thoughts

Osborne promised an inquiry on IHT, but is promising to abolish tax returns. Great for PAYE, even better for the self employed. …

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. …

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. …

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!  …

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. …

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!) …

Hmm. Just watched the B5 episode, “All alone in the night”, odd to see William Hague as a hero, and to see him extolling the slogan “Too far, too fast”. It was published in 1995 so the New Labour precognition must be an odd and lucky guess. …

Played too much NWN2 last night, the road to Crossroad Keep. A couple of fights where you need to keep certain allies alive; this takes concentration and I need to get to grips with the AI controls. The choice between Grobnar and Neeska is hard (and I seem to be getting it wrong), I also need to give Qara a turn as the magic user. The monster at the end of the Tavorick Estate took me by surprise with its ‘death’ spell, but it proved easy the second time; it’s amazing what appropriate preparation does. …

It would seen there are no Apple Stores “south of the river”, for those that understand the social geography of London and semiotics of the Mitchell & Webb Mac/PC adverts will come as no surprise. Anyone from San Francisco want to comment? …

Goodness me, £25 on the Lottery! …