(1) Updated at 1.50pm GMT 12.56pm GMT Economists react: did Osborne play Scrooge or Santa?
(2) But he added: “Whilst it is being rolled out, we must have the data to allow us to hold the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] to account and suggest where improvements can be made.” Scrooge is at large on our hungry streets | Letters Read more The committee said it had been difficult to hold the department to account on benefit delays because of a lack of available data on the timeliness and accuracy of benefits for some disabled people and short-term benefit advance applications.
(3) In a move condemned by campaigners as Scrooge-like behaviour, Betfred, which has almost 1,400 betting shops in the nation's high streets, proposes grading the performance of staff with a "higher weighting" given to the profits their shops make from fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) – machines that critics say lead to crime and the regulator warns present a "high inherent money-laundering risk".
(4) The BBC will also showcase Dickensian, a new series using Scrooge, Fagin and Miss Havisham, as well as an adaptation of the bestselling crime novel of all time, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, starring Poldark actor Aidan Turner.
(5) Is Labour not letting us all down by not hounding Osborne, demanding details, making it plain that if the turkeys do vote for this Christmas, it will be the type that even Scrooge would disown?
(6) Scrooge, but Uncle Ebenezer after the Third Ghost's visit, Mother Teresa after her second breakfast gin, Dorian Gray on Botox.
(7) If King, an apostle of non-violence and advocate for the poorest of the poor, were alive today, what would he make of President Obama's careless-with-life drone assassinations, his bullying of journalists and whistleblowers, his assent to slashing Social Security via his Scrooge-like "deficit commission"?
(8) In the first year, we painted a picture of a crisis in a barren desert: Scrooge McDuck’s egg timer isn’t working, no one can find the red sand – oil – and the camels have long since left.
(9) It was tries that England needed and France, the Scrooges of the tournament, suddenly found joy in giving them – Anthony Watson finished a counterattack sparked by Youngs’ 40m break before the scrum-half, after Ford’s clearance had been charged down by Gaël Fickou, took a quick throw to Joseph, even though the centre was standing behind his own line.
(10) Ask the Danes, and they will tell you that the Norwegians are the most insular and xenophobic of all the Scandinavians, and it is true that since they came into a bit of money in the 1970s the Norwegians have become increasingly Scrooge-like, hoarding their gold, fearful of outsiders.
(11) These historic challenges to a system are like the visits to Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol – they are the times when organizations have to confront the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
(12) Although Van Rompuy is pushing for a smaller budget increase than originally suggested, his draft proposal is still tens of billions of euros higher than the sums acceptable to the likes of Britain – who has been playing the traditional role of a trouble-making Scrooge.
(13) Today's Guardian, for example, informs us that Ebenezeer Scrooge is our favourite Dickensian character .
(14) For the government, Clarke argues that to ignore the potential economic gains "in favour of blowing up a controversy around one small part of the negotiations, known as investor protection, seems to me positively Scrooge-like".
(15) For now, though, Mr Osborne has played Scrooge rather than Santa and left the onus squarely on the MPC to keep the economic recovery going.
(16) I have never had Monbiot down as an ungenerous character, but to ignore all of this in favour of blowing up a controversy around one small part of the negotiations, known as investor protection, seems to me positively Scrooge-like.
(17) Looked at with a Scrooge-like economist’s hat on (gift idea for an accountant!
(18) Scrooge is at large during our festival of giving and receiving; we are him and he is all of us.
(19) Campaigners are to raise the spectre of Scrooge and the “ghost of Christmas present” at Associated British Food’s annual shareholder meeting on Friday over low-paid staff at its Primark chain.
(20) One of the most endearing characters in English literature is Tiny Tim, the crippled son of Ebenezer Scrooge's clerk, Bob Cratchit.