Careful now
“The reasons for thinking property taxes will fail to deliver reduced volatility are a melange of some reasonable points, some basic economic theory, some casual empiricism …and a massive dose of street-fighting politics.” Alex Marsh takes issue with the latest report from Policy Exchange.
Benefits Britain and the rise of poverty porn
“They used to have a word for media programming used to distort public mood in favour of a political goal by using misrepresented data: propaganda.” Scriptonite argues that we must demand better from the media in how they portray the welfare state.
Stamp out regressive property taxes
Normally the Taxpayers’ Alliance website is only worth a visit to raise a smile and to see what people pretending to be on the taxpayers’ side are up to. I say pretend because of course everyone is a taxpayer: those who do not pay income tax pay more regressive taxes like VAT, but the TPA […]
How and why politicians are avoiding the ‘most difficult’ decisions
Summary Why “we have to take difficult decisions” doesn’t go anywhere near tackling the hardest questions of all I’ve reached that point where I now want to unpick this “difficult decisions” line to take. Politics and policy-making is full of decisions. Some of them are relatively straight forward, others are not – and for various […]
If borrowing is up, but services are being cut… where is our money going?
UK Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget yesterday informed the nation that by 2018 national debt will have doubled since 2010, whilst the welfare state and living standards have been crushed. If debt is going up, and services are being cut, where is the money actually going? Short history of UK national debt National Debt was a facility created […]