DEBATE: With just 16 days to go until Brexit, is there any point to the Spring Statement? March 13, 2019 With just 16 days to go until Brexit, is there any point to the Spring Statement? Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG, says YES. While Brexit is likely to dominate minds again this week, and continue to bring a fog of uncertainty over the outlook for the UK economy, the Spring Statement is still important. [...]
Economics could teach Theresa May a thing or two about tackling knife crime March 13, 2019 Knife crime continues to dominate the headlines. What can be done about it? Economics does not pretend to provide all the answers. But, perhaps surprising to some, it has a lot of useful insights to offer on crime. Gary Becker was a professor of both economics and sociology at Chicago. One day he was pushed [...]
The left should listen up: Tax reform is a progressive cause March 13, 2019 In 2012, the columnist Mary Dejevsky wrote a piece for the Independent arguing that the centre-left should advocate a flat tax. It was in response to the publication of the Single Income Tax, the final report of the 2020 Tax Commission, convened by the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) and the Institute of Directors, and chaired by former [...]
New proposals for NHS rules risk taking us back to the 1970s March 13, 2019 Reforming the laws around how the NHS operates may not sound like a particularly scintillating topic, particularly when the health service is in the news already for the far more headline-grabbing issue of scrapping A&E waiting targets. Nonetheless, potential legislative changes proposed by NHS England and NHS Improvement last month that have gone largely unreported [...]
Hong Kong Horse Racing Tips: Purton and Fownes hoping to be Super Lucky up in trip March 12, 2019 HARDLY a week goes by without champion jockey Zac Purton making the headlines in Hong Kong. Just a couple of weeks ago the Zac- Man had thousands of supporters screaming with delight after he produced a winning six-timer at Sha Tin, narrowly missing out on seventh after being impeded in the last race. Last Sunday, [...]
Hong Kong Horse Racing Tips: Noble can leave punters delighted at Happy Valley March 12, 2019 CHELTENHAM Festival fever may be sweeping the UK, but you can guarantee racegoers in Hong Kong will be just as excited as Happy Valley opens its doors for today’s racing. The eight-race card takes place on the ‘B’ course, and if past statistics are anything to go by, horses drawn in the inside stalls (1-2-3) [...]
Horse Racing Betting Tips: Min could make Altior’s life hard in bid for third Champion Chase March 12, 2019 FOR THOSE who remember the 2008 Cheltenham Festival, we are all hoping there isn’t going to be a sense of deja vu today. The forecast suggests Cheltenham is going to be battered by high winds and if they are as strong as some are saying, we could be in for a repeat of 11 years’ [...]
Horse Racing Betting Tips: Delta will have to Work hard but can land Russell Another RSA Chase March 12, 2019 EVEN though the RSA Insurance Novices’ Chase (2.10pm) remains a tough test for a novice, it’s not quite the brutal one it used to be. There are only 12 declared runners for this afternoon’s renewal and the monster- sized fields seem to be a thing of the past. In fact, in four of the last [...]
Horse Racing Betting Tips: Sam’s the man but have a saver on City in the opener March 12, 2019 THERE aren’t many races I’ve been looking forward to more at this year’s Cheltenham Festival than this afternoon’s opening Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle (1.30pm). The Irish have a particularly strong recent record in the contest having won six of the last 10 renewals and look to have a serious chance again with Gordon Elliott’s Battleoverdoyen. He [...]
How the arrival of the World Wide Web has changed the mortgage market March 12, 2019 In 1989, the Swiss physics laboratory, CERN, was buzzing with information but it had one big problem: ideas, data and knowledge held by the lab was stored across incompatible computers. A young scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, envisioned creating a unifying structure for sharing information across its computer systems. He wrote a proposal for a linked information [...]