Politicians Must Choose Their Friends Better
P.J. O’Rourke, who is no lover of politicians, once said.
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
It is a test that should not just be applied to politicians, but to their friends and donors as well.
Today in the Times we have two stories about people wanting to influence politics.
The first is about the troubles of the Labour Party and their relationship with the Co-operative movement. It contains this classic quote from, a Tory MP; Brooks Newmark.
The toxic element of a great ethical institution like the Co-operative is the way the Labour Party has effectively infiltrated it and infected it because of the benefits they have been receiving from it. The only way the Labour Party could get a loan if it didn’t have the Co-operative Bank is from Wonga.
But then Ed Milliband got his own back on the Tories by complaining about some of their donors. But at least these donors, were using their own money, rather than that of members of the Co-operative movement.
Remember too, that the Liberal Democrats had a dalliance with Michael Brown.
And then there’s the story of Hotchpotch the cat who was left £10,000 by Malcolm Richards who was a large financial supporter of Ukip.
I can smell the fruitcakes.
Perhaps we need say a ten percent tax levied on every political donation. The money could be used for philanthropic purposes, like looking after distressed catfolk.
Germany Thinks About Charging Foreign Drivers To Use The Roads
I saw this story in the Sunday Times, but it is also discussed in detail here, in The Local, which is German news in English. Quite a few countries now use vignettes to enforce tools.
I feel we should do the same, as being a non-driver, why should I subsidise foreigners, who drive on the roads of the UK.
I suppose the advantage of driving in Germany, is that you don’t have to put up with their crowded and often late trains.
Hollande Shows How To Ru(i)n Football
The top French football clubs, are showing what they think of President Hollande’s high earner tax, by going on strike, as is reported here on the BBC. Here’s the first paragraph.
French President Francois Hollande has rebuffed protests against a 75% tax on high earners, prompting football clubs to press on with a planned “strike”.
Mr Hollande stood firm by his plan to levy the tax on incomes above 1m euros (£850,000; $1.36m) at a meeting with club presidents.
Ed Milliband admitted in this interview to being a lapsed Leeds United supporter and now follows Doncaster, so expect him to raise taxes like Hollande if he gets elected, as it won’t effect any of his teams. It might even raise Doncaster into the Premier League!
The Long Arm Of The American Tax System
This story from the BBC entitled Goodbye, US Passport, caught my eye, as it was top of the BBC’s most read list this morning. It’s about US citizens living abroad, giving up their citizenship.
The number of Americans giving up their citizenship has rocketed this year – partly, it’s thought, because of a new tax law that is frustrating many expats.
Some examples are given, where Americans living in countries like Germany and Scandinavia are having to spend several thousand dollars with professional advisors just to fill in the complicated tax form required. And then they are not actually paying any tax!
Would you give up your British citizenship, if say you wanted to live in Italy and the British government wanted you to fill in a complicated tax form, so you could be taxed on things that are nothing to do with the UK at all?
Years ago, I was in Denver at a conference and about seven of us of different nationalities, all sat down and discussed the tax we paid. It was strange some of the taxes that in those days Americans paid. One guy who lived in Virginia, always ran an old car, as he had to pay a yearly property tax on his vehicle to the state.
In the end we came to the conclusion, that if you added up the cost of national and local taxes, property taxes and the cost of healthcare, schooling and universities, there wasn’t great differences between anywhere in the developed world.
I suspect it’s not much different now, if you take one of your average 2.4 families, where the parents do normal jobs.
Why Should I Subsidise Fuel For Drivers In Remote Areas?
The government has announced that it might subsidise fuel for drivers in remote areas, as is reported here.
If people want to live in areas where costs are high, but perhaps they like the area, they should pay for the consequences of their actions.
Balls Loses The Next Election For Labour
It is reported today, that Ed Balls has said he will cut the winter fuel payment to wealthy pensioners.
it wouldn’t bother me, as any extra benefits I get from the government, I make sure goes into my charity pot, where I give money to charities that need it for good causes.
Many of those losing their benefit will be Labour voters and this sends a signal, that perhaps some of their other benefits like excellent pensions from public sector jobs might not be safe. So they might think about not voting and some might abstain or worse, as far is Labour is concerned.
I have this view, that politicians of all persuasions and colours are not to be trusted with my money, as they’ll all find vanity projects to waste it on. I won’t name any projects, as I quite like some of them from all sides of the political spectrum, but obviously not all.
Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy
You could argue for years about Margaret Thatcher.
But it wasn’t what she did or didn’t do, that she leaves behind. In the course of history, there are only a few politicians, philosophers and sad to say despots and dictators, who have changed the world.
Margaret Thatcher showed that no rule or thought in traditional thinking is sacrosanct, when it comes to shaping the world. Since then we’ve seen lots of radical ideas work, that would have never even been thought of, had not Margaret Thatcher and a few others shown that you could do something different.
Would Tony Blair have been able to reform a Labour Party, stuck in the 1920s, without Margaret Thatcher showing what radical thinking could do? Or Ken Livingstone, reinvent himself, to make a comeback as the London Mayor. I suspect, if Margaret Thatcher hadn’t been a radical Prime Minister, we’d have had a succession of useless worthies in the last few years.
