Tim Worstall

This really is most amusing from our favourite Irish tax exile:

Actually Bob, lots of us would like to lecture you on your tax morals if you don’t pay in full what somebody else living in the UK might owe. I stress we don’t know whether you do or not, but you had the option of saying you do and got angry instead, which makes me think you’ve got something to get angry about.

And candidly, in that case Lucy Bannerman was absolutely right to question you as she did. Paying tax in the right place at the right time is a principle inextricably linked to solving the problems of poverty in Africa – and elsewhere. You can build as many ditches as you like. But candidly if you set an example by tax avoiding then you undo all your good works.

It’s your choice though Bob. You’ve no need to get angry. You can just either drop the non-dom claim or pay up instead. It’s not hard.

Bob Geldof being a non-dom you see. So he pays full whack on all his UK income in the UK. This not being enough for the Murphmeister.

But there’s more to it than this. The Murph has been insisting that actually, tax should not be paid upon this either domicile or residence basis. But upon citizenship. You have a passport from a place then you’re gaining something from that citizenship and thus you should be paying tax to that State.

And the Murph is on an Irish passport. And Irish taxation of his sort of income would be higher than UK tax on said income. He is, therefore, an Irish tax exile.

He who would cast the first stone etc….

The warning came amid reports that one Cayman islands-based vulture fund, Dart Management, received almost 90pc of the €435m of debts that Greece repaid on Tuesday.

The fund, founded by American tax exile Kenneth Dart, was one of those that refused the debt restructuring deal that saved Greece from default in March.

It was one hell of a bet, gambling on hte diference between Greek bonds issued under Greek law and Greek bonds issued under foreign law that the Greek government couldn’t change.

And it paid off too.

With this difficult economy the whole world is trying to contend with, it’s no wonder penny-pinching has become a way of life. Online resources suggesting ways on how to save money on this and that have become valuable tools for a lot of entities – individuals and businesses alike.

And then came the emergence of collective buying websites like Groupon, LivingSocial and a whole host of others. For a lot of people who aim to get the most bang for their buck, deal of the day is here to stay. But did you know there are smaller niche websites that can help you save money, too? Here are 5 of those sites:

1. Bitrix24.com

For a business to survive a competitive marketplace, communication among its employees is of paramount importance. Problem is, corporate intranets usually cost thousands of dollars, and most small businesses may not have enough operating budget to afford them.

Bitrix24 provides a solution to that problem. If your business has 12 employees or less, Bitrix24 offers a basic package that is absolutely free. Yes, you heard that right. The basic package is absolutely free. And the package comes with a fully functional CRM, activity streaming where every team member gets updates as events unfold, calendar, activity planner, sales funnel and a whole host of other features. If your company is comprised of more than 12 employees, the service costs just about $99 per month.

2. Logaster.com

Online or not, if it’s a business you’re running, you need a logo. Unfortunately, professional logo designers command a high price – hundreds of dollars at the very least. And even with crowdsourcing sites, getting the logo you desire may render you at least $100 poorer.

Logaster.com lets you create your logo free of charge, and with a $4.99 subscription per month, you get other valuable features like business cards, letterheads and envelopes.

3. PickyDomains.com

Some people think it odd to pay somebody to come up with a name for his company or a domain for his website. Then again, branding can make or break your business. What’s worse, with millions and millions of top-level domains registered already, coming up with a domain that hasn’t been registered yet may be harder than you think it is

.

PickyDomains.com is a site of over 55,000 namer contributors. All a client needs to do is register, pay the required $50 downpayment for a domain, brand or name (or $75 for a slogan), specify his parameters, then wait for suggestions to start pouring in. If none of the suggestions are to his liking, he may ask for a refund.

4. JetRadar.com

Expedia, CheapFlights and Orbitz are just three of several niche sites that have changed the way the securing-cheap-air-fare game is played forever. If you’re a businessman constantly on the go or somebody who simply likes to travel, with JetRadar.com, you can search for tickets that are even cheaper.

Cheaper than cheap? How’s that for a cool deal? JetRadar.com is a meta search engine that searches through every travel agency, major flight site and through registers of 728 individual airlines. Some deals from airline companies are made known only through their own websites and not anywhere else to ensure traffic to their sites. JetRadar makes these deals publicly available.

5. iSpionage.com

If you’re a business owner, you want to know what your competitor is up to. With iSpionage, you get to manage client campaigns, save valuable time monitoring affiliates and paid search competition, manage through search engine gaps, view the ads your competitor is running and a whole lot more.

And instead of you collating all the information you need from various searches, iSpionage sends you e-mail alerts every time a competitor activity is detected. iSpionage subscription starts at $59 per month.

Yes, this is a paid advertisement.

There is no inherent contradiction between delivering higher returns to investors and addressing society’s most pressing unmet needs.

Well of course there bloody isn’t.

If you are making high returns you are, by definition, adding great value to the resources you are using to create your production. Adding value is how unmet needs are met. So adding lots of value meets needs which produces high returns.

This is actually the very point of the whole capitalist/free market melange, not some surprising side issue.

