All about earnings

Earnings Preview: H-P to report 4Q results

Maxim, Blender Publisher Toast In Another Blow To Quadrangle

- 7 hours and 34 minutes ago

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=49280ffd14b9b9e60042d897maxX=340maxY=342" border="0" alt="Maxim.png" title="Maxim.png" width="340" height="342" /The publisher of sex magazine Maxim and Blender has violated debt covenants and may be turned over to creditors, a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122730194963548825.html?mod=googlenews_wsj"the WSJ reports/a. Such a move will likely lead to a steep loss for Steve Rattner's Quadrangle Group, which bought the company, Alpha Media, for $250 million last year:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"The negotiations are fluid and could still fall apart, according to people familiar with the discussions. Financial results at a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djnsymbol=LM.V"Alpha Media/a, the publisher of Maxim and a separate music magazine called Blender, have dropped sharply amid an advertising slowdown.../p p style="padding-left: 30px;"Maxim's crisis marks the latest setback for Mr. Rattner, a prominent Wall Street deal maker and investor whose firm manages New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's multibillion-dollar fortune. Mr. Rattner's Quadrangle Capital Partners has struggled with its private-equity portfolio and recently unwound its hedge fund amid market turmoil./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"Quadrangle's private-equity fund paid about $250 million for Alpha Media in August 2007, lauding the company as an "unrivaled" play for reaching 18- to 34-year-old males. The New York-based firm put up about $90 million of equity and borrowed the rest to purchase the titles from British publisher Felix Dennis./p pWho are these mysterious creditors who are likely to inherit the titles? One is Cerberus, which used to be thought of as an astute private equity firm. Cerberus execs will not likely have much time to read all the free magazines they'll get, however, because they're too busy trying to save some of the billions they blew on Chrysler and GMAC./p pOne small bit of good news is that Blender and Maxim aren't actually losing money yet. They'll probably get there soon:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, have plummeted, say people familiar with the matter. When Quadrangle acquired Alpha, it was generating about $28 million in Ebitda; it is on track to generate about $8 million in Ebitda in 2008./p p style="padding-left: 30px;"Amid a broad magazine downturn, ad pages in Blender are down 25% through September, according to the Publisher's Information Bureau. Maxim's ad pages have fallen 3% over that period./p pstrongSee Also:/strong a href="http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/quadrangle-s-hedge-fund-blows-up-closes"Quadrangle's Hedge Fund Blows Up, Closes/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/MVvU1s8WL_30la9v8nIG7YGFAkc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/MVvU1s8WL_30la9v8nIG7YGFAkc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OpzhtimN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=OpzhtimN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=rmyu7FX7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=gw1xiKvo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=gxyTUK6k"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=gxyTUK6k" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=YVQW1Xcx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=FSVz2DPU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Pl8481W8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=7oa6xlnT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/SV97Vuoi6do" height="1" width="1"/

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Dr Pepper Pays Up, For One Day Only

