Human Capital - British government puts a value on Britons

At the end of December 2011, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) published a report on what we are worth: "Human Capital Estimates 2010" 


This is not about what we own minus what we owe, but what we as animate objects, are worth. Our "Human Capital". The ONS' definition of Human Capital is:


“the knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being.”


You may be flattered to know that:

• "The UK’s human capital stock was worth £17.12 trillion in 2010."
• "This is more than two-and-a-half times the UK National Accounts estimated value of the UK's tangible assets - buildings, vehicles, plant and machinery etc - at the beginning of 2010."

It may, or perhaps may not, give you a warm fuzzy feeling to know that you are valued at an average of just over £425,000:

According to the ONS, the key means of developing human capital are related to education:

• Learning within family and early childcare settings

Families contribute to the development of human capital in their children through direct expenditures on educational materials etc and through time spent fostering learning habits and attitudes.

• Formal education and training

This includes activities ranging from early childhood education, school-based compulsory education, post-compulsory vocational or general education, tertiary education, public labour market education, adult education etc.

• Workplace training

Firms and organisations invest in human capital to develop those skills and competencies with economic value.

• Informal learning

This is a wider concept taking place through ‘on-the-job’ learning, in daily living and through civic participation.

The importance of education in terms of hard cash:

So, let's leave 2011 on a positive note. At £425,000 your person, not including what you own, is worth on average 2.65 times the price of the average house in the UK.


Added 1/12/2014: The infographic below from the Office for National Statistics explains "Human Capital" quite nicely:

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Human Capital - British government puts a value on Britons

At the end of December 2011, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) published a report on what we are worth: "Human Capital Estimates 2010" 


This is not about what we own minus what we owe, but what we as animate objects, are worth. Our "Human Capital". The ONS' definition of Human Capital is:


“the knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being.”


You may be flattered to know that:

• "The UK’s human capital stock was worth £17.12 trillion in 2010."
• "This is more than two-and-a-half times the UK National Accounts estimated value of the UK's tangible assets - buildings, vehicles, plant and machinery etc - at the beginning of 2010."

It may, or perhaps may not, give you a warm fuzzy feeling to know that you are valued at an average of just over £425,000:

According to the ONS, the key means of developing human capital are related to education:

• Learning within family and early childcare settings

Families contribute to the development of human capital in their children through direct expenditures on educational materials etc and through time spent fostering learning habits and attitudes.

• Formal education and training

This includes activities ranging from early childhood education, school-based compulsory education, post-compulsory vocational or general education, tertiary education, public labour market education, adult education etc.

• Workplace training

Firms and organisations invest in human capital to develop those skills and competencies with economic value.

• Informal learning

This is a wider concept taking place through ‘on-the-job’ learning, in daily living and through civic participation.

The importance of education in terms of hard cash:

So, let's leave 2011 on a positive note. At £425,000 your person, not including what you own, is worth on average 2.65 times the price of the average house in the UK.


And a happy new year to you too!

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Liebrary: Pension costs are ballooning out of control? Actually, the share of GDP going in pay and pensions has been DROPPING!

"Never waste a good crisis". Who first said it - I don't know. But using a crisis as a smokescreen to push through changes irrelevant to the crisis itself is a tactic used by leaders great and small. A golden chance to quickly make changes that under normal non-crisis conditions they could never get away with. From the head of a household cutting pocket money, to the head of a company cutting jobs and pay, to the head of a government cutting pension entitlements.

Pensions are part of employees' compensation - that is "pay" to the likes of most of us. Far from ballooning out of control, employees' compensation has been falling as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product for years. 

What this means is that as the country gets richer, the share paid to ordinary ripped-off Britons has fallen, as can be seen from this data from the Office of National Statistics 

(The ONS defines "Compensation of employees" as wages, salaries and social contributions made by employers).

A phenomenon that really kicked off in 2000, during the last Labour government, and being followed through with a vengeance by the current Tory-LibDem coalition. The jump in the employees' share of GDP seen in 2008-10 has nothing to do with greater fairness, and everything to do with the slump in GDP. Current government policies to freeze pay and cut pensions (public and private) aim to get things back to abnormal.

