My @ft piece on Church pensions https://t.co/r56wShoyar via @ft "By holding 70% in “risky” assets @churchofengland is playing a dangerous game of double-or-quits, like betting money at the casino. Would parishioners be happy if they knew what was going on with their donations?"
When both JD Vance and Bernie Sanders agree on something, it's worth considering. But @allisonschrager says a government fund that invests in AI companies is a terrible idea https://t.co/13BlAZW9B4
The problem with the devolution argument is that where it has been tried to the maximum extent, Scotland, it has hampered growth, degraded public-sector standards and encouraged corruption
What does it take to survive as British PM? Two things for a start. Be honest that the UK has not been living within its means: trade-offs must be made, sacred cows slain. Don’t say growth will rescue us. It may, but that would be more luck than design.
https://t.co/X2ySGWu6SE
Hans Münch was a German biologist and a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1937. Between 1943 and 1945, he served as a physician at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
He became known as the "Good Man of Auschwitz" because he refused to take part in the camp's mass killings.
Münch refused to participate in the prisoner selection process at Auschwitz. Through various tactics, and at considerable personal risk, he deliberately delayed medical experiments on prisoners. Those designated for research could not be executed, and as a result, many survived because of his actions.
At the First Auschwitz Trial in Kraków in 1947, Münch was the only defendant to be fully acquitted, largely due to the testimony of numerous former prisoners who spoke in his defense.
It's not a "retirement tax". It's income tax - same as everyone else pays. There's no justification for pensioners with no rent/mortgage, no childcare costs, no commute costs, etc, getting a tax break when low paid workers don't. It's wholly unfair and shouldn't happen.
It's actually mind-boggling that @JDVance would say Watergate would be a "10 hour story" today.
Just to review, Nixon's aides authorized a break-in of the DNC HQ to install bugging equipment--in a caper foiled by a night watchman, who called police. They then enlisted the CIA to mislead the FBI that the break-in was related to a probe of malign foreign actors.
The entire operation was paid for by a slush fund controlled by the WH.
The WH also enlisted the IRS to probe hundreds of Nixon's political enemies.
The AG, the WH COS and several other top aides all were convicted and served time for their involvement in the crimes and coverup.
Nixon was caught on his own secret tape system conspiring with them but was pardoned a month after he resigned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
That Vance thinks this would be a "10 hour story" today speaks volumes about the moral and ethical degradation of the Trump era.
This genuinely made me laugh out loud.
Andy Haldane (1) calls for major simplification of tax code and (2) calls for complicating tax system by restricting pension and savings tax relief to UK investments.
Neatly encapsulates tensions in tax policy
https://t.co/qeDtrsYqu2
"For since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book. I was helped to realize these mistakes—to a degree which I myself am hardly able to estimate—by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life. Even more than to this—always certain and forcible— criticism I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr. P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly practised on my thoughts. I am indebted to this stimulus for the most consequential ideas of this book."
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I’m very happy to be able to announce that the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law has rescheduled my lecture on Freedom of Expression in the Sex and Gender Debate.
Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy
A statement of self-definition and dignity from, and for, those long referred to as ‘boy’. Confident, virile, not a trace of doubt to be found. Muddy Waters decides what he is.
1955.
Last year, Govt won a £122m judgment against Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone's company PPE Medpro, for supplying defective PPE
The company had been emptied of cash and collapsed
Now its liquidators are suing Barrowman, Mone and associated companies personally
Short 🧵