(LifePath Unlimited)Home-Based Business is Not MLM

Trust condemns BBC's failures in Brand row

Guardian Unlimited

- 20 hours and 56 minutes ago

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/68545?ns=guardianpageName=Media%3A+Trust+condemns+BBC%27s+failures+in+Brand+rowch=Mediac3=The+Guardianc4=BBC%2CJonathan+Ross%2CRussell+Brand%2CRadio+industry+%28Media%29%2CMedia%2CUK+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CComedy%2CRadio+Media%2CTelevision+Media%2CTVc6=Tara+Conlanc7=2008_11_22c8=1122231c9=articlec10=GUc11=Mediac12=BBCc13=c14=h2=GU%2FMedia%2FBBC" width="1" height="1" //divpIt took a single word - "yes" - and a click of her BlackBerry. With that Lesley Douglas, Radio 2 controller, triggered a row that led to the resignation of Russell Brand and the suspension of Jonathan Ross, and ended her own 22-year career at the BBC./ppHer one-word message sanctioned the controversial broadcast of Brand and Ross abusing the elderly actor Andrew Sachs and disparaging his granddaughter Georgina Baillie./ppThis crucial detail was revealed yesterday in a BBC internal report that the corporation hopes will draw a line under one of the most controversial episodes in its recent history. /ppDouglas, the woman credited with saving Radio 2 by modernising the once unfashionable station, quit her post last month and Ross will not broadcast again until the new year./ppThe report by BBC management lays bare a breakdown in communication over the offensive messages left on Sachs' phone answering machine and, in some cases, what the BBC yesterday accepted was a "failure of editorial judgment"./ppIn the first message, the day after the recording on October 15, the producer Nic Philps raised concerns about bad language with Radio 2 head of compliance Dave Barber: "The problem comes when Jonathan says that Russell 'f*cked' Sachs' granddaughter ... I would say take it out, but it forms the crux of the call and is VERY funny."/ppBarber, who also quit this month, subsequently emailed Douglas, repeating the phrase "it's very funny" and telling her: "Having discussed it with [Philps] and listened to the sequence, I think we should keep it in and put a 'strong language' warning at the top of the hour. I think it's editorially justified in this context and certainly within audience expectations for Russell's show and the slot. Andrew Sachs is aware and is happy with the results which were recorded his end for him to hear. Are you happy with this as a plan of action?"/ppThe next day Douglas responded simply: "Yes."/ppIn a separate report yesterday, however, the BBC Trust, which oversees the corporation, disagreed and said the transmission during Brand's late-night show was "grossly offensive" and that there was no justification for broadcasting it./ppThe report reveals that nobody at the BBC realised or checked claims that Sachs had made a complaint, with the result that BBC news bulletins reported press office denials that he had lodged a complaint. His agent had emailed Douglas but she was away from the office and did not receive it until October 26, four days later./ppThat was the day the Mail on Sunday ran its story about the October 18 broadcast, which subsequently led to 42,851 complaints to the corporation. /ppThe BBC's report also revealed that no compliance form was completed by a BBC executive or producer ahead of the transmission of the Brand show./ppDespite the report's conclusion that there was a "lack of direct control by Radio 2", the BBC Trust ruled that the sanctions already imposed by BBC management were enough./ppThe BBC Trust also criticised a further incident of bad language involving Ross, but said his three-month suspension without pay was adequate punishment. This means Ross, who is believed to be earning pound;6.9m over three years, will return to the BBC on January 24./ppIt said an episode of Ross's pre-recorded BBC1 chatshow, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, in which the presenter told Hollywood actor Gwyneth Paltrow he "would fuck her" was "gratuitous and unnecessarily offensive"./ppFollowing complaints, BBC management had originally reviewed the show, broadcast in May, and cleared it, as had the regulator Ofcom. However, the trust yesterday said it disagreed with that judgment, adding that the comment was made in an "overly sexual way" and that it had upheld a number of complaints./ppIn addition, the trust said that BBC management should investigate another incident involving Brand on Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles' show. Moyles and Brand had a conversation live on Radio 1 at 8.23am on October 21, three days after the offensive messages were broadcast on Radio 2 - but before the Sachs affair had become a crisis for the BBC./ppBrand told Moyles he had met Baillie and said he had "met her brains out"./ppBBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said: "None of the breaches the trust is reporting today should have happened. All of them could have been avoided. The issue which links them is a lack of editorial judgment by those in control."/ppTrustee Richard Tait added that in future "this use of such offensive language must be approved at senior level"./ppHe also said the "prime responsibility rests with the BBC and the editorial management responsible"./ppThe Sachs row has led to Ross stepping down as host of this year's British Comedy Awards. Yesterday ITV announced that his place would be taken at the ceremony on December 6 by Angus Deayton. /ppLyons also revealed yesterday that, in the light of the current tough economic climate, the BBC's nine public service executive directors, including Mark Thompson, the corporation's director general, would waive their bonuses next year. Thompson has done so for the past four years./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/bbc"BBC/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/jonathan-ross"Jonathan Ross/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/russell-brand"Russell Brand/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/radio"Radio/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Mediacountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227317660255112201400459684"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Mediacountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227317660255112201400459684" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

