Don’t give house room to illiberal spare-bed taxes October 19, 2011 A MISGUIDED charity has called upon the government to take action against elderly people who live in large homes. In its outrageous report Hoarding of Housing, the Intergenerational Foundation (IF) takes aim at 25m “unused” bedrooms in England. In view of the real housing shortage, the charity’s surreal answer is that the government should tax [...]
A euro escape route is well worth £250,000 October 19, 2011 IF YOU were stuck in a burning building with no exits, what would you do? You could try to put out the fire, or try to dig an escape route. When Europe’s leaders gather this weekend, they are going to spend their time trying to get the fire extinguishers to work to quell the euro [...]
RAPID RESPONSES October 19, 2011 DNA of innovation I’d like to draw Tim Hammond’s [Innovation first, Rapid Responses, yesterday] attention to the computer, transistor and integrated circuit. Together they have transformed the world far more than the jet engine did, and are all more recent inventions. Then there are new technologies in the life sciences, such as DNA sequencing and [...]
It is time that business got its hands dirty – by helping rebuild the nation’s schools October 18, 2011 FOR business leaders there can be few, if any, more critical issues than the way that we educate the workforce of tomorrow. How the UK approaches education reform over the coming years will determine how successfully it closes the skills gap that threatens our future prosperity. So any good business leader knows that he or [...]
The City must be on guard for the EU’s legal angels October 18, 2011 FROM its inception, the EU has not been a simple, straightforward entity with clear rules and methods of working. Each EU treaty is an amendment of the previous one – and incorporates any number of opt-outs, derogations and allowances, not just for “national specificities” but also to allow latitude of interpretation for the EU institutions [...]
There is zero virtue in involuntary high taxes October 18, 2011 WARREN Buffett has famously claimed that he is happy to pay a higher rate of income tax. He figures that, given all he has gained from society, it is only right that he give a lot back. President Obama’s proposed new tax on incomes above $1m has even been dubbed the Buffett tax. This week [...]
RAPID RESPONSES October 18, 2011 Innovation first Norman Lewis makes some good points [Steve Jobs was an amazing businessman – but Einstein’s the genius behind the iPod, yesterday] but while pure science is clearly important, many innovations precede the science. We flew long before we knew how, we used electricity long before we understood what it was and we continue [...]
Steve Jobs was an amazing businessman – but Einstein’s the genius behind the iPod October 17, 2011 THE recent death of Steve Jobs is a timely moment to step back and reconsider what innovation is really for. Reading the obituaries and testimonies posted across the internet, you would not be alone in assuming that Saint Jobs had cured the world of cancer and is now in heaven, reconfiguring God’s messaging system from [...]
A few cold facts in the debate on high energy bills October 17, 2011 AT YESTERDAY’S energy price summit, David Cameron pledged that he would do whatever he could to bring down the spiralling cost of energy bills. There is only one problem: the coalition’s own costly green energy policies, which threaten to raise energy prices even further in coming years. David Cameron’s energy advisers recently warned him of [...]
The real central bank target is not inflation October 17, 2011 IT SEEMS like Mervyn King has abandoned the Bank of England’s (BoE) inflation target, with the consumer price index (CPI) apparently stuck well above 2 per cent. But has King privately taken up a different sort of target altogether? A more credible alternative that continues to gain momentum is to set a nominal GDP (NGDP) [...]