Ordinary Brits get their share of the nation's wealth mainly as pay and pensions. Reducing the pay and pensions share means increasing the share that goes to dividends, capital gains, and other forms of wealth that are all for the less than ordinary Briton.

"Something has got to be done!"; "Just get on with it!"; "Carpe diem!". Panic the people into accepting drastic action. Panic MPs into voting for it, panic unions into submitting to it, panic the citizens into lying back and thinking of England.

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Ripped-Off Britons Quiz - without answers

We present the Ripped-Off Britons Quiz.

With forty multiple-choice questions on the rip-offs of the year, we aim to provide half an hour of fun and provoke half a pint of bile. 

Use the quiz at your next party or social gathering, or in a lesson at school. 

In this post the questions are given in a form that is easy for you to print off or display on your computer screen for all to see. We also provide the answers in a separate post - >>>>click here<<<<.

Those that rip us off are confident that we will not hold it against them. Not because we forgive, but because we forget. Their scams make the news for a couple of days, and then fade away. From banks to energy companies to political parties, they all let us down with total predictability and total impunity.

In the words of Adam Smith, the great icon of capitalism,

"The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence."

Our forty questions will help the participants in the quiz remember the frauds and negligences we ripped-off Britons have suffered. With links to our stories, giving the details behind the rip-offs. 

1) The UK Government says it is up to shareholders to control excessive pay in companies. Who was the controlling shareholder in Royal Bank of Scotland who demanded that bonuses must be constrained in the year after the banking crash, but was given the two fingered salute by the RBS board of directors?

a)      Warren Buffet

b)      Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

c)      The UK Government

2) What is the average monthly pension paid by ‘gold plated’ public sector pensions?

a)      More than £2,000 per month

b)      More than £1,000 per month

c)      More than £500 per month

d)      Less than £500 per month

3) Using figures for 2009, what is the official monthly income for a couple with no dependent children at the borderline between ‘poverty’ and ‘absolute poverty’?

a)      £350

b)      £550

c)      £850

4) In 2007 the Financial Services Sector paid just over £12 billion in corporation tax. How much did savers loose by not moving their money when banks quietly dropped interest rates on current accounts?

a)      £100 million

b)      £1 billion

c)      £12 billion

5) When Eric Daniels, the former CEO of Lloyds Banking Group under whose leadership the share price collapsed by over 85%, left his job in March 2011, how much did the Lloyds executive compensation committee demand from him in compensation for his cock-up?

a)      £1 million, to compensate employees who were laid off to reduce expenses.

b)      £10 million, to give some aid to pensioners who had lost most of their savings invested in the bank’s shares.

c)      Nothing. They planned to pay him £4 million.

6) In 1975 an MP’s salary was £5,750. If it had risen in line with RPI inflation, in 2007 it would have been £34,800.  What was an MP’s actual salary in 2007?

a)      £34,800

b)      £40,350

c)      £50,870

d)      £60,675

7) In 1975 an MP’s expense allowance was £3,200. If this had risen in line with RPI inflation, in 2007 it would have been £19,367. What was an MP’s actual allowance in 2007?

a)      £19,367

b)      £30,420

c)      £55,890

d)      £90,505

8) The Financial Services sector demands weak regulation – i.e. a free hand to do the naughty things they do – because they contribute so much in tax. What percentage of the UK’s total tax revenue is paid in corporation tax by financial services companies?

a)      50%

b)      25%

c)      5%

d)      2%

9) Consumer protection law specifies that Advertisers do not have to make sure they aren’t misleading every single consumer when they make promises in adverts and write contracts. It is not unreasonable if a few people get the wrong end of the stick, as a certain artistic licence and room for metaphor and comic exaggeration make for more amusing adverts. What percentage of the population can advertisers get away with misleading under this law?

a)      5%

b)      10%

c)      25%

d)      50%

10) What percentage of adults in the UK has numeracy skills of an eleven year old or lower?

a)      16%

b)      26%

c)      36%

d)      46%

11) What percentage of consumers say they actually read the ‘terms and conditions’ when they sign contracts to buy goods and services?

a)      89%

b)      67%

c)      45%

d)      23%

12) In December 2011 the FSA fined HSBC £10.5 million for selling investment products that take 5 year to mature to people who didn’t have 5 years to live. According to the FSA, “unsuitable sales had been made to 87% of customers involving these types of investments”. How big was the fine compared to HSBC’s ill gotten gains?

