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Is Gordon Brown the most irresponsible Chancellor the UK has ever had? So asks Michael Becket, author of Starting Your Own Business, in this month’s issue of Director magazine, published by the Institute of Directors for its members – sorry, but there is no online version. According to Becket:
Despite promising not to raise income tax, Brown has done just that, by not increasing allowances in line with earnings, by raising [National Insurance] by 10 per cent, and by other stealthy changes…
Having enticed small businesses to incorporate by tax incentives, Brown has now closed the trap by imposing a 19 per cent tax on their dividends. Failing to reinvest profits instead of paying themselves was one reason given to directors. But how can the owner of a company with a £10,000 profit afford to eat and invest as well?
People are saving less and putting aside less money for their old age. By stopping pension funds from reclaiming tax on dividends, Brown extracted £5bn a year from the pensions industry. A typical 30-year-old now needs to put an extra £200 a year aside for the whole of his working life to offset that one move. Peps and Tessas were taxed and replaced with Isas, but the amount eligible for tax-free savings has been steadily whittled away…
What makes Brown’s policies appear so irresponsible is that they are the opposite of what the country desperately needs. This grab-what-you-can attitude has many consequences, but few discuss the indirect effect on business.
Fewer savers and smaller pension funds mean less investment for industry… It could also mean less cash for buying shares. It is also possible that it will become more difficult to raise money, especially since business angels will also be taxed out of the market.
A more obvious consequence is the burden to the taxpayer of an increasingly aged population – particularly one that has not been able to save sufficiently for retirement. We are constantly being warned about the “demographic time bomb” when the baby boomers become pensioners in the next few years, with fewer young people to support them. If these people are forced to depend on public benefit, requiring a wide range of help from pensions to health care, the level of taxes on individuals and businesses will rise to an intolerable level.
Yet there seems no alternative prospect. Such policies could amount, in the long term, to our children labouring without return in an impoverished business environment. Pensioners will live on a pittance in ill-health as their pensions get eroded and the NHS turns from a sick joke to full-blown disaster.
Well, that is all very cheering for a British taxpayer to read. I take no convincing on the points that the government is bang out of order in what it takes from us, that the state is forcing people to rely on public benefit, and that the NHS sucks. What I want to know is whether Michael Becket is right: Is Gordon Brown the most irresponsible Chancellor this country has ever had?
Whenever, as is happening just now, a small Political Party seems about to get a big result, the Big Parties orate loudly about how a vote for the Small [fill in the name of the small party] Party will be a “wasted vote“. What does this mean?
To me what it means is that the Big Parties have run out of good arguments to stop people voting for this Small Party in embarassingly unsmall numbers, and are instead resorting to a ridiculous argument which they hope will pack a punch despite the fact that it makes no sense whatever.
A large number of people in Britain have just recently realised that Britain is in the process of becoming a small clutch of provinces of a new country, EUrope. They have never wanted this, but until recently they did not notice that it was happening, so they saw no need to vote against it. Now they realise that it is happening, despite all the mendacious protestations of the Big Parties, and a Small Party has stepped forward to enable them to register their disapproval. And depending on how many people vote for the Small Party, the Big Parties will either perhaps change their policy of British provincialism, or definitely not change it. → Continue reading: The myth of the “wasted vote”
I am watching a television show on Channel 4 at the moment about how an English couple fare in foresaking the home comforts and routine of life in Essex for the risk-taking venture of running a sailing school in the Canary Islands. As a keen yachtsman myself, I identified quite a lot with the guy who became fed up with a routine day job and dreamed of making a living in the sun. This television show, called No Going Back, has featured a number of couples, mostly young, who have emigrated in the search for a dream job.
In many cases, the people selected for the shows chose to go overseas either because they were bored with life in Britain, fed up with their jobs, their neighourhood, and tempted by the glossy magazine images of life abroad. But the programme makers never directly asked any of them if other factors drove them abroad, such as rising domestic taxes and regulations on business, or the rising level of crime and sliding quality of schooling for their children. Maybe this sort of stuff was considered a bit too political in what are essentially ‘fly on the wall’ documentaries about ordinary folk striving after a dream.
