The war on the driver is a war on freedom – and autonomous cars are part of the problem October 14, 2015 Freedom-hating municipal politicians have it in for the motorist: London has its congestion charge, Dublin is closing off ever more of its urban core, and Paris is now experimenting with sporadically banning all private transport. Young people, faced with turbo-charged costs, onerous restrictions and absurd taxation – not to mention rising housing costs – [...]
As the UK unemployment rate hits a seven-year low, should the Bank of England raise interest rates imminently? October 14, 2015 Andrew Sentance, senior economic adviser to PwC and a former member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, says Yes. There is little indication that the UK labour market is softening. Employment has hit a new high on the data series which goes back to the early 1970s. Vacancies are significantly higher than before the financial [...]
China’s new middle class threatens Beijing October 13, 2015 Credit Suisse has published its 2015 Global Wealth Report. It is one of the most comprehensive tools analysing the distribution and changing nature of wealth across the world. Much of the response to the report has focused on the news that the global top one per cent are still rich and appear to be getting [...]
EU referendum: Twelve more reasons Brexit campaigners have momentum October 13, 2015 A couple of months back, I listed 12 reasons why the positive momentum was with Brexit campaigners, and in closing said I would return to give another 12. Well here we are again and I can tell you that I’m even more upbeat. Here’s why the sun is still shining even though the summer is [...]
Olivier Blanchard’s stopped clock: Integration won’t save the struggling Eurozone October 13, 2015 Olivier Blanchard, the recently retired head of economics at the International Monetary Fund, has something of a track record with his predictions. In 2013, he warned George Osborne that he was “playing with fire” with the UK’s recovery from the financial crisis. Austerity had to be relaxed. We now know that we were actually [...]
Betting on inflation: What we learned from our wager on the character of the UK recovery October 13, 2015 In March 2013, we made a bet via Twitter on what would happen to UK inflation as the economy started to recover. Andrew bet that, within 18 months of one-year GDP growth exceeding 2 per cent, inflation would reach 5 per cent or more. He thought that that would happen because economic recovery would [...]
Is the Labour Party right to abandon its support for George Osborne’s fiscal charter? October 13, 2015 Len Shackleton, professor of economics at the University of Buckingham, and economics fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, says Yes Fiscal rules have a poor record: think Gordon Brown’s Golden Rule, or the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact. Of course, the fiscal charter will be different – but don’t they all say that? Passing [...]
Facebook tax row will generate more heat than light – The City View October 12, 2015 Here we go again. Corporation-bashing is back in full force, this time targeted at Facebook following the revelation of its latest UK tax bill. Labour MP David Lammy slammed the company as a “disgrace” yesterday, while Green party leader Natalie Bennett described Facebook – which employs hundreds of people in the UK and is enjoyed [...]
Trade blocs are obsolete: Why the Commonwealth is Britain’s future October 12, 2015 China is vital to our future,” the chancellor told the Tories at their conference last week, but it’s “not growing as strongly as it was.” And, he added, “the Eurozone is still very weak”. So where else do we look to shore up our not-so-brilliant trade performance? The answer could lie in something we [...]
Cherry-picked evidence does not justify costly policies to boost “social mobility” October 12, 2015 When major political parties agree on an issue, worry. For the past decade, “social mobility” – the movement of individuals to different positions in society – has been said to be in decline, with Britain believed to perform poorly compared with other countries. At his conference speech last week, David Cameron summed up the establishment [...]