a)      Ten times as much

b)      Five times as much

c)      Equal to the amount pinched

d)      Less than half the misappropriated money

13) Accountancy companies do a great deal of tax planning for their wealthy clients – i.e. tax avoidance (dodging, in common parlance). In evidence to the US Senate a senior tax professional stated how big the fines were in relation to the fees ‘earned’ from the dodges by the accountants.  Was this

e)      Ten times as much

f)        Five times as much

g)      Equal to the ill-gotten fees

h)      Less than 50% of the fees paid for dodgy services

i)        Less than 15% of the money raked in by the accountants

14) The Office of Fair Trading won a succession of courtroom battles against the banks for their extortionate unauthorised overdraft charges of upto 800,000%. The OFT lost the final battle in the Supreme Court.  Was this because the Supreme Court judges decided

a)      The charges were actually fair

b)      The Office of Fair Trading was not allowed to look into whether the banks were trading fairly

15) Each year banks advertise their latest Cash ISA offers at attractive rates which typically drop to 0.1% at the end of the first year. The Office of Fair Trading “did not think it appropriate to require Cash ISA providers to transfer consumers to identical accounts with higher interest rates automatically." If you invested your full ISA allowance each year from 1999, and were paid the average savings account interest rate throughout that period you would have earned £11,739 interest. What percentage of this interest would you have lost if the bank dropped the rate to 0.1% at the end of the first year for each investment?

a)      14%

b)      34%

c)      64%

d)      84%

16) A prudent young person decides to put £1,000 into a fund and keep it there for 40 years, so they can spend it when they retire. If they got an annual 6% return (the typical assumption made by accountants) after 40 years they would have about £10,300. What would their fund actually be worth if they were paying an annual management charge of 2% over those 40 years?

a)      £9,200

b)      £7,300

c)      £4,600

17) On retirement, you can buy a future proofed ‘index linked’ pension that rises with time or a ‘level’ pension that pays a constant amount for the rest of your life. The ‘index linked’ pension starts at a lower amount, but grows at 3% each year you are alive. How long would it take for the total money paid to you by the ‘indexed’ pension to catch up with the amount paid to you by the ‘level’ pension?

a)      9 years

b)      19 years

c)      29 years

18) Parliament is supposed to represent all of us, including the 24% who consider themselves working class.  What percentage of MPs come from a manual working class background?

a)      24%

b)      16%

c)      8%

19) What is the lowest percentage of votes cast for a winning MP?

a)      59%

b)      49%

c)      39%

d)      29%

20) For this MP (i.e. the one who got the lowest percentage of votes cast) what percentage of the total electorate in his constituency that voted for him?

e)      59%

f)        49%

g)      39%

h)      29%

i)        19%

21) MPs tow the party line for many reasons: one is the hope of a top up to their income that comes with one of the political posts in the gift of the PM – in May 2011 there were 119 people in the current parliament holding posts like these.  One of the least of these posts is the “junior whip”. How much does the holder of this junior post get in addition to his normal pay and perks?

a)      £5,000

b)      £10,000

c)      £20,000

d)      £26,624

22) Out of 650 MPs in the UK parliament, how many voted against their party 5 or more times in 100 votes?

a)      325

b)      225

c)      125

d)      32

23) How much would £100 invested in the UK stock market in 1899 be worth 110 years later if you did not reinvest the dividends?

a)      £71

b)      £175

c)      £1,390

d)      £9,129

24) How much would £100 invested in the UK stock market in 1899 be worth 110 years later if you did reinvest the dividends?

a)      £175

b)      £1,390

c)      £1,152,000

25) If you invested in Guaranteed Equity Bonds, would the provider be taking from you?

a)      The mickey

b)      The dividends

c)      The mickey and the dividends

26) The government is changing the pensions inflation link from being with the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). If RPI and CPI do the same thing in the next 22 years as they did in the last 22 years, what difference will this make to your pension in 2034, 22 years from now?