I’ll only give one example of where Margaret Thatcher ditched conventional thinking.
In 1982, conventional thinking, said that to attempt to retake the Falkland Islands after the Argentine invasion was utter madness, and many on all sides of the political spectrum said that to give the islands away was the best solution. How many people today, think that the decision to retake the islands was wrong? Not many I suspect! I’ve even met an Argentinian, who felt that we did his country a favour, by effectively getting rid of the evil dictatorship of General Galtieri.
Without Margaret Thatcher my life today would be very different.
After I had sold my first successful software; Pert7 to ADP, I received an offer to go to the United States to write a PERT system for a large US computer corporation.
How they got my number or the fact I’d sold out, I don’t know?
Soon after, I was approached to write a PERT system, which later became Artemis, so I turned the Americans down.
I suspect that if that hadn’t happened, I’d have eventually moved across the Atlantic, as it was just impossible to provide for a growing family with the tax rates, then in force.
i didn’t move, as neither C or myself could have ever lived abroad permanently.
But Margaret Thatcher’s Tax and other reforms enabled me to stay in the country of my birth. If tax rates were still as the eighty percent plus they were in the nineteen seventies, I doubt many of the brightest in the UK, would not have gone to where pastures were greener.
One aside here is a story from my accountant of the 1980s. A confirmed Socialist, he was not a supporter of Margaret Thatcher, but felt the tax reforms of the time were very good for the country. Although tax rates were lowered, her Chancellors were good at closing the myriad loopholes that had been developed by clever members of his profession. There may be a lesson here for today’s politicians, who need to both maximise the tax take and keep voters happy.
I’ve Found A Use For Ed Balls
I’ve got rather fed-up with the one-sided reporting on the tax changes, that come into force today. typical is this report on the BBC. The fact that the personal allowance threshold has been raised, is very much buried in the story.
So when it was announced that Ed Balls was going to be on BBC Radio 5 Live at 8:05, I decided that this was an ideal time to walk down the road and get my paper.
The proof of the value of these tax changes will not be in headlines designed to attract readers and votes, but in the amount of tax collected. Having heard Danny Alexander this morning, I think everybody is in for a surprise.
Andrew Motion Says Make Second Homes Very Expensive
It is reported that former Poet Laureate; Andrew Motion has said that second homes must be made very expensive to stop sucking the life out of villages. The full story is here in the Guardian.
I have owned and lived in two houses a couple of times in my life. At one time we were living in Cromwell Tower during the week and also had the house at Debach in Suffolk for the weekend. And then we had Les Ondes in Antibes.
I think in truth,neither arrangements worked out for C and myself, as we were incessant travellers. And fixed bases are not compatible if you want to go long distances abroad for a couple of months a year.
Before we moved to Newmarket, we were not using the house in France, but were flying everywhere in my Cessna 340A. If we hadn’t bought Les Ondes, we might have visited some of the places, I now regret we didn’t.
So my argument against second homes, is that they may look good on paper, but spending the money you save by having only one home, on say travel or something you enjoy is probably better.
Since C died, I’ve been to a few places, where she never went, that to have flown to in a light aircraft would have been fun. For a start on my cruise, there was Corunna.
There is also two other arguments against second homes.
By having a second home, you are effectively denying someone else or another family, a home. That is morally indefensible in times like these, where we don’t have enough homes.
There is also the climate change argument, in that loading a 4×4 up with half your worldly goods each weekend, isn’t a way of cutting CO2 emissions. All it does is create profits for oil companies.
I could throw in a few other arguments too, like the fact that I believe spontaneity and impulse are good for you and do you want to be involved in the various NIMBY arguments that plague the countryside.
Perhaps though, most people don’t think logically about life as I do, and they have so much money, they can’t spend it creatively.
So is Motion’s idea to make second homes more expensive is the only thing, that might curb second home ownership and put more houses on the market for those, who don’t have a nice place to live? But no government would bring in the legislation, as it would be a catastrophic vote loser. Just look at the protest, when Ryanair chopped all those routes to France a few years ago, as it cut the cheap route to second homes.
Similar arguments can also be applied to those individuals from abroad, who buy up desirable properties in the UK and leave it empty.
We need more housing and as we haven’t got the space to built much more, we must maximise our use of what we already have.
The ISA Rip-Off
It’s the cash ISA time of the year and I’ve just been looking at the rates. As to what an ISA is, it’s probably best summed up by this page in Money Saving Expert. Here’s the first paragraph.
A cash ISA is just a tax-free savings account. You don’t need to lock the cash away, many are easy-access. Each tax year EVERY person over 16 in the UK can put a new £5,640 in these accounts that pay up to 2.8%. And once in there, the money stays tax-free, year after year.
The rates are derisory and are very poor compared to what I get from Zopa.
Admittedly, there are tax advantages, but why can’t I get those with a peer-to-peer lender if I agree to lock my money away for several years?
The Anonymous Widower 