budget issue is heating oil and you just hear them pop up talking about how evil pylons are etc. Not major issues for 70%+ of the population and a difficult cycle to break.

[Nation.Cymru @NationCymru]

David Chadwick has confirmed he will stand to become leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, with the MP set to succeed Jane Dodds without a contest, subject to securing 50 nominations https://t.co/UfbGoAmxMG

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

The Series B Irish banknotes, designed by Servais Haanen, are genuinely beautiful.

[Paul Johnson @PJTheEconomist]

Mindblowing chart from OBR. In 2029 real household disposable income per person expected to be just 1% higher than in 2019. What an unbelievably awful decade. It used to grow by 2%+ every year, not 1% in 10 years.

[robert shrimsley @robertshrimsley]

OBR chart on real household disposable income growth over the decades. Just wow

[David Phillips @fiscalphillips]

The #fiscaldevo roadmap if OUT.

Overall I'm pleased. The government has nailed its colours to the mast, with proposals for what I'd call a 'balanced' system of tax revenue-sharing. And its avoided a big pitfall that could have seen London race away.. BUT there are some buts...

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

British AI application companies are only lagging behind American ones by revenues by about 50%, adjusted for nominal GDP. European ones are at 20%.

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

Which is less than Welsh Lab squeezed out of the gov to add to ALN spend in the recent supplementary budget row.

[Joe Allen @Joe___Allen]

Funny thing about free prescriptions being such a totemic policy in Wales: if it was dropped and replaced with the English system of payments and exemptions it'd probably only save £40m a year.

[max tempers @maxtempers]

I had to pay for a prescription recently, and the guy at the counter seemed inconvenienced, almost annoyed, that I wasn’t ticking an exemption box and was making him pull out a dusty card machine instead. Worth remembering that only *one in ten* prescriptions are ever paid for.

[Ant Breach @AntBreach]

Quick thoughts on today's fiscal devolution roadmap, building off our four tests:

1. This is the end of the beginning for fiscal devolution. Government now accepts fiscal centralisation is a national economic problem - and over the longer term there is more fiscal devo to come