a)      16% more

b)      6% more

c)      6% less

d)      16% less

27) Banks claim that they “pay for performance” to ensure they keep the best of the best staff who deliver outstanding performance. Lloyds TSB’s 2010 annual report states that bonus share options granted to executives in 2001 would be withdrawn if the total shareholder return was ranked below a certain position in the FTSE100 index.  How low could Lloyds get before this bonus would be lost?

a)      Fifth out of a hundred

b)      tenth out of a hundred

c)      twentieth out of a hundred

d)      fiftieth out of a hundred

28) According to the Economist newspaper, Switzerland is the leading offshore financial centre where foreigners squirrel away their cash on the quiet. Which is the second biggest hidey-hole for foreigners to privately stash their money out of reach of their own country’s taxmen?

a)      Cayman Islands

b)      Luxembourg

c)      Bermuda

d)      Britain

29) There is a great deal of talk about benefits fraud. But many people due benefits fail to claim them. If all benefits claimants took no more and no less than every penny they are entitled to, by how much would the benefits bill change?

a)      Save the taxpayer £1 billion per year

b)      Save the taxpayer £100 million per year

c)      Increase the cost to the taxpayer by £12 billion per year

30) MPs claiming to be overworked and underpaid are in the almost unique position of public servants who are allowed to hold as many other jobs as they like. In November this year Francis Maude suggested that public sector workers should hold a token 15 minute strike instead of the whole day in their protest against pension cuts. How much did Francis Maude get paid for 15 minutes work in one of his ‘other jobs’

a)      £5

b)      £50

c)      £150

31) The Confederation of British Industry is forthright in its defence of big businesses such as banks, in spite of complaints from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that banks are unhelpful and overcharge them. SMEs are allocated 10% of the seats on the CBI’s Chairmen’s Committee which sets CBI policy. What percentage of all private sector employees are employed by small and medium enterprises?

a)      10.8%

b)      24.6%

c)      42.3%

d)      59.8%

32) According to the High Pay Commission, corporate bosses have seen their pay quadruple over the last 10 years, an increase of 300%. In that same period, by what percentage have average earnings increased?

a)      1%

b)      10%

c)      100%

33) Fund managers are paid pots of money. They claim this is because they are so excellent at managing funds. Index tracking funds are effectively the average of the market – what a monkey picking stocks at random is likely to pick. According to Standard & Poor, what percentage of funds actively managed by the clever fund managers beat the index for small cap stocks in a 5 year cycle?

a)      95% beat the monkeys

b)      75% beat the monkeys

c)      45% beat the monkeys

d)      15% beat the monkeys

34) In 2007, just before the banking crisis, UK public sector net debt was just under 40% of GDP. In 2008 the government borrowed money to bail out the banks. What percentage of GDP was the public sector net debt by the end of 2008?

a)      60%

b)      80%

c)      100%

d)      150%

35) Does the retail price of energy (what you pay for your gas and electricity) follow the wholesale price of energy on international markets?

a)      Yes

b)      No

36) Who said “if it’s possible to make money out of gullible or unsuspecting customers, particularly institutional customers, [the banks think] that is perfectly acceptable”

a)     A rabid left wing politician

b)      A bleeding heart liberal

c)      The governor of the Bank of England

37) Who said ''The biggest disappointment of my time at *****  has been the failure of firms, in particular their senior management, to learn the lessons of past mis-selling. Sadly the recent history of the British retail financial services industry is proof of the adage that those who fail to understand the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.''

d)     A rabid left wing politician

e)      A bleeding heart liberal

f)        The chairman of the FSA

38) Bankers claim to make their profits by being unfeasibly clever. One of their schemes is paying depositors miserable interest rates on their savings and charging borrowers extortionate rates on this same money. In 2006, how much did the banks make from this thuggish tactic?

a)     £41 million

b)     £410 million

c)     £4,100 million

39) According to the government’s own figures, are public sector pensions ballooning out of control over the next decades?

a)     Yes

b)     No

40) There is a continuous bleating from certain quarters that the rich are over-taxed, and that if they were taxed less then even the poorer would be richer. How have taxes on the rich changed in the period since 1979?

a)      Increased by 40%

b)      Stayed about the same

c)      Decreased by 40%

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Ripped-Off Britons Quiz - WITH ANSWERS!