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The Dell surprise: Higher earnings on lower revenue

(BBtv) Unicorn Chaser, Friday Review: Offworld.com Death Dwarf Dance

Dark Knight... Both Most Pirated And Highest Earning Movie

Techdirt

- 1 days and 5 hours ago

You may recall when iThe Dark Knight/i opened, we pointed out that its record breaking opening was because movie makers created a movie that a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080721/2256451753.shtml"people iwanted/i to see in a theater/a. The fact that parts of the movie were designed for IMAX theaters drove many people to pay even more (or even see the movie multiple times) in order to experience the IMAX version, which simply can't be replicated at home. As we pointed out, this was a perfect example of how the movie studios could compete with free. In fact, in such a scenario, you could even make the argument that the more people saw the movie in download format, the more willing they would be to go pay to see the IMAX version, to get the full experience. br /br / However, it was stunning to hear movie industry execs then claim that the ireason/i the movie was so successful was ibecause/i of their a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080728/1012151810.shtml"anti-piracy efforts/a. That was clearly untrue at the time, and now a href="http://blogcampaigning.com"Parker Mason/a alerts us to the fact that iThe Dark Knight/i was not just the biggest grossing film, but a href="http://io9.com/5091139/why-so-copyrighted" target="_new"also the most pirated film of the year/a. Of course, if you believed the studio execs, that would be impossible. After all, if so many people are downloading the movie, then clearly they're "stealing" from the industry and would never go see the movie. But, seeing that the movie made record profits, it seems to show that's simply incorrect. Many people, reasonably, viewed the download as imarketing/i, convincing them to go see the movie in the theaters.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081118/0400182867.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081118/0400182867.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081118/0400182867op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1d8454b9dd4650d6d4685723a4ee531dp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1d8454b9dd4650d6d4685723a4ee531dp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=1d8454b9dd4650d6d4685723a4ee531d" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=hVSgn"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=hVSgn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/460944076" height="1" width="1"/

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Brocade reviews mixed after tempered outlook

Dell Sees 9% Gain in Fiscal Q3

Analyst: Microsoft shares could rise 22 percent

Ahead of the Bell: Dell revenue worries analysts

[App Store Release] Master Number

Mixx Growing Fast, But Are They Really More Mainstream Than Digg?

TechCrunch

- 1 days and 12 hours ago

Social news community Mixx is seeing healthy growth ever since they left stealth mode. They got a nice traffic spike last May after CNN integrated ‘Mixx it’ buttons in their articles, roughly doubling their number of unique monthly visitors to nearly 1 million, and it appears their new community building features aren’t hurting them either.

A screenshot from their Google Analytics account shows that the Digg-competitor is gaining traction, receiving over 5.8 million unique visitors last month. Compete (as usual) estimates lower numbers but shows a similar growth pattern, as does Google Trends. Quantcast seems to affirm the number of reported visitors as well.

So how does that compare to Digg?

While we don’t have any insight on their internal stats, we do know Comscore, Compete, Quantcast and Google Trends all show that Digg yields much more traffic than Mixx, even if growth appears to be stagnating while Mixx’s is soaring.

Mixx is also very eager to show that their user base is more diverse than Digg’s audience, citing a Hitwise report that suggests its users tend to be more female (49% vs. 33%), older (36% in the 18-24 age group vs. 45%) and wealthier (e.g. 19% makes more than $150k per year vs. 4%) than Digg users. But comScore’s U.S. demographics of both sites tells a different story. According to comScore, females make up 47% of the Mixx audience vs. 46.4% for Digg. So about the same. But when it comes to 18-24-year-olds comScore thinks Mixx skews younger, with 17% vs. only 14% for Digg. And for households earning more than $100,000, Digg wins there as well with 30% vs. 27% for Mixx.

