John Redwood's Diary
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John is a frequent commentator in the media, a keen cricketer and water sports enthusiast, and supports a number of different charities. He is an Ambassador for the Variety Club of Great Britain. His blog is incisive and topical campaigns and commentary on today's issues and tomorrow's
problems.
John Redwood's Diary
17h ago
This week I took a train from London to Ipswich and back. There were two plus points. There was good service frequency, giving me plenty of choice of trains. The out bound train ran to time so I could get to my appointment. There were plenty of bad points. The seats were in the modern ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
2d ago
I agree with Keir Starmer that spending £100 m on a bat tunnel over a small section of HS2 is a bad idea. The issue is what is he doing about it? I do not recall him previously intervening over the crazily escalating costs of the project. He is not this time identifying excess costs ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
3d ago
So just five months in the government dumps its most attractive and exciting promise to make the U.K. the fastest growing G7 economy. They want to perpetuate this century’s experience of falling further and further behind the US, clinging to EU style slow growth, high taxes and bad regulation and cosying up for more of ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
4d ago
The railway is largely nationalised. The four train companies already run by the state run like the others over fully nationalised track, signals and stations to government controlled timetables. Three of the fully nationalised ones have very poor records for cancellations and delays. As we go into 2025 we learn there will be more inflation ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
5d ago
One of the main reasons the US is a lot better off than the U.K. and growing much faster is the UK’s self harm policies in the name of net zero. Under President Trump the US increased its output of oil and gas by 50%, adding plenty of extra tax revenue and well paid jobs ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
6d ago
The government thinks it has to choose between following the EU more or the USA. As its main aim is faster growth to afford better public services, it needs to recognise this century the US has been growing more than twice as fast as the EU. Making the U.K. more like the EU would mean ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
1w ago
I have been reading Boris’s account of the last few storm tossed political years. It is written with panache and wry humour, avoiding boastfulness and self pity. It sweeps you along with his boosterism, his impishness, his sharp observations of events and people and his ability to see what others saw. I was particularly interested ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
1w ago
The U.K. government has been completely silent on how much extra money the state will give emerging economies every year up to 2035 despite signing a formal pledge that the world annual total from 43 richer countries will treble. So far the U.K. pledged £11.6 bn of state finance over the period 2021-2 to 2025-6 ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
1w ago
COP 29 was all about money. The COP did not chase up improved national plans to get to net zero,though the U.K. did table one. They now say they can get to an 81% reduction by 2035, without telling us what the cost will be or the extent we will have to change our travel ..read more
John Redwood's Diary
1w ago
I find in the book on Truss a wrong assertion about myself p 77 “John Redwood was a figure early on at Chevening until he made it clear he didn’t want to become minister for personal financial reasons, so he was replaced by Chris Philp, who was to succeed Clarke as Chief Secretary to the ..read more