There’s something very satisfying about seeing other people come round to your way of thinking. (See my previous blogs on why bonuses make CEOs worse at their jobs, and why bonuses make CEOs worse at their …
Bonuses: worse than useless
Category: Blog
Want the ‘love hotel’ experience? Tokyo’s shortage of lovers means you must head to Japan now
Japan is cheap, Japan is fun, Japan is beautiful, Japan has the best food in the world. So why not go on holiday there? After all, everyone else seems to be. I wrote about this …
Buy-to-let: don’t do it
More people are getting in on buy-to-let. Brewin Dolphin has done some scary numbers on the issue this week. Its example has a landlord with an 80% loan-to-value (LTV) mortgage getting £10,000 in rent and …
Never underestimate the creativity of central bankers
What happens when you want to do more quantitative easing (QE) but there isn’t anything left to buy with your newly printed money? That, say some, is soon to be a problem in Japan. There, …
Using entrepreneurs’ relief? Sell up fast
There’s an interesting blog by tax lawyer Jolyon Maugham. In it, he points out that while we pay a huge amount of attention to whether or not we are getting value from taxpayer-funded public spending, …
Don’t rush in to oil stocks
Thinking of buying into oil producers and explorers on the basis that the oil price will surely start to rise again in the very near future? Maybe don’t. I explained recently why the oil price is …
Britain is becoming a country of ‘pensions apartheid’
In last week’s podcast, John and I talked about the UK pensions system. It is constantly in transition and increasingly unfair. The older generations appear to be consistently favoured over the young, and public sector …
Time to reform Britain’s unfair in-work benefits system
In the post below we look at just how tax credits work – and just how much money some families can make out of claiming them. It isn’t a pretty picture – it’s horribly expensive …
How new technology can save the NHS from itself
The NHS is a nightmare, says Gillian Bowditch in the Sunday Times. It isn’t national (there is no single UK standard for everything). It doesn’t appear to be much concerned with health (it is more …
The truth about tax credits
We published an article by James Ferguson a few weeks ago pointing out that it is entirely possible for a family on tax credits to work very few hours a week but still take home …