This post gives the answers to the Ripped-Off Britons Quiz. If you want to see the quiz without answers then click  >>>HERE<<<

1) The UK Government says it is up to shareholders to control excessive pay in companies. Who was the controlling shareholder in Royal Bank of Scotland who demanded that bonuses must be constrained in the year after the banking crash, but was ignored?

a)      George Soros

b)      Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

c)      The UK Government                 <<<CORRECT<<<

2) What is the average monthly pension paid by ‘gold plated’ public sector pensions?

a)      More than £2,000 per month

b)      More than £1,000 per month

c)      More than £500 per month

d)      Less than £500 per month            <<<CORRECT<<<

3) Using figures for 2009, what is the official monthly income for a couple with no dependent children at the borderline between ‘poverty’ and ‘absolute poverty’?

a)      £350

b)      £550

c)      £850                                        <<<CORRECT<<<

4) In 2007 the Financial Services Sector paid just over £12 billion in corporation tax. How much did savers loose by not moving their money when banks quietly dropped interest rates on current accounts?

a)      £100 million

b)      £1 billion

c)      £12 billion                           <<<CORRECT<<<

5) When Eric Daniels, the former CEO of Lloyds Banking Group under whose leadership the share price collapsed by over 85%, left his job in March 2011, how much did the Lloyds executive compensation committee demand from him in compensation for his cock-up?

a)      £1 million, to compensate employees who were laid off to reduce expenses.

b)      £10 million, to give some aid to pensioners who had lost most of their savings invested in the bank’s shares.

c)      Nothing. They planned to pay him £4 million.             <<<CORRECT<<<

6) In 1975 an MP’s salary was £5,750. If it had risen in line with RPI inflation, in 2007 it would have been £34,800.  What was an MP’s actual salary in 2007?

a)      £34,800

b)      £40,350

c)      £50,870

d)      £60,675                      <<<CORRECT<<<

7) In 1975 an MP’s expense allowance was £3,200. If this had risen in line with RPI inflation, in 2007 it would have been £19,367. What was an MP’s actual allowance in 2007?

a)      £19,367

b)      £30,420

c)      £55,890

d)      £90,505                      <<<CORRECT<<<

8) The Financial Services sector demands weak regulation – i.e. a free hand to do the naughty things they do – because they contribute so much in tax. What percentage of the UK’s total tax revenue is paid in corporation tax by financial services companies?

a)      50%

b)      25%

c)      5%

d)      2%                               <<<CORRECT<<<

9) Consumer protection law specifies that Advertisers do not have to make sure they aren’t misleading every single consumer when they make promises in adverts and write contracts. It is not unreasonable if a few people get the wrong end of the stick, as a certain artistic licence and room for metaphor and comic exaggeration make for more amusing adverts. What percentage of the population can advertisers get away with misleading under this law?

a)      5%

b)      10%

c)      25%

d)      50%                             <<<CORRECT<<<

10) What percentage of adults in the UK has numeracy skills of an eleven year old or lower?

a)      16%

b)      26%

c)      36%

d)      46%                             <<<CORRECT<<<

11) What percentage of consumers say they actually read the ‘terms and conditions’ when they sign contracts to buy goods and services?

a)      89%

b)      67%

c)      45%

d)      23%                             <<<CORRECT<<<

12) In December 2011 the FSA fined HSBC £10.5 million for selling investment products that take 5 year to mature to people who didn’t have 5 years to live. According to the FSA, “unsuitable sales had been made to 87% of customers involving these types of investments”. How big was the fine compared to HSBC’s ill gotten gains?

a)      Ten times as much

b)      Five times as much

c)      Equal to the amount pinched

d)      Less than half the misappropriated money             <<<CORRECT<<<

13) Accountancy companies do a great deal of tax planning for their wealthy clients – i.e. tax avoidance (dodging, in common parlance). In evidence to the US Senate a senior tax professional stated how big the fines were in relation to the fees ‘earned’ from the dodges by the accountants.  Was this

e)      Ten times as much

f)        Five times as much

g)      Equal to the ill-gotten fees

h)      Less than 50% of the fees paid for dodgy services

i)        Less than 15% of the money raked in by the accountants  <<<CORRECT<<<

14) The Office of Fair Trading won a succession of courtroom battles against the banks for their extortionate unauthorised overdraft charges of upto 800,000%. The OFT lost the final battle in the Supreme Court.  Was this because the Supreme Court judges decided

a)      The charges were actually fair

b)      The Office of Fair Trading was not allowed to look into whether the banks were trading fairly            <<<CORRECT<<<

