Britain must plan exit strategy from failing EU, but should keep trade links As Europe’s leaders gamble their nations’ finances on saving the Euro, a new Civitas report reveals that the European Union is damaging Britain’s economic recovery and sapping job growth. Time to Say No, by Ian Milne, shows that a break with the… [Read More]
Via the Monkey Cage, we learn of a new and interesting academic study examining how public opinion effects law-making across US states. The results offer some tentative support for a theory put forward in our report, Total Recall. There we argued that direct democratic mechanisms can complement representative democracy but primarily as a way to… [Read More]
Plans to expand the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) have taken a tumble at the last hurdle. Yesterday (11 October), a vote in the Slovak parliament – the 17thand final Eurozone member state needed to accept the reform measures – failed to gather the necessary support, leaving the expansion of the EFSF in disarray. The… [Read More]
This is the last of a short series on the subject of pensions. In an earlier post, I considered the situation of a low-wage earner saving in order to preserve a constant income after retirement. I now present a final example to illustrate the retirement planning of someone further up the income scale.
It is not clear if David Cameron was really planning on telling ‘households – all of us’ to pay off ‘credit card and store card bills’ or whether he really just meant that in general ‘the only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts’. Whatever Mr Cameron’s original intention, it… [Read More]
When people mention personal pensions, Gordon Brown and the Dividend Tax Credit get mentioned soon afterwards. This note sets that change in the context of other reductions to pensions.
Long anticipated plans to introduce a financial transaction tax (FTT) have come a step closer to fruition with the European Commission President announcing the proposal in his state of the union address. Speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday (Wednesday 28 September), José Manuel Barroso announced that the college of commissioners has already adopted… [Read More]
By David Fraser The Secretary of State for Justice, Ken Clarke, has claimed that recent falls in crime have occurred at a time of increased prosperity. He concluded that therefore the way to reduce offending rates further was to improve prosperity levels generally, and added that there was no link between imprisonment and crime. However,… [Read More]
A Guest post by Peter Morgan over at LeftFootForward offers a real blast from the past. He suggests introducing price controls on rental properties. His theory is that this will act as a simple transfer of wealth from property owners to renters (who spend more of their income), thus stimulating the economy far better than… [Read More]
Tomorrow will see BAE Systems disclose how many jobs the company will cut. Expectations are that around 3,000 jobs will be lost across 3 sites in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Unions and opposition politicians have called on the Government to take action, but is there anything useful the Government can do?