If you drive through Glasgow these days without knowing much of its history you’d be hard pushed to imagine just how successful a city it was back in the 18th and 19th centuries. I’m reading …
Every December Saxo Bank publishes a list of ten outrageous predictions for the coming year. The idea is that the things on the list are unlikely and definitely not part of the consensus view, but …
There has always been something a bit odd about the price of topping up a state pension. We have written before about the fabulous returns involved in deferring taking your public payment. But unveiled in the …
I’ve been in long conversations with a few readers and a couple of MPs about the real level of household income in the UK for ages. I – and they – keep pointing out that the …
We’ve written here several times before about how useful a land/location value tax (LVT) might be. But when we talk about it, like most people, we tend to focus on the kind of land that …
One of the biggest conundrums in the UK market at the moment is the failure of UK companies to invest. Last Saturday, Stephanie Flanders, now of JP Morgan, took to the pages of the FT, …
When governments get broke, governments get desperate. They look for ways to bring in money with no immediate obvious cost. So you get a residents permit for Greece if you buy property valued at over …
I am bemused by the coverage of George Osborne’s announcement that henceforth the state pension age will rise with life expectancy, which suggests that today’s young will not get their pension until they are knocking …
We have written here several times before about the tax status of foreign investors in UK property. It has long seemed odd that non-residents who hold for the long term are obliged to pay nothing but …
A letter arrives from a Scottish friend. It contains some materials from what you might call “the last Better Together campaign”, the referendum of 1979. There are some little stickers which read “Good Girls Say …