For instance, someone earning £200,000 a year, who received a £6,000 pay rise, could be handed a tax bill of £24,000 – or four times the value of the pay rise.
...let the brain drain begin.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Ye gads....
In order to encourage people to save for their old age, one presumes...
...let the brain drain begin.
...let the brain drain begin.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Mad as a Hatter award
This weeks complete loon has to be 'Paul' of the State Ethics blog. DK takes him to task here, but I am also grateful to the anonymous commentator who drew our attention to this post, where he advocates 'criminalising greed', along with some handy definitions, such as;
I really can't work out of this chap is just having a laugh or if he's serious. Either way, there is enough nonsense on the site to have a good giggle during your lunch break. But don't have more than one sandwich, will you? That would be greedy, and if Paul gets his way, 'illegal'.
investment of more than € 10 000 in any fund or scheme, promising a rate of return of more than 3% above the European Central Bank borrowing rate
I really can't work out of this chap is just having a laugh or if he's serious. Either way, there is enough nonsense on the site to have a good giggle during your lunch break. But don't have more than one sandwich, will you? That would be greedy, and if Paul gets his way, 'illegal'.
Another victim of policy
Mark Wadsworth correctly points out ~ this woman would probably still be alive if MDMA wasn't a controlled substance. Prohibition of a substance doesn't lead to the elimination of the demand. It simply leads to more deaths due to black market product (as per USA, circa 1919 to 1933), & more criminality (ditto). Why can we not see this?
MDMA is a class A drug ~ there can be no higher penalty for possession or intent to supply. Yet millions of doses are taken each year. Deaths are minimal, certainly less than for alcohol on a unit by unit basis, and those that do occur are generally down to either contaminated product, or over heating of the individual, which itself is often compounded by a variable strength product.
Prohibition doesn't work. It will never work. It causes society billions of pounds in direct and indirect costs. It achieves nothing, and contributes to deaths. In short, it's completely daft.
It's high time we all grew up and had our own Twenty-first Amendment moment.
MDMA is a class A drug ~ there can be no higher penalty for possession or intent to supply. Yet millions of doses are taken each year. Deaths are minimal, certainly less than for alcohol on a unit by unit basis, and those that do occur are generally down to either contaminated product, or over heating of the individual, which itself is often compounded by a variable strength product.
Prohibition doesn't work. It will never work. It causes society billions of pounds in direct and indirect costs. It achieves nothing, and contributes to deaths. In short, it's completely daft.
It's high time we all grew up and had our own Twenty-first Amendment moment.
MP's expenses
One of the things I was taught at University was that it is virtually impossible to correct a system without understanding the cause of its failure. So here, we have a failed system ~ the method that we use to reimburse MP's for monies expended carrying out their duties has fallen in to such disrepute as to have lost widespread public confidence.
Gordon Brown's solution, to pay an attendance allowance, appears to be the worst possible idea. It fails to ask why this system failed, preferring instead to mask is on a blanket payment. MP's do indeed occur genuine out of pocket expenses which any employer would reimburse. If I need a laptop for my work, my employer either provides one, or I provide one and claim it on expenses. Ditto travel, ditto accommodation when working away from my usual work place. If I open a branch office, I am not expected to fund the rent on it, nor should an MP have to fund a constituency office.
So what went wrong, what was the root cause of the failure of the MP's expenses system? The answer to that is simple. MP's themselves.
Rather than look upon the system as a means of refunding genuine expenses, a significant number of them used it as a method of enriching their lives. I don't care if the Home Sectary's 2nd home allowance was 'within the rules' ~ it was clearly a method of receiving tax payers’ money. An honorable MP would recognise this and only make genuine claims, but as we have seen, while they will line up on the telly to condemn 'greedy bankers' pension schemes, they aren't so diligent when it comes to spending our money on themselves.
There has been some mutterings in the MSN about the good being tarred with the same brush as the bad. To which I say tough. Let us remember it wasn't an MP that forced the publication of these expenses, but campaigners from outside of parliament. 646 men and women of differing political views, and not a single whistle blower among them, happy to keep the truth away from their employers.
So whatever bodge Gordon Brown et al come up with, you can be sure of one thing ~ the root cause of the problem, corrupt and acquiescent MP's, will still be there, and the system will fail again.
Gordon Brown's solution, to pay an attendance allowance, appears to be the worst possible idea. It fails to ask why this system failed, preferring instead to mask is on a blanket payment. MP's do indeed occur genuine out of pocket expenses which any employer would reimburse. If I need a laptop for my work, my employer either provides one, or I provide one and claim it on expenses. Ditto travel, ditto accommodation when working away from my usual work place. If I open a branch office, I am not expected to fund the rent on it, nor should an MP have to fund a constituency office.
So what went wrong, what was the root cause of the failure of the MP's expenses system? The answer to that is simple. MP's themselves.
Rather than look upon the system as a means of refunding genuine expenses, a significant number of them used it as a method of enriching their lives. I don't care if the Home Sectary's 2nd home allowance was 'within the rules' ~ it was clearly a method of receiving tax payers’ money. An honorable MP would recognise this and only make genuine claims, but as we have seen, while they will line up on the telly to condemn 'greedy bankers' pension schemes, they aren't so diligent when it comes to spending our money on themselves.
There has been some mutterings in the MSN about the good being tarred with the same brush as the bad. To which I say tough. Let us remember it wasn't an MP that forced the publication of these expenses, but campaigners from outside of parliament. 646 men and women of differing political views, and not a single whistle blower among them, happy to keep the truth away from their employers.
So whatever bodge Gordon Brown et al come up with, you can be sure of one thing ~ the root cause of the problem, corrupt and acquiescent MP's, will still be there, and the system will fail again.
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