Embracing the long-term unemploy...
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LATEST: Think you’re paying less tax now? The withdrawal of Working and Child Tax Credits leaves low earners paying a 73% marginal tax rate, and medium earners paying even more
...And this government says it cuts taxes for poor working households!
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RIP-OFF NEWS ROUND-UP, OUR PICK OF THE LAST WEEK'S MEDIA
Drug firm Novartis tried to 'scupper' trials of a cheaper version of eye medicine
Has Austerity caused the UK’s first decline in life expectancy in 20 years?
Kellogg's effectively paid no corporation tax in the UK in 2013, +more stories...
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YOU'RE FIRED?! We are already nearly the most easily fired people in the developed world
Only the US and Canada make it easier, says the OECD’s Worker Protection Index
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EYE OPENER: Housing Equity Withdrawal took off in 1979. Since then almost all UK growth has suspiciously equalled the amount we took out. Looks like it’s pensions next
Osborne’s new rules allow you to spend your entire pension pot now. Same mistake, different pot
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DID YOU KNOW? MPs are getting a 10% pay hike in May, to £74k
...and in 2010, 137 MPs put family members on parliament's payroll. Now it's soared to 167
GOOD DEBT
PENSION CRAZY
BANKSTER PAY
MPs' 2nd JOBS
TAX IS THEFT?!
FAILING SCHOOLS
AFFORDABLE NHS
1m WORK IN POVERTY
JAIL THE ACCOUNTANTS
RICKETS IS BACK
UN-NATIONALISED RAIL
LOW WAGE BRITAIN
BANK OF MUM & DAD
UK: A PRISONER OF CUTS
TAXING LIES
WATER CANNON BORIS
UNIVERSAL C.. OCKUP
FULL TIME JOBS? WHERE!
Sunday, 26 February 2012
By Dr.Ros Altmann, Director General of SAGA Anyone recently or soon-to-be retired may be facing a stark reality - Bank of England policy is robbing them of the retirement they saved for. If Government had announced that, in order to bail out the banks and help those who have borrowed too much, it had decided to raid people's pensions, there would be uproar. But, by calling it 'Quantitative Easing', somehow it has got away with stealing older people's futures. QE is causing dreadful damage to pensions, pensioners and annuities...
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Project Merlin, the deal done by the banks in 2011 to avoid harsher government treatment for causing the Credit Crisis, would have more aptly been titled Project Morgana, known to viewers of the BBC's Camelot-inspired television series for her pitiless pouting treachery. The treachery in Project Merlin comes from all sides: the treachery of the banks for keeping their promises while not doing what they promised to do; the treachery of the government for knowingly (or was it incompetently?) offering terms and conditions that were as constraining...
Friday, 17 February 2012
Big industry has an inglorious track record of celebrating missed targets, and rewarding the missers with garlands of cash. In its press release the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) celebrated the efforts of the banks missing the Project Merlin targets, which had been agreed with the government for lending to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The CBI blamed increased regulation for the shortfall. Are they suggesting that if only banks were less regulated it would be so much better?When Evan Davis, presenter of Radio 4's Today Programme...
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
It's that time of year again. Valentine's day is a day for concord, concurrence, and cordiality. This was seen in the statutory exchange of letters between chancellor of the exchequerGeorge Osborne and Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England.The day before Valentine's day, Mervyn had written to George saying: Dear Chancellor..."With external price pressures diminishing, and the underlying weakness in domestically generated inflation likely to persist, the Committee's assessment of the inflation outlook at its February meeting...
Sunday, 12 February 2012
With ministers spinning like duplicitous tops striving to show they are friends of business while simultaneously seeking electoral cheers for being beastly to bonus-takers, it is worth thinking what makes a 'true friend'. And how politicians can gain electoral advantage by actually being true friends of business. After all, a true friend helps you live up to your highest potential, not to indulge your basest instincts. The first thing is to expose the fallacy that if excellence brings rewards, then those who are rewarded must be excellent....
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Gerrymandering, the process of gaining electoral advantage by changing the demographics (the type of voters) in a constituency, is a tactic used by some of the best democracies - the worst resorting to the much simpler ballot-box stuffing technique. There are two obvious ways of manipulating the demographics:The first is to move the boundaries of the constituency to exclude those you don't want and envelope those you do. This "re-districting" is a favorite tactic in the USA, with its meandering congressional districts exemplified by...
Do private equity fund managers get paid loads because they are so good at rescuing failing businesses? Fund managers don’t make their money only by gouging fees from their clients. With a little help from their friends at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, they have had various other cosy little arrangements. One of these is in the form of “carried interest”. HMRC came to an agreement with the British Venture Capital Association in 2003 that cleared the way for 'leveraged buyouts'. As a result of this little understanding, made in the...
