A radical proposal to rid Britain of its painful tax on jobs November 18, 2012 AS GEORGE Osborne approaches his Autumn Statement, there’s reason to hope he may finally do something about a tax albatross that hangs around the necks of employers and workers alike: national insurance. A consultation on integrating national insurance with income tax was first announced in the 2012 Budget, scheduled for this summer and then postponed [...]
Syria, the Gaza conflict and the rest: Is the Middle East crisis spiralling out of control? November 18, 2012 YES Allan Hogarth The situation in the Middle East is spinning dangerously out of control. The government ought to be playing a key diplomatic role in protecting human rights. We’d like to see them stressing the human cost of further escalation in the Middle East, and warning all combatants in Syria that there will be [...]
Rapid responses November 18, 2012 Reform agendas [Re: Will the new Chinese leadership implement necessary economic and political reforms? Friday] Maintaining the status quo isn’t an option. It would jeopardise the future of the Communist party. But the party has a habit of reinventing itself and I am cautiously optimistic that it will again. Success will depend on two things. [...]
Forget Grexit and Spexit: Brixit is looming over the European Union November 15, 2012 FORGET Grexit, Spexit or any other possible departures from the euro. Despite yesterday’s news that the Eurozone is now back in recession, the markets should focus on another potential exit. The Brixit – a British departure from the European Union. For the first time in a generation it’s realistic. But would it hurt the UK [...]
Michael Gove is courageously recovering our ancient tradition of learning November 15, 2012 IN 75 BC, when the great Roman politician and champion of liberal learning Cicero was quaestor in Sicily, he led an expedition to a neglected, overgrown jumble of funerary monuments just outside the city of Syracuse. Directing men with scythes to cut away the briars, he uncovered the tomb of Archimedes, lost for more than [...]
Babies born today can expect a long expensive future November 15, 2012 BRITAIN faces many challenges, but none more daunting than our ageing society and the financial challenges it will create for future generations. There were 807,766 live births in the UK in the past year, and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) predicts that one in three will live to be 100 years old. Today there [...]
Will the new Chinese leadership implement necessary economic and political reforms? November 15, 2012 YES Gigi Chan After months of policy paralysis, certainty over leadership will be good for markets in the short term. The new leadership can focus on pushing through policies once its power base is consolidated. Xi Jinping will head a Politburo standing committee that is pro-reform, which has to be positive for investments. For the [...]
Rapid responses November 15, 2012 Stale bank lending [Re: The real reason businesses aren’t borrowing from their banks, yesterday] Anthony Browne’s argument about small business lending is stale. In his early days in post, we hoped that the chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), would have shifted the debate onto more fertile ground. The enormous rise in lending [...]
The Bank of England needs a new method for predicting UK growth November 14, 2012 THIS week’s barrage of economic figures confirmed a gloomy picture for Britain. The Bank of England’s inflation report suggests sluggish growth into next year – just 1 per cent in 2013. Jobs figures show high (though falling) unemployment – still at 7.8 per cent of the workforce. And Tuesday’s rise in inflation confirmed a squeeze [...]
The real reason small businesses aren’t borrowing more from their banks November 14, 2012 ALMOST every politician I meet asks me one question. Often with a hint of menace, they demand: “why are banks refusing to lend to small businesses?” They say their postbags are full of complaints from small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that banks are refusing to approve or renew loans or overdrafts. In reply, banks point [...]