A care home manager has been fined £1,118.62 after he settled an £804 debt to his accountant with five crates of mostly 1p and 2p coins. He had been to the bank especially, he said: be glad that you weren’t behind him in the queue. So what did Robert Fitzpatrick, the care home manager, do wrong?

So they’ve copied this from the Mail.

And they are correct that coins are only legal tender up to certain amounts, depends upon the coin (this is not true in the US, where the penny is legal tender in any amount).

But the bloke hasn’t been fined that amount at all. For he’s not done anything illegal in the slightest which, even these days, is a requirement for being fined. He’s been told that his original £800 odd payment was not made in legal tender. Thus he must make the payment, plus legal costs I assume, properly.

He does get his £800 odd in pennies back though.

Churnalism is bad enough but being unable to copy a story properly is something else, eh?

There’s an important point at the bottom of this. It is not necessary to settle a debt in legal tender. As long as everyone agrees you can settle a debt with pennies, a pint or a plate of barbecued puppies. However, it is sufficient to settle a debt with legal tender. If you offer such and it is rejected then you are deemed to have paid that debt.

Which is why the guy didn’t get fined: he did nothing illegal in attempting to settle a debt not in legal tender. If the accountant had laughed and banked it then that would have been the end of the matter. What he has been told is that because the accountant did not accept the not legal tender then he must pay the bill in legal tender: or, if the accountant were to accept it, a plate of barbecued puppies.

Bondholders, who were forced to accept losses of around 75pc on their debt two months ago or lose everything, hired lawyers to claim they were “fraudulently misled” after Athens repaid €435m to debtors who resisted the restructuring.

The bondholders who got paid out in full were the people holding English law bonds, not Greek law ones. That is, bonds that the Greek Parliament could not retrospectively alter the terms of as they did the Greek law ones.

Shows something of the value of this rule of law malarkey really, doesn’t it?

Moody’s downgraded 26 Italian lenders on Monday night saying the slump itself is the killer, joining a chorus of voices warning that too much austerity may be self-defeating. “Banks are vulnerable to the renewed recession in Italy, given their already elevated levels of problem loans and weakened profitability,” it said. Moody’s expects the economy to contract 1.9pc this year.

The Italian Banking Association ABI accused Moody’s of an “irresponsible, incomprehensible, and unjustifiable” smear. “Moody’s decision is an attack on Italy, its companies, its families and its citizens,” it said, calling on the EU authorities to clamp down “severely” on rating agencies.

For if there were no Moody’s pointing such things out then such things would not be happening, would they?

Topping the list released in the May issue of the magazine was Vladimir Kim, the close confidant of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and chairman of Kazakhmys, the London-listed copper producer.

Forbes Kazakhstan, which has not published its rich list on the internet, estimated his wealth at about £2.2 billion. …Several other people linked closely to Mr Nazarbayev appear in Kazakhstan’s wealthiest top ten people, including his daughter, Dinara Kulibayeva, and her husband Timur Kulibayev.

Their wealth is estimated at roughly £810 million each and derives mainly from the finance and energy sectors. ……..The youngest person in the list is Nurali Aliyev, 27, Mr Nazarbayev’s oldest grandson. He is ranked at 25 and is credited with earning around £120 million through various finance positions. …….Mr Nazarbayev’s oldest daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, ……..Ms Nazarbayeva ranks at 13th on the Kazakh rich list with an estimated wealth of £370 million. …….

You might wish to complain that success in the UK depends rather upon who you know, who you are related to. But there are places rather more feudal in their arrangements…..

Citing a secret government document, he said Greeks were already pulling £80 million a day out of the country’s banks. Almost €1 billion (£795 million) has been withdrawn since the last elections on May 6.

That’s yer slow bank run for you.

And the only place the Greek banks can get more money is the ECB, who demand collateral at a steep haircut and the Greek banks don’t have much of that left.

It could well be that the Greek banks fall over as people anticipate the possibility of Grexit: in which case, why not just go ahead with Grexit anyway?

Requiring just one quarter of all new pension contributions go into new infrastructure investment – in exchange for a guaranteed and proper return, maybe with an upside if something went especially well, is a wholly reasonable condition of giving pension tax relief.

That’s the finance part he doesn’t understand. If infrastructure investment could provide a guaranteed and proper return, with that option on the upside, then you wouldn’t need to direct investment into it. There’s hundreds of billions out there crying out for such guaranteed and proper returns. You could pave the country three times over with what people would be willing to invest in a proper and guaranteed return.

The problem isn’t finding the money: it’s creating the guaranteed return. Which is the part that he and Colin Hines haven’t in fact addressed except for some wibble about….well, what have they actually said about where the guarantee comes from?

So long as these funds were invested witha view to returns then they’re not part of the revenue cycle and should not be considered part of the deficit or government borrowing. It is ludicrous that such stupid accounting definition are destroying real lives and constraining rela growth – precisely because the government is slashing investment now to try to balance books to meet these accounting rules, and is destroying lives in the process. No business is constrained by such stupidity. When they invest the profit and loss account is not punished – the asset is put on the balance sheet and the behaviour is applauded. That should be true for government too.