15) Each year banks advertise their latest Cash ISA offers at attractive rates which typically drop to 0.1% at the end of the first year. The Office of Fair Trading “did not think it appropriate to require Cash ISA providers to transfer consumers to identical accounts with higher interest rates automatically." If you invested your full ISA allowance each year from 1999, and were paid the average savings account interest rate throughout that period you would have earned £11,739 interest. What percentage of this interest would you have lost if the bank dropped the rate to 0.1% at the end of the first year for each investment?

a)      14%

b)      34%

c)      64%

d)      84%                 <<<CORRECT<<<

16) A prudent young person decides to put £1,000 into a fund and keep it there for 40 years, so they can spend it when they retire. If they got an annual 6% return (the typical assumption made by accountants) after 40 years they would have about £10,300. What would their fund actually be worth if they were paying an annual management charge of 2% over those 40 years?

a)      £9,200

b)      £7,300

c)      £4,600             <<<CORRECT<<<

17) On retirement, you can buy a future proofed ‘index linked’ pension that rises with time or a ‘level’ pension that pays a constant amount for the rest of your life. The ‘index linked’ pension starts at a lower amount, but grows at 3% each year you are alive. How long would it take for the total money paid to you by the ‘indexed’ pension to catch up with the amount paid to you by the ‘level’ pension?

a)      9 years

b)      19 years

c)      29 years            <<<CORRECT<<<

18) Parliament is supposed to represent all of us, including the 24% who consider themselves working class.  What percentage of MPs come from a manual working class background?

a)      24%

b)      16%

c)      8%            <<<CORRECT<<<

19) What is the lowest percentage of votes cast for a winning MP?

a)      59%

b)      49%

c)      39%

d)      29%            <<<CORRECT<<<

20) For this MP (i.e. the one who got the lowest percentage of votes cast) what percentage of the total electorate in his constituency that voted for him?

e)      59%

f)        49%

g)      39%

h)      29%

i)        19%            <<<CORRECT<<<

21) MPs tow the party line for many reasons: one is the hope of a top up to their income that comes with one of the political posts in the gift of the PM – in May 2011 there were 119 people in the current parliament holding posts like these.  One of the least of these posts is the “junior whip”. How much does the holder of this junior post get in addition to his normal pay and perks?

a)      £5,000

b)      £10,000

c)      £20,000

d)      £26,624            <<<CORRECT<<<

22) Out of 650 MPs in the UK parliament, how many showed the independence to vote against their party 5 or more times in 100 votes in the current parliament up to the end of 2011?

a)      325

b)      225

c)      125

d)      32            <<<CORRECT<<<

23) How much would £100 invested in the UK stock market in 1899 be worth 110 years later if you did not reinvest the dividends?

a)      £71

b)      £175

c)      £1,390

d)      £ 9,129             <<<CORRECT<<<

24) How much would £100 invested in the UK stock market in 1899 be worth 110 years later if you did reinvest the dividends?

a)      £175

b)      £1,390

c)      £1,152,000            <<<CORRECT<<<

25) If you invested in Guaranteed Equity Bonds, would the provider be taking from you?

a)      The mickey

b)      The dividends

c)      The mickey and the dividends            <<<CORRECT<<<

26) The government is changing the pensions inflation link from being with the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). If RPI and CPI do the same thing in the next 22 years as they did in the last 22 years, what difference will this make to your pension in 2034, 22 years from now?

a)      16% more

b)      6% more

c)      6% less

d)      16% less            <<<CORRECT<<<

27) Banks claim that they “pay for performance” to ensure they keep the best of the best staff who deliver outstanding performance. Lloyds TSB’s 2010 annual report states that bonus share options granted to executives in 2001 would be withdrawn if the total shareholder return was ranked below a certain position in the FTSE100 index.  How low could Lloyds get before this bonus would be lost?

