Pensioner scales UBS bank building in protest
A 77 year old man scaled the front of the UBS bank headquarters in London yesterday, prompting the police to come to the scene and force him down.
Around 3pm a group of pensioners held a protest outside the UBS building on Sun Street – opposite the #occupyLSX ‘bank of ideas’ building – against the notorious Shared Appreciation Mortgage (SAM) schemes.
The SAM schemes were aggressively marketed to thousands of pensioners and have left many stranded in unsuitable homes.
Brian tried to scale the UBS building as far as he could. He told passerbys: “Having worked for a lifetime we have literally had the rug snatched from under our feet.”
In 2009 the Telegraph explained:
Under the original agreements, borrowers were lent the money to buy property at the 0pc interest rate as long as when the owner came to sell the property they repaid 75pc of the appreciation.
In the example of the average UK property, this would mean a pay back of £68,500 plus the original 25pc borrowed. This would leave the home owner with only £70,370 to buy their next home, a tall order, even in today’s deflated market.
UBS was one of the biggest backers of SAMs and reaped massive profits from the deals.
The pensioner was not arrested and was released by police when he promised not to climb back up the building.
Conservatives aren’t sure if they saved the economy or copied Labour plans
I’m slightly confused by this. Fraser Nelson at the Spectator blogs:
So it is with Osborne and Balls. Rhetorically, they are poles apart; one championing cuts, the other spending. But you’ll notice that neither quantifies the cuts. That’s because Osborne is simply enacting an only-slightly-souped-up version of Darling’s plan and the real difference between the two parties is tiny.
Wait a second – they were dismissing Labour plans at the election as ‘deficit deniers’, weren’t they?
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Three important reasons why tax evasion matters in the UK
The research that Tax Justice Network published yesterday morning on tax evasion is, I think, shocking. The full report is here. I’ve posted a summary table of tax evasion for 145 countries too.
The real question is why does this matter? What’s the problem with the UK losing £69.9bn a year to tax evaders?
What’s the problem with Italy losing €183bn a year as a result of its 27% shadow economy – a shadow economy of the same size as that in Greece and more than twice the size of that in the UK?
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N30 demo: join the private sector wealth creators’ bloc
Good thing I won’t have to take David Cameron up on his stupid idea of bringing the kids into the office when teachers go on strike next Wednesday. I can just picture the chaos that would inevitably result.
The 11 year old would sulk in a corner all day long, telling anyone who politely introduced themselves that she really, really hated them and never wanted to speak to them ever again. Knowing my luck, she would demonstrate her awareness of the F-word within earshot of the chief executive.
Exclusive: How the government is exaggerating the cost of abortions
Last week the Telegraph revealed ‘new figures’ from the government that put the cost of abortions £30m ‘higher than previously thought’.
Lord Alton, the crossbench peer who obtained the new figures, said: “I have written to Lord Howe setting out a number of concerns about how Parliament came to be so very badly misled about the costs to the NHS associated with abortion.
I think the most pressing concern Lord Howe needs to address is why Lord Alton’s can’t understand his own bloody correspondence.
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Report says 50p tax doesn’t deter ‘talent’
You may have heard the constant drum-beat from right-wingers that the 50p tax deters talented executives from coming to the UK.
You may have also come across piss-poor reports against the 50p tax that were very likely written by an A-level Economics student.
But where is the evidence for these claims? It turns out there is some evidence…
The Financial Times reports today:
Fears that the 50p rate of tax would hinder recruitment of top executives have been allayed, according to a survey of 50 large companies that will relieve pressure on George Osborne to accelerate plans to abolish the controversial levy in next week’s autumn statement.
Only 13 per cent reported that the 50p rate for those earning more than £150,000 a year was proving a barrier to attracting senior managers to Britain, according to KPMG, the professional services group, in what it said was a “dramatic change of sentiment” since 2009 when over 80 per cent of companies expected the levy to hinder recruitment.
Damn, another right-wing myth busted. There’s one point though – expectation is also different to reality. Even if firms expect high taxes to deter people (as they did in 2009) – that doesn’t actually mean it worked like that in practice.
However I bet there is another government policy that is making it difficult to attract senior people to the UK – immigration restrictions.
I look forward to Conservatives arguing against immigration restrictions to promote business, since the 50p tax claim doesn’t stand up.
What in god’s name is Labour’s response to the Eurozone crisis?
I don’t really know how to say this in any other way: the Eurozone is in the midst of a long, drawn-out train crash of epic proportions. Follow it closely enough and you can almost see every sheet of metal rip like paper and huge objects smash into each other with terrifying force.
Jeremy Warner at the Telegraph has run out of adjectives to terrify people.
Hell, even I’ve given up trying to terrify people – I’m now worried about how this will play out politically.
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How much of a role does class play in self-confidence?
Self-confidence plays an important role in depressing social mobility. That’s the message of this new paper:
Even small differences in initial confidence can result in diverging patterns of human capital accumulation between otherwise identical individuals.
As long as initial differences in the level of self-confidence are correlated with the socioeconomic background [which they are]…self-confidence turns out to be a channel through which education and earnings inequalities are transmitted across generations.
Graphic: how national income has shrunk for the poorest
The pay gap has massively widened between the rich and the poor, reports the Guardian today, over the last year.
But how has this played out over several decades?
This info-graphic shows how, as a percentage of national income, poorer families now command a smaller part of the pie.
Meanwhile, the share of national income for the richest 1% has grown consistently over the last few decades – especially when bonuses are taken into account.
Info from the Resolution Foundation.
Can the US media deal with Republican lies?
Both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have so far started airing ads that blatantly lie about what Barack Obama said.
This isn’t really surprising – Republicans are known for lying in politics – but the real question is how the media deals with it.
Watch this segment from MSNBC last night, where Lawrence O’Donnell slams not just Perry and Romney for the ads, but the media for letting them get away with it.
Amazingly, when called out by some journalists for lying in the ad, here’s how Mitt Romney’s team replied:
None of that bothers Romney media strategist Stuart Stevens, who needled the Obama camp for what he called an overreaction to “a small buy on one station in New Hampshire.”
“It is now my goal for every ad we make to so upset the White House that they will force Jay to go out with his light saber and do his thing,” Stevens said in an email, pointing out that Democrats have been more than willing to target his candidate in harsh terms.
There’s no doubt we’ll see more of this over the next year.
It’ll be instructive to see how journalists tear themselves apart in trying to maintain the notion of ‘balance’ to avoid pointing out one side is simply lying.
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» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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