Linky’s 2nd Law of Statistics: Interesting discoveries need to be doubly checked, it’s more likely to be wrong than ‘interesting’. …
pump
I have just typed chown pump:pump pump 🍞 …
Accuracy
Osborne promised an inquiry on IHT, but is promising to abolish tax returns. Great for PAYE, even better for the self employed. …
Anthology
Went to Westminster for the launch of Michael Meacher’s new anthology “What the three main parties are not telling you”, including contributions from David Blanchflower, John Mills, Mariana Mazzucato, Ha-Joon Chang and others. The speakers included John Mills, Richard Murphy of Tax Justice Now, Anne Pettifor and Kelvin Hopkins MP. It’s an impressive contributor list. …
Budget
Rumours that Osborne will reduce inheritance tax in today’s budget, or more accurately increase the threshold at which it’s paid. He promised this five years ago. That’s a lot of people he’s let down and who have experienced the unfairness of the assessment. I don’t think they’ll thank him; it’s one tax you can’t reschedule. …
Labour & Digital
Trefor Davies of trefor.net commissioned and published an article by me on the state of the politics of digital and its likely impact on the General Election. In the article I classify the issues around citizenship and economics. Obviously the manifesto has not been published and so prediction of its content is not easy. Regular readers will know that I am a supporter of both the Open Rights Group and Privacy International. I have also served on NESSI, the EU’s internet/I.T. R&D project incubator. I am hopeful on the issues of citizenship, unsure on copyright and intellectual property laws and expect a good offer on digital government. …
The State we need
Michael Meacher convened a meeting to launch his anthology, “The State we need”, the title of which is a play on words on Wlll Hutton’s “The State we’re in”. The launch was held in Portcullis House. The speakers were, Meacher himself, Kelvin Hopkins, John Mills , Anne Pettifor and Richard Murphy. …
Adaptable
So that didn’t work! I buy myself an adaptable transformer, with both variable electricity conversion setting and output socket and it still won’t connect to an old Sony Walkman! …
Good Luck
An afternoon at the races! Some pretty small fields, and in one race no-one finished. Two pulled up and one fell at the last! That was of course the one I was backing. A good day though. …
Royalties
if copyright lasts longer than life, should it not be an asset for the purpose of inheritance tax? (That’d be fun, we can use the GATCA infrastructure to chase the UK, European or worldwide future income of dead Americans. Ho Ho!) …