The City and the tax haven
Richard Murphy has a good definition of a tax haven, but I disagree with his idea that having a large financial services sector is an important characteristic, although I do agree with his view that the UK and Ireland are both tax havens. (more…)
Don’t eat killer fruit!
One of the reasons given by The Guardian for the failure of a scheme to encourage children to eat more fruit, is that schools are reluctant to give children fruit with stones because they might choke. What is even more amazing is that the journalist writing it could let this idiocy, and the disturbing reasons for it, pass with absolutely no comment. (more…)
Tax and government
at 11:54 am on Tuesday, 10 July 2007
I sympathise with the Tax Justice Network’s aims, but I think their latest publication may have got the relationship between tax and good government (found via Richard Murphy’s blog) wrong. I also think I can explain why there is so little pressure to improve tax collection. (more…)
Fixed rates will not make housing affordable
I find it hard to believe that encouraging long term fixed interest mortgages, as the government plans to, will really make housing more affordable. Here is why: (more…)
Middle class revolution
at 8:33 am on Tuesday, 10 July 2007
One of many interesting ideas in the Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Trends study is that the middle class may become revolutionaries: taking on the role Marx expected of the proletariat. My instinctive reaction to this is that it is implausible, but, on reflection, it is more likely than it first appears. (more…)
Feeding terrorism?
at 1:29 pm on Thursday, 5 July 2007
This evidence appears to show that the main cause of terrorism is the lack of civil liberties (as discussed in this blog post). So where does that leave governments whose “war on terror” involves getting rid of civil liberties? (more…)
My favourite terrorists
The terrorists responsible for the London and Glasgow airport “car bombs” are my favourite kind: bumbling idiots who could not explode a jar of nitroglycerine. I feel a lot safer,knowing how incompetent they are. My main worry is that some of the suspects are doctors: if they planned this, how did they get through medical school? (more…)
Spreading greed
According to economist Robert H Frank, economics students become more selfish as a result of spending years immersed in the study of economic theory that is based on the idea that people act selfishly (or “rationally”, as economists describe it.
What effect does living in a neo-liberal capitalist society that is based on exactly the same assumptions have on people?
BAE and how to pay bribes
After the ineptness apparently shown by BAE in directly transferring cash it appears that many people do not know how to pay bribes properly. Lot of companies with ethics committees and auditors, so, for the benefit of BAE and others who need to learn how to it properly, this is how you bribe foreign government officials: (more…)
Bush-Blair memo: heros imprisoned
at 3:59 pm on Thursday, 10 May 2007
The heroic David Keogh and Leo O’Connor have been jailed. It is no longer news that Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in Qatar and flatten Falujah, which fits with claims that US forces deliberately targetted journalists. Peter Kilfoyle’s early day motion here, people willing to risk jail to get the truth out here (who include Borris Johnson).