So who’s numbers are you going to believe? It’s important to note that the Hitwise report was based on a 4-week study, which is in my opinion far from enough data to jump to any conclusions about the difference in user demographics. When you take the comScore data into account, the demographic differences seem pretty minor. Certainly they are not big enough to make any solid statements about Mixx being more mainstream than Digg.

Still a nice traffic growth pattern for a website that’s only been live for about a year and raised only $3.5 million in funding so far (Digg, for reference, has raised $40 million to date). Below are some comScore charts for the U.S.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Formula 1 boss [Bernie Ecclestone] faces divorce case

LA 2008: Mazda takes top honors in Design Challenge

Autoblog

- 1 days and 20 hours ago

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/conceptcars/" rel="tag"Concept Cars/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/la-auto-show/" rel="tag"LA Auto Show/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/motorsports/" rel="tag"Motorsports/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/mazda/" rel="tag"Mazda/a/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-la-design-challenge-mazda-kaan/1108388/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/mazda_03_l_opt.jpg" alt="" //abr / div style="text-align: center;"span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"smallClick above for more renderings of the Mazda KAAN concept/small/spanbr //div br /It wasn't the number one pick of our readers (earning the silver medal in your voting), but Mazda managed to take the top honors at the LA Design Challenge with its KAAN concept. The design itself is a fanciful look into a future where all the roads in California are paved with... um, sub-level electro-conductive polymer (m'kay), which provides juice to the electronic tires that allow the KAAN to reach speeds of up to 250 mph. Up to 30 KAANs would travel together in formations that would cheat the wind, so MAZDA designed the vehicles so that they could fit tightly together in the peloton. br /br /The theme of the competition was to depict what motorsports would be like in 2025. Chuck Pelly, director of Design Los Angeles, said that the choice was made because Mazda's entry was "the most innovative and artistic design," and that the KAAN "ultimately brought unique styling back to motorsports." Unique? That seems like a major understatement to us. See all of the contenders after the breakbr /br /div class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-la-design-challenge-mazda-kaan/"2008 LA Design Challenge: Mazda Kaan/a/strong/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-la-design-challenge-mazda-kaan/1108388/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/mazda_01_l_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-la-design-challenge-mazda-kaan/1108390/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/mazda_02_l_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-la-design-challenge-mazda-kaan/1108389/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/mazda_03_l_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-la-design-challenge-mazda-kaan/1108387/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/mazda_04_l_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-la-design-challenge-mazda-kaan/1108386/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/mazda_05_l_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/divbr /[Source: a href="http://www.laautoshow.com/DesignChallenge.html"LA Auto Show/a]pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-mazda-takes-top-honors-in-design-challenge/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emLA 2008: Mazda takes top honors in Design Challenge/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-mazda-takes-top-honors-in-design-challenge/"LA 2008: Mazda takes top honors in Design Challenge/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:59:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-mazda-takes-top-honors-in-design-challenge/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1378656/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-mazda-takes-top-honors-in-design-challenge/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/fUYycRX077LSgCL9CyOuYuvFrdI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/fUYycRX077LSgCL9CyOuYuvFrdI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=bnrBkZwz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=bnrBkZwz" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=4wRP3V5A"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=4wRP3V5A" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/I3ESSYpPHzo" height="1" width="1"/

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Find £1bn to help 10p tax rate victims, Darling told