What is clear, more broadly, is that a lot of my fellow Britons have had enough of life in this damp little island off the European continent and want out. Some of the issues I mentioned in the previous paragraph have something to do with it. There have in the past, and indeed now, been examples of some of Britain’s best scientists and entrepreneurs leaving the UK for friendlier and more lucrative places abroad. There is also the simple fact that Britain is so densely populated. It is hard to convey to those who have never been here and who live in big nations just how crowded the UK is, particularly in the economically vibrant bits, such as London and the southeast.
I would love to go and work abroad, if only to savour the experience of living in another land and broadening my horizons. I would, however, like to think that I take such a step for the positive reasons of spreading my wings, rather than because I have been pushed to despair by the state of this nation.
Of course, in years to come, Channel 4 may be screening a show about how a young couple from Essex packed up their belongings and decided to ‘start over’ in the recently terraformed Mars.
Before I proceed, let me make several things clear… Firstly, although I have a certain fondness for Mrs. T (that whole ‘facing down communism at the crucial moment in history’ thing cuts you a great deal of slack with me), I am not a Tory: I just happen to think Britain needs an effective and differentiated opposition party. Secondly, I personally do not vote for anyone as I am opposed the entire system of kleptocratic populism called ‘democracy’, particularly as it is practiced in Britain… but as I realise as I cannot wish it away, I have to address democratic politics. Thirdly, although I find Roger Knapman pretty impressive for what I have heard of his views so far, I also think some of the things certain members of the United Kingdom Independence Party stands for are truly odious and amongst its ranks are to be found no small number of crackpots, conspiracy theorists and crypto-fascists.
I mention that last point because if you are going to vote for the Tory Party (and therefore obviously hold democratic politics and the Tory Party in vastly higher esteem than I do), you might do well to ask yourself why are you voting Tory?
If it is because you like the idea of broadsheet reading Grandees with their safe pair of hands on the tiller of state and trust them to do whatever they see fit in your name (i.e. you are a Ted Heath/Michael Heseltine/Chris Patten fan and therefore support Labour Party-Lite), then please stop reading now and piss off, I am not talking to you… and anyway, what on earth are you doing reading a blog like Samizdata.net which is written by people like myself who utterly despise you?
If however you vote Tory because you think the Anglosphere approach of not conflating state and society is vastly preferable to the state-centred systems which generally prevail in Continental Europe… or you have the notion that British politics of any sort should be made in Britain rather than Brussels (and yes, I suppose I am talking to no small number of Labour supporters here too)… then you have a very simple decision to make.
If you want force to the Tory Party to support traditional civil society rather than have it do nothing mote than debate the speed with which Britain acquiesces to a regulated and therefore politicised existence more in tune with Continental norms… then you must send the message that continued support for Euro-statism is not acceptable to you. And the only way you can do that is not just to abstain, but to vote for the UKIP. Only that sends an unmistakable message why you did not vote for them.
And if by doing that you cause the Tory Party to lose to Labour yet again… so what? If you care enough about the Tory Party, you will do whatever it takes to demonstrate the electoral cost of saying platitudes like ‘In Europe but not ruled by Europe’ whilst demurring to regulation after regulation from Europe which indeed amounts to being ruled by it.
Vote UKIP, at least until you have clubbed some sense back into the Tory Party.
…3 days later than last year. The Adam Smith Institute has announced that this year’s Tax Freedom Day will be tomorrow, 30th May 2004.
The ASI calculates this every year, providing a useful measure of one of the ways in which the state reduces liberty, destroys wealth and lowers overall living standards.
As usual, Tax Freedom Day attracts quite a lot of media coverage from the usual suspects. I wonder if any voters are actually noticing?
Growing up in the 1970’s I recall being rather spooked by dire warnings of an impending ice age and the threat that I would spend my adult life shivering in a cave. Some twenty years later that apocalypse vision had been melted clean away by the dire (and considerably shriller) warnings about global warming and, according to everyone who is anyone, I now face the threat of spending what remains of my adult life sizzling like a sausage.
Two decades in which to manage a complete polar reversal in doomsday-scenario is pretty good going but it pales into ‘also-ran’ status by an eerily similar polar switch in the rather more mundane field of eating disorders.
This is from the BBC website in July 1998:
Doctors have hit out at the media and advertisers for encouraging anorexia by portraying skinny supermodels as the beauty ideal instead of ‘more buxom wenches’.
The British Medical Association’s annual conference in Cardiff voted overwhelmingly for a motion condemning the media obsession with ultra thin supermodels.
Dr Muriel Broome, a former director of public health, said “the constant image of very thin models” encouraged girls to develop eating disorders. “We urge the media to be more responsible and show more buxom wenches,” she said.
