Prime Minister's Questions: Cameron Out of Touch on Bonuses, Says Miliband
BBC: Labour leader Ed Miliband has accused David Cameron of being "out of touch" for opposing European Union plans to cap bankers' bonuses.

He claimed the prime minister was "straining every muscle" to help the rich while doing little for the poor.

But Mr Cameron said the Labour leader wanted to "play and pose politics", while the UK needed to do all it could to attract the world's largest banks.

The UK was the only EU country to oppose the cap in a vote on Tuesday.

Under the plan, bonuses would be limited to 100% of a banker's annual salary - or to 200% if shareholders approve.

During a lively Prime Minister's Questions session, Mr Miliband said Mr Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne were the only people who thought it was "a priority to fight for bigger bonuses". » | Wednesday, March 06, 2013

George Osborne's Series of Bitter Pills
THE GUARDIAN: Message that 'we're all in it together' seems hollow as chancellor takes aim at public sector workers and those reliant on credits

This was the day George Osborne did his best not to be buried by bad news. He came to the chamber of the House of Commons to deliver an autumn statement that prophesied a long, bleak winter for the British economy, a downturn unmatched in the postwar era, one that would stretch for seven lean years.

His task was to release a mudslide of gloomy numbers, forecasts and projections – and somehow remain standing, looking like a man who not only bore no blame for this dire state of affairs but who would pull the country out of the mess. There can't have been many tougher assignments in recent British political history. Just one of the announcements Osborne had to make would, in normal times, have represented a day of despair for a chancellor. But these are not normal times.

So he had to declare that the coalition's signature political promise would be broken: they would not, after all, pay off the deficit by the end of this parliament. That goal had now receded to the distant horizon of 2016-17.

All the pain, the tax rises and spending cuts, that were meant to turn red ink black, would be, if not quite in vain, in pursuit of a goal now revealed as vanishingly remote. » | Jonathan Freedland | Tuesday, November 29, 2011