Posts by Jody

0% corporation tax, but tax dividend income like salaries?

How about this: apply tax on corporate profits at zero, but levy tax on dividend income at the same rate as other income (so 40% for UK citizens earning over £40k or so; 50% for those in top band).

Pluses: 1) You no longer tax the same flow of money twice (when it is profit and when it is distributed to the company's owners). 2) You encourage lots of businesses to move to UK and employ Brits, who then pay income tax on their salary. 3) You probably raise more money because, I seem to recall, UK citizens earn more from owning oversees shares than is paid out to foreigners by British companies. 4) There is less scope for people setting themselves up as companies to pay less tax.

Minuses: there would be clever ways this was abused, as there is for any system of taxation. Also, corporation tax is a relatively cheap tax for HMRC.

New versions of Word have mainly just jumbled up the icons and menus so I can't find anything anymore. Worse than pointless.

Brosnan totally looked the part...

...but the films made no sense. Never Die Another Not Enough was the worst.

This sort of kit in cars opens the way for pay-per-mile road charging and variable insurance premiums charged according to when/where/how dangerously you drive .

I actually think these are both good things - I reckon road charging is the only way to really kill congestion, and rewarding safe drivers with lower insurance premiums might make some of the many nutters on Britain's highways change their ways.

But others might disagree.

Its heartwarming...

...the Americans should have named Endeavour after a Royal Navy ship that, after its famous exploratory voyage, would later ferry British troops across the Atlantic to suppress the American revolution.

Heightened

Signs in the foyers of many government buildings have been saying the security state is "Heightened" for years now. For something to be "heightened" on a permanent basis is clearly absurd, but difficult to back away from without appearing complacent. Makes it all seem a bit pointless.

Burn opium

It strikes me that the US could solve the narcotics problem AND the fuel problem in Afghanistan, as well as boosting the Afghan economy, by guaranteeing farmers an good price for poppies, and then converting it into biofuel. The farmers could bring it to collection points manned by the Americans (so no troops are at risk as it is transported over dangerous roads) where it is turned into biodiesel and biokerosene for use by US planes and vehicles.

Use second-hand oil rigs as fish food

So it turns out that dumping the Brent Spar in 1995 would have fed algae with thousands of tonnes of iron as the structured decayed and created enormous blooms of CO2-gobbling phytoplankton. Well done Greenpeace.

Sometimes low tech is fine

"There's a real risk we do another Eurofighter - tarting up an old design with new bells and whistles. "

If only the Eurofighter was just a tarted-up old design. The French Rafale was based on existing technology and hence was relatively cheap and put into production in a few years. In contrast, Eurofighter is technologically very ambitious, and as a result, twenty years have passed since its prototype first flew (the "EAP": I forget what that was an acronym for). During this time, the enemy has changed, and technology has moved on anyway, and this multi-billion pound project has drained resources from more sensible procurement programmes. Being a four-nation procurement programme didn't help. Meanwhile, the RAF has lacked a credible fighter since at least the 1970s.

Pushing barriers in defence technology is very expensive and can just trigger an arms race with your enemy. We should only do so where there is a credible threat and a shortcoming in our capability. In the Eurofighter case, a bread-and-butter fighter would have met our needs.