Sir Winston Churchill to be the next face on the five pound note

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, shows the design to Cameron...SOURCE INDEPENDENT: Sir Winston Churchill to replace Elizabeth Fry on the five pound noteGUARDIAN: Budget 2013: George Osborne concedes lack of progress in cutting deficitChancellor, who halved growth forecast to 0.6%, refuses to agree with OBR that his plan to cut borrowing has 'stalled'OUR RELATED STORIES:The IMF calls for UK to end austerity strategyOutsourcing public services always saves money? False. Remember?!History shows left/right policies grow the...

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Liebrary: Is Corporation Tax being cut to make us more competitive? Or is there another reason?

Adam Smith, the patron saint of capitalism, theorised that by everyone behaving selfishly the 'invisible hand' of all the selfishness will distribute the wealth of the nation as if "the earth had been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants". Smith wrote:  "The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of...

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“Big 4” accountancy firms use knowledge gained from staff seconded to Treasury to help clients avoid taxes

"Scam": PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPGM... Fee tries to explain, but KJ and Chris get there in the end...SOURCE: GUARDIAN “Big 4” accountancy firms use knowledge gained from staff seconded to Treasury to help clients avoid taxesIn one example, KPMG advised on the development of "patent box" rules, and then issued marketing brochures titled "Patent box: what's in it for you." Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers have provided the government with expert accountants – free of charge - to help draw...

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 25th April)

Famous academic paper used to make the case for austerity cuts contains major errorsAnother surprise is that the mistakes, by two eminent Harvard professors, were spotted by a student. He'd spotted a basic error in the spreadsheet. The Harvard professors had accidentally only included 15 of the 20 countries under analysis in their key calculation (of average GDP growth in countries with high public debt). BBC NEWS(“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” – JM Keynes c.1940. “I change the facts” – George Osborne c.2013.)OFT accuses...

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Every minister should spend a year living the life of the people their policies affect the most

Osborne and Cameron see the light?...SOURCE BBC NEWS: Prime Minister defends plans to get trainee nurses to first work as healthcare assistants, washing and feeding patients. The Royal College of Nursing called the idea "stupid".GUARDIAN: Iain Duncan Smith calls petition for him to live on £53 a week a stuntWork and pensions secretary insists he has twice lived on breadline after online petition secures nearly 300,000 signaturesOUR RELATED STORIES:What happened to all the Compassion?Who should pay for the defence of the nation? The wealthiest,...

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Liebrary: Are wages and employment rights being cut to make Britain more competitive? Or is there another reason?

Our leaders tell us we must be more competitive. So we can work ourselves out of the banker induced crisis. They tell us that to earn money to pay off the debts that came from the crisis we must compete with other countries to attract companies to Britain. To do this they tell us we must have a more flexible labour market (i.e. easier for companies to fire us), more competitive wage structure (i.e. pay us lower wages), and we must cut corporation tax for the companies (i.e. reduce companies' contribution to the public purse, paying for the...

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Big Six energy firms accused of being a 'cold-blooded profiteering' cartel, hiking prices and dodging tax

Chris meets an energy fat cat...SOURCE GUARDIAN Big six energy firms accused of 'cold-blooded profiteering'Official figures showed the big six energy firms had more than doubled their retail (i.e. selling to households and businesses) profit margins over the last 18 months and were now earning an average of £95 profit per household on dual-fuel bills. Ofgem also said average margins in generation (i.e. extracting the oil and gas) across the big six increased from 18.4% in 2010 to 24.4% in 2011. Critics accuse energy firms of acting as...

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 18th April)

Welfare cuts to hit the north and regions up to five times as hard as the Conservative heartland southern countiesBlackpool, the hardest-hit town, will see an average loss of £914 a year for every working age adult, or 4.65% of household incomes. It is only 0.86% in Surrey. This will also make a Conservative majority at the next election more unlikely, as those are the areas where the Tories must win more seats. FINANCIAL TIMESRoyal Bank of Scotland should stay in public ownership for now, says pollA YouGov poll reveals only 9% of voters think...

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Welfare cuts will hit the north as much as five times as hard as the Conservative heartland southern counties

Cameron ponders the implications with IDS, Osborne and his party...SOURCE FINANCIAL TIMES: Cuts to welfare payments will hit the local economies of northern towns and cities as much as five times as hard as the Conservative heartland southern counties. The FT's research underlines the potential risks to economic regeneration and private sector business prospects in poorer areas where the local population faces the loss of a large slice of purchasing power. Small independent shops already faced tough competition from supermarkets and out of town...

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Britain tops Europe's fuel poverty league table

Chris, KJ and Fee v the "Strivers v Skivers" brigade...SOURCE INDEPENDENT: Britain tops the fuel poverty league tableMost other European countries actually face higher energy prices than those of the UK (mostly due to taxes). But better-quality home insulation means our European neighbours pay less to heat their homes. One in five UK households are now in fuel poverty. The Government has cut fuel-poverty funding for families by 27% since coming to power. Mythbusters: Strivers versus skivers NEW ECONOMICS FOUNDATIONOUR RELATED STORIES:Have...

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New pension scandal: employers add "consultancy" fees to the new automatic workplace pension schemes that can reduce your pension by 50%

From our guest author, the pensions expert Dr.Ros Altman: The FSA is allowing employers to pay huge fees to unauthorised 'advisors' with money taken from employee pension funds. All for advice that doesn't have to benefit the employees, and for fees that can reduce their pensions by half.Workers' pension funds being raided to pay fees for employer advice: As millions of workers are being automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme, it has emerged that many employers can arrange for huge fees to be taken out of their employees' pension...

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 11th April)

Barclays’ tax avoidance division generated £1bn annuallyBarclays ran a Structured Capital Markets department to enable its clients to avoid tax. Embarrassed, Barclays closed down this "industrial-scale tax avoidance" department, but the 100 staff were redeployed rather than sacked. GUARDIAN(“Redeployed after retraining, mind you. Yup, we got the 100 staff to retrain the rest of us!” said our Barclays insider...)Wealthy individuals stash as much as $32tn (£21tn) in overseas havensLeaks expose anonymous companies in tax havens serving the super-rich....

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Where are our conviction politicians now, Mr Cameron?

What can Cameron learn from Margaret Thatcher so the Tories win the next election...OUR RELATED STORIES:Under Margaret Thatcher inequality rose, stabilised under Major, then crept up again under Blair/BrownThatcher era began rise of the richest, without any improvement in growthHistory shows left/right policies grow the economic cake equally. The difference is only in how the cake is dividedOutsourcing public services: a case of privatised profits, socialised los...

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Where are our conviction politicians now, Mr Cameron?

What can Cameron learn from Margaret Thatcher so the Tories win the next election...OUR RELATED STORIES:Under Margaret Thatcher inequality rose, stabilised under Major, then crept up again under Blair/BrownThatcher era began rise of the richest, without any improvement in growthHistory shows left/right policies grow the economic cake equally. The difference is only in how the cake is dividedOutsourcing public services: a case of privatised profits, socialised los...

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Have regulators in other sectors learned the lessons of the bad bankers? OFGEM's piffling "record" fine on energy firm SSE for mis-selling suggests not.

In the first week of April 2013 out came three reports two detailing naughtiness and incompetence in banks, Barclays and HBOS, and one in the energy supplier SSE. All three showed deeply ingrained recklessness in the pursuit of profit. While Britain has stood gobsmacked at the greed of bankers, are we missing the fact that what started in the City has infected other industries and professions?Letting bankers off their leashes by deregulation in the 1980’s, leaving no effective restraint on rip-offs nor on remuneration, sent a strong message to...

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