Luisa's Quandaries

Luisa’s line-up of mathematical quandaries:

1. More over 50s unemployed + More people having to work longer before they can receive their state pension = More older people with less money + More older people needing financial support
2. More people looking for work + Less jobs = Less money being spent + More people needing financial support
3. The growth of the economy will be directly proportional to the growth of small businesses

Luisa’s line up of non-mathematical quandaries:

1. Reducing charitable giving is better than directly taxing the rich
2. Increasing the costs of public transport is better than reducing the costs of public transport
3. Privatising public services is better than managing them effectively
4. Talking about neighbourhoods and localism is better than having neighbourhoods and localism
5. Privatising local authorities will be better than having effective public local authorities
6. Having someone to vote for is better than having no one to vote for
7. Propping up a dead elephant is better than saying OMG the elephant is dead !

Add your own.

Short Planetary Interlude

Luisa thinks you should just be mindful that at the moment: theres a whole lot of earthquaking and volcano erupting going on; that the Arab Spring may slide into a Muslim Brotherhood Winter; that the price of more individuality is becoming more surveillance; and that prices of boxes of chocolate are increasing. Luisa thinks it could be a useful exercise to try and use laws of intention to make chocolate more affordable because the other stuff is just out of control !

OMG, How do we tax the rich, its so difficult

Luisa has been thinking about the Tax Cap on charitable giving, carefully constructed to ensure very, very, very rich folk don't use charitable giving to avoid paying tax. It should probably be renamed the Dunce's Tax Cap as it is a strangely poor and superficial attempt to be seen to be trying to extract some tax from the VVVRF.  If HMG really wanted to ensure the VVVRF paid some tax at least, the simple thing to do surely is to enact a law or tax rule which says that if you earn say over £5million gross a year, no matter what your outgoings are you must pay a fixed % on that say 2% or a fixed sum, say £100k. That will force the VVVRF to pay their taxes but not interfere, [I hope] with charitable giving. I remember many years ago paying £7k in taxes in one year where I had earnt £47k - perhaps you'll say I needed a better accountant. I then discovered that someone I knew of had earnt £3.5 million in that same year and had paid £5k in tax. They obviously had better accountants, who themselves were probably tax deductible, but for me there was something very wrong with that situation. The Dunce's Tax Cap isn't going to resolve it.

Which end of the telescope are we looking through?

Luisa thinks to herself well, the Third Sector is a vital part of Big Society. So vital in fact that when it comes to the Work Programme, it is fully involved in waiting to be fully involved.  When its not fully involved in waiting its fully involved in fund-raising perhaps, or wondering how those who most need its services will be able to get them, or what ? Some are thinking about A4E but Luisa thinks they are a symptom rather than a cause. And that detracts from focusing on how those who need good services to gain their self-respect never mind a job, are going to get such services from a cash squeezed third sector. In the meantime, with many young people out of work, with inadequate jobs available, and with a deep need to encourage entrepreneurship, Luisa wonders why those approaching retirement still need to look for work, and yet others will be forced to work for longer, competing for work with younger members of society who probably need jobs more than imminent retirees. H'mmm. And this will continue for quite a while. Not a few months, but a few years. So who can we have an honest discussion with about all this ?