Letters to the Editor – 05/08 – Planning laws, tourist bonds, best of Twitter August 4, 2013 Planning Laws [Re: How hidden taxes and levies are pushing up UK house prices, Thursday] Alex Prince, in his letter to the editor last Thursday, implies that opposition to building developments arises exclusively from a local desire to retain green spaces. But another key reason for nimbyism is that an adjacent development will often reduce [...]
Why Britain should not view Germany as a role model for economic success August 1, 2013 ACROSS Europe, policymakers are casting envious looks towards Germany. From a French perspective, the country’s persistent low unemployment rate is desirable; British policymakers long to copy its relatively robust growth and export performance; and from across the continent, the balanced budget that Europe’s largest economy projects for 2013 seems like something to strive for. But [...]
National Minimum Wage turns 15 – but it still fails to help those most in need August 1, 2013 YESTERDAY, the National Minimum Wage (NMW) celebrated its fifteenth birthday. It has not been the disaster some feared – largely because the Low Pay Commission set rates conservatively, taking ability to pay into account – but nor has it entirely helped those it was designed to. Today, there is pressure to push the minimum upwards. [...]
Open for business: How universities can boost our long-term recovery August 1, 2013 THERE’S been widespread talk recently that the British economy, finally, is taking off. Addressing what will sustain this recovery over the long-term should be a top priority, and the UK government must avoid a pseudo-recovery fuelled by quantitative easing, or relying on puffing up the public sector again. A serious recovery demands a serious rethink of [...]
Letters to the editor – 02/08 – Startup growth, Best of Twitter August 1, 2013 Startup growth [Re: Britain is falling badly behind in the entrepreneurship stakes, Tuesday] For the past seven years, I have run Enterprise Nation, and for the past two I have managed the national enterprise campaign, StartUp Britain. The StartUp Britain Tracker – which tracks the number of companies started each day and month – shows that, [...]
Help to Buy is worrying but the real problem is inflexible housing policy July 31, 2013 MILTON Friedman once observed that, “with some notable exceptions, businessmen favour free enterprise in general, but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.” With this in mind, if a market intervention is criticised even within the industries that could benefit from it, it is probably safe to conclude that it is a really [...]
Poorly-designed immigration policies are damaging the London economy July 31, 2013 THE PROPOSAL from part of the coalition to make some overseas visitors pay a £3,000 bond to come to Britain is perhaps the most ill-considered development in immigration policy yet. The government says that Britain is open for business, but with visitor bonds, healthcare levies, and adverts urging self-deportation – to mention but three examples [...]
Shale oil and gas are vital for a recovery in British manufacturing July 31, 2013 ONCE again emotion is threatening to overcome reason in the shale debate. Whether they realise it or not, the professional protestors in Balcombe, who are disrupting exploratory drilling in West Sussex, threaten to destroy jobs and livelihoods across the country. Last year, Britain got over a third of its overall energy from natural gas, another [...]
Letters to the editor – 01/08 – Planning laws, volunteering, Best of Twitter July 31, 2013 Planning laws [Re: How hidden taxes and levies are pushing up UK house prices, Monday] This piece is completely correct. But one problem with recent reforms to planning law is that many Tory MPs support coalition policy in Westminster (which is to make building easier), but then ferociously oppose virtually all plans to build locally [...]
Hamstringing banks with higher capital requirements will not stop the next crisis July 30, 2013 GREAT fallacies periodically grip the British establishment and cause enormous harm to the economy. The last big one was the obsession with joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism at the end of the 1980s. Now we have the regulative fallacy. The great and the good are in its grip. They identified banks and excessive debt [...]