I know not whether Dr Broome’s advice was acted upon, but I am now informed that we have, indeed, taken on the mantle of buxomness with some considerable gusto. From the BBC website today:
Improving children’s eating habits is the key to tackling an obesity “timebomb”, MPs have warned.
The Commons Health Select Committee attacks the government, food industry and advertisers for failing to act to stop rising levels of obesity.
From ‘ultra-thin models’ to ‘obesity timebombs’ in the space of slightly over half-a-decade. Now I am no statistician but I think even I am qualified to regard that as a quite remarkable national metamorphosis. → Continue reading: Fat of the land
Here are two snippets of news from the BBC today.
Snippet one:
Train drivers’ union Aslef has suspended three of its officials after an alleged brawl at a barbecue at its north London offices.
The alleged incident involved general secretary Shaun Brady, assistant general secretary Mick Blackburn and president Martin Samways.
Snippet two:
A 14-year-old schoolboy has been arrested after a teacher was attacked, police have said.
The youngster was arrested after the incident at a school in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, on Friday 21 May.
He was later released on police bail pending further inquiries, a force spokesman added.
Police said the teacher, a 54-year-old man, was taken to hospital for a check-up after suffering swelling and bruising to his face.
Both of these events occurred in Britain. They prove beyond doubt that Britain is a continuous maelstrom of violence from one end of the country to the other.
We should get out now.
You know how people are always saying that complaining about the state of the world (and the world of the state) is all well and good, except that it never achieves anything? The UK’s Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, thinks that the great British public is about to prove those people wrong, as “whingers” put London’s Olympic bid in peril.
BRITAIN’S chance of hosting the 2012 Olympic Games is in peril because of “whingers”, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell sensationally warned last night.
Doom-and-gloom merchants risk wrecking London’s hopes just six days after the capital was shortlisted, she said…
She told The Sun: “Whingeing pessimism and hostility will not stop our campaign but it will hand votes to the cities against which we are competing. It is whingers who will weaken our national will. At this moment, optimism, self-confidence and ambition is what we need. Let that win, not the whingers…”
Ms Jowell urged the nation to get behind the UK’s bid to stop the International Olympic Committee handing the games to Paris.
Nah. For perhaps the first time ever, I and many others are fully backing the French to win. Let’s hope a continued stream of bitching and moaning about this ridiculous misuse of taxpayer money will see them through to victory, and bring about Britain’s glorious defeat.
Speaking as someone who is really far too cynical for his own good, I shall believe this when I see it:
Voters in next month’s European elections could shock the political establishment by giving the United Kingdom Independence Party more seats than the Liberal Democrats, a poll suggests today.
A YouGov survey for The Telegraph indicates that UKIP, which is committed to British withdrawal from the European Union, is ahead of the Lib Dems among those who are “very likely” to vote.
But I really and truly hope that I do see it.
I’m watching Robert Kilroy-Silk on Question Time, and I think he’s doing rather well.
Kilroy started out as a Labour MP, believe it or not. But he was never really convincing in the role. The others did not like him, and he sensed that he was not one of them, was my impression. Too keen on personal advancement, and not nearly keen enough on concealing it under a veneer of class solidarity. So he stopped doing that and switched to Kilroy, one of those early to mid-morning mini-amphitheatre televised bore-ins with Kilroy himself as the roving interlocutor.
Kilroy’s basic problem with Kilroy was that he seemed to regard everyone present except himself an idiot, a feeling which must have been hard to fight, given that everyone present except himself was at the very least behaving idiotically. (I speak as one who used to appear on this show myself from time to time, until I saw the pointlessness of my ways.) Kilroy tried to conceal his contempt for everyone under a layer of somewhat overdone good humour and what I presume he thought was charm, but what everyone else called smarm.
As his show moved away from semi-intelligent debate into the territory already occupied more entertainingly by Jerry Springer – my mother is a cross-dresser, I want to have a fight with my step-dad, my twin sister is a prostitute and I am a nun and I want to have a fight with her, etc. – Kilroy’s manner became ever more off-putting and false and desperate.
But Kilroy-Silk’s manner on Question Time was downright … appropriate. Gone was the layer of smarm. And out from under it came this really quite attractive and intelligent man. He used to be hated because he was appalling. Now he will be hated because he is not nearly as appalling as his enemies would like him to be.