a)      Fifth out of a hundred

b)      tenth out of a hundred

c)      twentieth out of a hundred

d)      fiftieth out of a hundred            <<<CORRECT<<<

28) According to the Economist newspaper, Switzerland is the leading offshore financial centre where foreigners squirrel away their cash on the quiet. Which is the second biggest hidey-hole for foreigners to privately stash their money out of reach of their own country’s taxmen?

a)      Cayman Islands

b)      Luxembourg

c)      Bermuda

d)      Britain              <<<CORRECT<<<

29)  There is a great deal of talk about benefits fraud. But many people due benefits fail to claim them. If all benefits claimants took no more and no less than every penny they are entitled to, by how much would the benefits bill change?

a)      Save the taxpayer £1 billion per year

b)      Save the taxpayer £100 million per year

c)      Increase the cost to the taxpayer by £12 billion per year    <<<CORRECT<<<

30) MPs claiming to be overworked and underpaid are in the almost unique position of public servants who are allowed to hold as many other jobs as they like. In November this year Francis Maude suggested that public sector workers should hold a token 15 minute strike instead of the whole day in their protest against pension cuts. How much did Francis Maude get paid for 15 minutes work in one of his ‘other jobs’

a)      £5

b)      £50

c)      £150(about a day’s pay for an average public sector worker)<<CORRECT<<<

31) The Confederation of British Industry is forthright in its defence of big businesses such as banks, in spite of complaints from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that banks are unhelpful and overcharge them. SMEs are allocated 10% of the seats on the CBI’s Chairmen’s Committee which sets CBI policy. What percentage of all private sector employees are employed by small and medium enterprises?

a)      10.8%

b)      24.6%

c)      42.3%

d)      59.8%              <<<CORRECT<<<

32) According to the High Pay Commission, corporate bosses have seen their pay quadruple over the last 10 years, an increase of 300%. In that same period, by what percentage have average earnings increased?

a)      1%

b)      10%                 <<<CORRECT<<<

c)      100%

33) Fund managers are paid pots of money. They claim this is because they are so excellent at managing funds. Index tracking funds are effectively the average of the market – what a monkey picking stocks at random is likely to pick. According to Standard & Poor, what percentage of funds actively managed by the clever fund managers beat the index for small cap stocks in a 5 year cycle?

a)      95% beat the monkeys

b)      75% beat the monkeys

c)      45% beat the monkeys

d)      15% beat the monkeys            <<<CORRECT<<<

34) In 2007, just before the banking crisis, UK public sector net debt was just under 40% of GDP. In 2008 the government borrowed money to bail out the banks. What percentage of GDP was the public sector net debt by the end of 2008?

a)      60%

b)      80%

c)      100%

d)      150%               <<<CORRECT<<<

35) Does the retail price of energy (what you pay for your gas and electricity) follow the wholesale price of energy on international markets?

a)      Yes

b)      No                   <<<CORRECT<<<

36) Who said “if it’s possible to make money out of gullible or unsuspecting customers, particularly institutional customers, [the banks think] that is perfectly acceptable”

a)     A rabid left wing politician

b)      A bleeding heart liberal

c)      The governor of the Bank of England          <<<CORRECT<<<

37) Who said ''The biggest disappointment of my time at *****  has been the failure of firms, in particular their senior management, to learn the lessons of past mis-selling. Sadly the recent history of the British retail financial services industry is proof of the adage that those who fail to understand the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.''

d)     A rabid left wing politician

e)      A bleeding heart liberal

f)        The chairman of the FSA          <<<CORRECT<<<

38) Bankers claim to make their profits by being unfeasibly clever. One of their schemes is paying depositors miserable interest rates on their savings and charging borrowers extortionate rates on this same money. In 2006, how much did the banks make from this thuggish tactic?

a)     £41 million

b)     £410 million

c)     £4,100 million            <<<CORRECT<<<

39) According to the government’s own figures, are public sector pensions ballooning out of control over the next decades?

a)     Yes

b)     No                <<<CORRECT<<<

40) There is a continuous bleating from certain quarters that the rich are over-taxed, and that if they were taxed less then even the poorer would be richer. How have taxes on the rich changed in the period since 1979?

a)      Increased by 40%

b)      Stayed about the same

c)      Decreased by 40%                 <<<CORRECT<<<

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