And that’s accounting that he doesn’t understand. Sure, let’s have a proper balance sheet for government. Let’s put the assets onto it. And given that it is indeed a balance sheet then we’ve also got to put the liabilities onto it. You know, all those unfunded pension rights for example? Look a bit sick at that point, wouldn’t it?

As to his not understanding economics, well, blogs passim and all that.

It’s all very Arts and Crafts, William Morris, isn’t it? Society was better in every way before that nasty industrial revolution, wasn’t it?

Inflation is predicted to stay obstinately high while wages lag, shrinking demand in households with ever less to spend.

Imagine that you were a country worried that the amount that must be paid locally for labour made the production of that country uncompetitive on the world markets. No, go on, really, imagine it: you’re Germany circa 2000.

So, what do you do? Quite, you deliberately plan to have wages grow less quickly than either (or even both) inflation and productivity growth.

The outcome of which is? Quite, look at Germany today.

So, UK today: our trade deficit does show that the place ain’t competitive in many things. So, what should we do? Yup, let’s have a little burst of inflation to lower real wage costs.

And won’t Will Hutton be pleased that we’re finally following Germany?

Minimum alcohol price in Scotland to be set at 50p a unit

A bottle of wine will be at least £4.69 and four cans of lager £3.52 under Scottish ministers’ proposals

1) It’s illegal.

2) If you want to raiwe the price of something why in buggery are you giving the profits to the producers rather than claiming it in tax?

Scottish Labour is also preparing to support the policy if Alex Salmond’s government presses on with plans for a £130m “health levy” on supermarkets to claw back the £125m increase in their revenues from a 50p minimum price.

Why the fuck are they doing it that way? Just increase the tax on booze in the first damn place! Are they all mad?

Seriously, can someone explain this idiocy to me?

Convicted sex offender Gary Glitter stands to be paid thousands of pounds in royalties after the BBC aired a repeat of him performing on Top of the Pops in 1977.

What sort of tosspot phones up the BBC to complain about this?

Should we tear down Prospero and Ariel because Eric Gill was a kiddie fiddler?

And I’d love it if someone could tell me how he’ll get several thousands for one song in a TV repeat. It’s more like £50 on the radio so I rather doubt it’s thousands on the TV.

We agree, however, that the single currency needs to survive and succeed

That’s the bit that Ed Balls and the Slime Lord don’t explain.

Why does the single currency need to survive?

Personally, as someone who enjoys nothing more than a little camping, marching, and target practice, I’d be first in line.

No, no you won’t. The maximum conscription age in the UK has been 51. Both times it was 51 in fact.

Will Self will be 51 on 26th September 2012.

Amazing how people propose nonsenses just as they won’t be affected, isn’t it?

It’s amazing! He’s found it! Will Hutton has solved the eurocrisis!

The nascent European Financial Stability Facility needs to be doubled in size and turned into a fund that can lend to EU governments and their banks.

Err, what?

They’ve been scratching around the world trying to find the money to fill the current sized fund. So this is a solution that depends again on that magic money tree thing so beloved of the left….

There should be a ¤250bn euro pan-European infrastructure programme underwritten by the European Investment Bank.

Ditto…..and I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks that more infastructure investment is what, say, Spain needs is simply mad. What the place is currently undergoing is the pain from a couple of decades of malinvestment in infrastructure: not too little but too much.

The European Central Bank should offer unlimited long term loans to eurozone banks.

And that’ll just boost the carry trade as banks borrow at 1% and lend into govt bonds at 6%. Which is great: except when the capital values of the bonds fall and all the banks then go bust.

George Osborne was dragged deeper into the furore over the Murdoch empire’s links to government as it emerged that he entertained Rebekah Brooks for a weekend at his country residence as Rupert Murdoch was planning to take over BSkyB.

….the first thing to be bought and sold will be legislators.

No, of course I’m not suggesting brown envelopes stuffed with babki.

What I am suggesting though is that those screaming about how awful it is that a private sector company should try to suck up to those with political power is, well, what the fuck did you expect?

Your permission to run a newspaper business is dependent upon those politicians. Your spectrum allocation is dependent upon those politicians. How much domestic shite you’ve got to pump out over that spectrum is dependent upon those politicians. Which sporting events you’re even allowed to bid for is determined by those politicians. Whether you’re allowed to buy out the other shareholders in a company you already have management control of is determined by those politicians. Can you give TV viewers a free newspaper? Politicians.

When the politicians have this sort of control over an industry then the people in that industry will inevitably suck up to the politicians. And it’s no good arguing that it just needs my tribe of good politicians in charge and all will be fine for inevitably the Coke party is going to be replaced at some point by the evil bastards of the Pepsi party.

If politicians have these powers then of fucking course those affected by the exercise of those powers will spend their time kissing the hairy arses of those with the powers. If government ran the lettuce industry then we’d have to lick Osborne’s ringhole to have iceberg instead of romaine for tea.

Why can’t people understand that the politicisation of the media industry is because it’s politicised?

At the ASI.

On the new Limits to Growth report to the Club of Rome.