The recent help for business is piecemeal and inadequate, but still welcome – even if days, indeed weeks late – and effectively even later than that because companies are asked to survive for a month first… Yet what about the self employed? As our (well my) favourite MP says: This is really like pulling teeth… Read more
Posts by:
Peter May
Well there’s an idea
Buy two and get charged two and a half times as much! Problem solved. Tesco and Aldi please note…… Read more
Understanding the right wing mind -5
This from Jeremy Hunt, the new Chairman of the Health Select Committee, who never realised the harm he was doing! Words fail me, though ‘brain cells’ and ‘few’ and ‘inactive’ come to mind. What’s he been on in order to revive them ten years too late? Joking apart, it seems that few right wingers think… Read more
HMRC – getting tax wrong
‘Working with you to get tax right’ Is the subheading for the consultation on the revised HMRC charter. If you believe tax pays for nothing but prevents inflation then the charter starts with utter failure: HMRC is here to collect the tax that pays for the UK’s public services. We do this by working in… Read more
Bankers still rool…
I don’t agree with the idea that we have to borrow money in order to have any, but the calculation in the image below demonstrates that, even within the orthodox borrow to spend framework the calculations are favourable, if we presume that everyday people are as worthy as banks themselves for government help for short… Read more
Capitalism’s Black Death
I’m sure most are aware that the Black Death hastened Feudalism’s demise. I come increasingly to the conclusion that Coronavirus is likely to do the same for our version of neoliberal free-range capitalism. I’d be surprised if we get out of our Coronavirus predicament within the year – as we didn’t with Spanish flu. This… Read more
Doormats ‘R’ us
I think it is true that what I’ve heard suggested from others is that the British dress up incompetence and neglect as stoicism. Johnson would call it, ‘taking it on the chin’ – something, as a rather high earner, I doubt that he has great experince of in his own life. The stiff upper lip… Read more
Jetting in to the right understanding of where money comes from…
Amid the Covid 19 crisis why are we not insisting that the government fully uses its money creation powers? Oh hang on, some are: Sky News understands the bosses of Virgin Atlantic will write a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying the UK airline industry needs £7.5bn in government aid due to the impact… Read more
Covid-19 continued ..3
This is from a twitterer which amused me: Owing to the worsening situation, I’ve upgraded the musical accompaniment for my hand washing to Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Doesn’t leave much time for anything else, but safety first… Yet, joking apart, the UK prevention system for Covid-19 seems highly ‘individual’ and even somewhat suspect (see below): With… Read more
Covid-19 … continued
First – let me be clear: I’m no expert. But simple logic suggests that the current government’s idea of engendering herd immunity is both logical and cruel – people will die now, who might otherwise die later – even much, much later. But if we keep well apart until further notice which is broadly the… Read more