Guardian Unlimited

- 1 days and 21 hours ago

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/54665?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+Find+%26pound%3B1bn+to+help+10p+tax+rate+victims%2C+Darling+toldch=Politicsc3=The+Guardianc4=Tax+and+spending%2CAlistair+Darling%2CEconomics+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CEconomic+policy%2CLabour%2CBusiness%2CMoney%2CPolitics%2CPre-budget+reportc5=Personal+Finance%2CCredit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Patrick+Wintourc7=2008_11_21c8=1121605c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=Tax+and+spendingc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FTax+and+spending" width="1" height="1" //divpThe leaders of Labour's 10p tax rebels yesterday served warning on the chancellor, Alistair Darling, that he has to find at least pound;1bn in Monday's pre-budget report to help the 6 million people who have still not been compensated for the disastrous decision to abolish the lower tax rate earlier this year./ppFrank Field and Greg Pope, the leaders of the tax rebellion earlier this year, have written to Darling, urging action. Field told the Guardian: "The Labour backbenches will not abandon the poor who have still not been compensated. It is a Rubicon they will not cross, and at a time the government has found pound;50bn to bail out the bankers, the Treasury can surely find pound;1bn to ease the resentment of our core voters." /ppThe chancellor is expected to announce a series of business and personal tax cuts in Monday's pre-budget report, aimed at the poorest because they are most likely to spend any extra cash./ppThe intervention of Field and Pope will add to the pressure on the Treasury which was last night seeking to dampen speculation of a massive tax giveaway next week after the latest official figures showed a backdrop of rapidly deteriorating public finances./ppIn the wake of the first October deficit in 14 years, officials dismissed suggestions that the chancellor could unveil a pound;30bn package - worth 2% of GDP - designed to lift the economy out of recession. /ppThe quarterly payment of corporation tax means October is normally a surplus month for the public finances, but the slowdown in the economy, the collapse of the housing market, financial turmoil and tax concessions since the budget combined to leave the state in the red by pound;1.4bn last month. /ppCity analysts said the budget deficit could rise to pound;70bn this year and top pound;100bn in 2009-10 even before the extra borrowing for Monday's fiscal package was taken into account./ppIn their letter Field and Pope write: "We are anxious that the government's promise to do all in its power to compensate fully the losers from the abolition of the 10p rate is not only met, but kept clearly separate from other tax reductions the government may announce next Monday."/ppFollowing an unprecedented backbench rebellion, and amid signs that Brown's leadership was at risk, the Treasury hastily assembled a pound;2.7bn compensation package in May. Darling increased personal allowances for all basic rate taxpayers. Although only 1.1 million householders have lost out overall, this masks the fact that 6 million individuals have been losers. /ppField and Pope write: "Overwhelmingly these taxpayers are on low earnings. The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates that the greatest loss of around pound;112 a year are for taxpayers earning pound;7,755."/ppThey accept that the complexity of the tax system means it will be impossible for the Treasury to help every group that has lost, but argue it does seem likely that most of these losers are on low earnings and fall below a threshold of pound;13,355 a year./pp"We do hope you can give us an assurance that Monday's statement will include a measure that will recompense as many of these individuals as is practically possible. Only in this way would it be possible to draw a clear line under this wholly sorry saga." /ppField claims the net cost of his proposal will be pound;1bn./ppIn other developments the employment minister, Tony McNulty, said the pre-budget report would propose a new employment programme, adding it was "a no-brainer" to revisit the closure programme for Jobcentre Plus officers. Since 2002, the government has closed nearly 500 job centres, including 40 in the last year, and cut staff by 16,000. /ppMinisters are also under intense pressure to use the pre-budget report to rethink its housebuilding programme after figures were released yesterday showing only an estimated 22,200 housing starts in England in the September quarter, down 33% on the previous quarter./ppThis decline in housebuilding levels makes the government's target of building 240,000 homes a year by 2016 look hopelessly unrealistic./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/taxandspending"Tax and spending/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/alistairdarling"Alistair Darling/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics"Economics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/labour"Labour/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/pre-budget-report"Pre-budget report 2008/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Politicscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727712112100421654622"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Politicscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227227727712112100421654622" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

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