I’m working with the TV on at the moment and they are covering George Osborne’s speech to the Conservative Party conference. He’s just said some quite interesting things about the new economy (by which I presume he means the information economy) and argued that it is an intrinsically conservative environment. He argued that organisations like Google and Facebook (both of which he actually name checked) rely on individuals acting by themselves and that this is something the left will struggle to cope with. Need to think about that and come back to it.
Additional note: Let’s not get too excited by these new Conservatives being new though. One delegate… sorry conference goer (Conservatives don’t do delegates) clapped for the Internet references (I’m not kidding, it was one person), whilst they have just nearly lifted the roof off the conference hall because he said he was going to increase the inheritance tax threshold to one million pounds. He doesn’t bother to explain what he’ll cut to pay for it.
Additional additional note: I have actually been slightly unfair on Osborne (his speech text is now online, so I was able to check it out) as he says that he would pay for the change in inheritance tax through an annual flat charge on those who claim domicile status. At the time, I just equated that promise with his first pledge (to abolish stamp duty for first time buyers). But he did link the two bits of his speech up. Of course, as Nick Robinson points out, if it were that easy to obtain three billion quid, why has no one done it before?
[tags]conservatives, george osborne, web 2.0[/tags]