Let’s be clear: No deal is better than a bad deal.
– Richard Tice, discussing Brexit.
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September 18th, 2016 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
 September 15th, 2016 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Douglas Carswell makes some excellent points about the perils of any post-Brexit trade agreements with the EU:
Indeed, and as Peter Lilly wrote not all that long ago:
Quite so. The sooner we are out of the EU the better. September 14th, 2016 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The effort to wire the world — or to achieve “extreme reach,” in the NRO’s parlance — has cost American taxpayers more than $100 billion. Obama has justified the gargantuan expense by arguing that “there are some trade-offs involved” in keeping the country safe. “I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said in June 2013, shortly after Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed widespread government spying on Americans’ phone calls. Since Snowden’s leaks, pundits and experts (myself included) have debated the legality and ethics of the U.S. surveillance apparatus. Yet has the president’s blueprint for spying succeeded on its own terms? An examination of the unprecedented architecture reveals that the Obama administration may only have drowned itself in data. What’s more, in trying to right the ship, America’s intelligence culture has grown frenzied. Agencies are ever seeking to get bigger, move faster, and pry deeper to keep pace with the enormous quantity of information being generated the world over and with the new tactics and technologies intended to shield it from spies. This race is a defining feature of Obama’s legacy — and one that threatens to become never-ending, even after he’s left the White House. – James Bamford (£) September 13th, 2016 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is nothing new about this; it mostly started fifteen years ago, in 2001, and again the Irish were the main target. Ireland in the early 1990s had a high general corporation tax rate of 40%, but it introduced a special low 10% rate for finance companies in its Dublin-based International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). The Commission ruled that this was effectively an improper subsidy to the finance industry under the State Aid rules, and ordered its abolition. That was really the root cause of the EU’s current row with Ireland, because the Irish response to the IFSC being declared illegal was to reduce all its corporation tax to 12.5%. Because that wasn’t targeted at a particular company or industry sector, it wasn’t illegal State Aid and so the EU Commission could do nothing to stop them, much as it wanted to. So the EU Commission’s current action against Ireland over Apple is largely “Round Two”, a repeat of what it did fifteen years ago. September 8th, 2016 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Nobody is going to be banning meat in the near future, but that is for political reasons. There are simply too many meat eaters and not enough fanatical vegetarians. It is a question of power, not ethics, and the author of this article – vile authoritarian though he may be – inadvertently makes the libertarian argument very well. If it is the government’s business to prevent people taking voluntary, informed risks about one lifestyle choice, there is no reason to stop at smoking. He asks whether it’s “OK to allow free choice” or “OK to prevent ‘unhealthy behaviour'”. In my view, the only moral answer is that it’s OK to allow free choice. It is not the government’s business. The author obviously disagrees, but I bet it wouldn’t take long to find something he likes doing that has been linked to cancer. At least his argument makes more sense than the scatter-gun bigotry of people who argue for state force to be used against activities they don’t like while demanding protection for those they do. – Christopher Snowdon, from an article titled “The NHS as a tool of social control”. September 6th, 2016 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
In an astonishing EU ruling, Apple is being told the pay the Irish state €13 billion(!!!) in retrospective taxation that the Irish state never asked for. And the reply from Apple is very well crafted. It is clear they are not going to take this shakedown by the European Commission lying down. August 31st, 2016 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
I found this quite interesting:
And my reaction was to marvel… can it be true ‘Communist’ China is the only state to finally figure out the absurdity of modern mainstream thinking regarding interest rates? Every time Bank of England Governor Mark Carney opens his mouth, I am reminded of Albert Einstein’s purported definition of insanity. Is China really the only place the August 30th, 2016 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
This was on twitter and it is just too good not to repost:
Sums up my views perfectly. August 19th, 2016 | 57 comments - (Comments are closed)
August 18th, 2016 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is finding ways within the rules to arrange your affairs to minimise the tax you pay. So by saying advisers who tell you how to actually do that will be fined, the British government is prohibiting people from being told how existing tax laws work. Unless there is something I am misunderstanding, this appears to be completely insane. It seems to now be illegal to, er, legally arrange your affairs in such a manner as to inconvenience HMG. August 17th, 2016 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
The people at Charlie Hebdo may be a bunch of benighted lefties with only the most tenuous grasp on reality, but they sure know how to thrown a party! Nice to see folks taking it all in calmly. → Continue reading: Charlie Hebdo once again seeks to sooth the savage beast August 15th, 2016 | 86 comments - (Comments are closed)
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