The Foreign Office is a very important arm of the British state and I think Britain has a fantastic diplomatic service. We are the only country in the world spending 2% of our national income on defence and 0.7% of our national income on aid. We are the only country in the world doing both of those things.

George Osborne

Categorized in : Thinking Country Office

Printing money is the last resort of desperate governments when all other policies have failed.

George Osborne

printing-money lasts government

Let's also teach people about pensions and savings, insurance and the like. But if they aren't already familiar with numbers that won't be as effective as it might be.

George Osborne

numbers might people

You need to have a state pension that doesn't drag more and more people into means-testing each year and make it very difficult for people on low to medium term incomes to save and not see their savings clawed away.

George Osborne

mean people years

I very much support financial education in schools.

George Osborne

financial-education support school

What makes people angry and we are on the side of hard-working people who want to get on in life and they see how government is wasting their money.

George Osborne

government hard-work people

Well look, no one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others, but that is a function of capitalist markets.

George Osborne

misery people looks

I think the British people have a strong sense of what is fair.

George Osborne

strong people thinking

Tax cuts should be for life, not just for Christmas.

George Osborne

cutting christmas should

A generous basic state pension is the least a civilized society should offer those who have worked hard and saved through their whole lives.

George Osborne

whole-life states should

We will also target tax evasion and off-shore tax havens... Everyone must pay their share.

George Osborne

tax-evasion target pay

Even a China growing at 7% or indeed less is still adding to the world economy an economy equivalent to the UK or more.

George Osborne

economy growing world

Well British pension funds have not been investing the savings of British people in British infrastructure.

George Osborne

investing saving people

I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right.

George Osborne

law country thinking

Just as we should never balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so it is an economic delusion to think you can balance it only on the wallets of the rich.

George Osborne

rich balance thinking

I think it is absolutely central to our economic plan as a country not only that we put our own house in order but that we better connect ourselves with other parts of the world, particularly the faster growing parts of the world.

George Osborne

order country thinking

The Conservative Party mustn't sound like the old man on the park bench who says things were better in 1985, or 1955, or 1855.

George Osborne

benches party men

If we don't get a grip on government spending, there will be no growth.

George Osborne

spending growth government

Everyone in our society has had to make a contribution towards dealing with the debts.

George Osborne

debt contribution our-society

I think we woefully failed to connect Britain to the growing Chinese economy in the previous decade, and I have sought to remedy that. China is now the sixth biggest trading partner with the UK. We have attracted now the lion's share of Chinese investment that is going into Europe.

George Osborne

chinese europe thinking

The positive news is that the British economy is continuing to grow and is creating jobs. And it is positive news too that at a time of real international instability we are a safe haven in the storm.

George Osborne

safe-haven real jobs