Most of us are familiar with the Peter Principle, the one that says that people are promoted until they arrive with a thud at their level of incompetence, at which they then remain for ever. But in politics as in life generally, I think we sometimes observe the opposite process. Sometimes, people arrive at their level of competence, having just buggered about pointlessly for the previous two decades until they reached it. Kilroy-Silk strikes me as a fine example of a man who is now, as a Eurosceptic politician with the right, the duty, and the inclination to speak his mind, at last arriving at his level of competence.
It could turn out that by switching off Kilroy the talkshow host, and unleashing Kilroy-Silk the reborn politician, the BBC has made one of its most important contributions to the EUro-debate, in favour of the NO side.
Please understand that I am talking here about competence, rather than about the rights and wrongs of it all. I generally hate what politicians do, but my point is: some of them do it very well, while others mysteriously run out of steam, seem woefully miscast, and should have carried on with what they had previously been doing.
For the opposite tendency, a perfect example of the original Peter Principle rather than of the reverse version of it which I am here offering: Glenda Jackson. What a fine actress. And what a sad, drab failure as a politician.
After Thatcher glassed the unions, you would think they would have the manners to lie prostrate and bleeding amongst the spit and sawdust. Not a bit of it. Once their pet party returned to power under a business-friendly sneer, all they had to do was lie back and wait for pro-Europeans to pass the relevant regulation.
Lo and behold: the new Information and Consultation Regulations, where you, the employee, gain state mandated power to put forward a collective voice in how the business that employs you is run. You may not have put any money behind the business, but as a stakeholder, you should have your interests taken into account by the union that will represent you.
Tim Lang, partner at law firm George Green views this regulation as “a ticking time bomb”.
Initially, the new laws will only apply to firms with 150 or more employees. However, by 2007 the laws will extend to those with 100 employees and, by March 2008, the threshold will drop to 50.
Under the new rules, employ-ees will be able to request information and consultation arrangements from their employer with a petition from ten per cent of the workforce.
There would then be a period of time for negotiating a voluntary agreement, detailing exactly what information must be provided, when, to whom and what level of consultation is required. If nothing can be agreed then a default framework, set out in the legislation, will apply.
Since these works councils will provide a huge fillip to unionisation and wage demands, we can now see that the European Union, with Labour’s acquiescence, is rolling back Thatcher’s labour market reforms and jeopardising the potential growth of the British economy.
The costs for business will always be greater than the state estimates:
The Department of Trade and Industry estimates that for those firms with no pre-existing structure, who just implement the standard legislative process for informing and consulting, the total set-up costs per firm would be £4,000 for medium-sized firms and £6,300 for large firms.
But Mr Lang disagrees. He said: “The cost in management time of this new directive could be huge, with companies having to think through their processes and then actually provide the information. Time is already short for the first businesses affected to start the process of putting measures in place.”
Like all socialists, the Labour party wishes to return to a closed shop in politics and the workplace, gerrymandering our unwritten constitution and providing new institutions for the enemy class to take over the private sector.
If something sounds too good to be true then it is most likely untrue but if something sounds too bad to be true you can probably take it to the bank.
If there is anything axiomatic about that proposition then perhaps I should claim proprietory rights on it and call it ‘Carr’s Law’ or something. I am not sure how much use this law will prove to be on a practical day-to-day basis but it may oblige as a useful yardstick against which to measure my natural cynicism about opinion polls, surveys and related statistical exercises.
For example, take this one, published last month:
David Blunkett has pledged to push ahead with ID card legislation after an opinion poll said most people would be happy to carry one.
The MORI survey was commissioned by an IT consultancy which has worked on projects with the government.
It revealed 80% of those questioned backed a national ID card scheme, echoing findings from previous polls.
And published yesterday:
Most people would support closing a legal loophole that allows parents to smack their children, says a survey.
A total of 71% of people would favour such a ban, according to a survey commissioned by the Children are Unbeatable! Alliance.
And published today:
A majority of British adults favour a total ban on smoking in public places, a survey suggests.
A poll of more than 1,500 people by market analysts Mintel found 52% support for a ban, including two-thirds of non-smokers.
Despite my ingrained reluctance to pay these wretched surveys even a jot of heed, I do accept that a sufficient number of such polling exercises (if conducted scientifically and honestly) can, correctly identify a trend if not quite reveal great truths. → Continue reading: All those in favour say “aye”
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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