I’m launching a new conference on tax justice in London on May 2nd through International Tax Review magazine. It’s free to attend if you’re an activist or with an NGO and you’ll hear from a whole host of great speakers including former Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, and anti-poverty activist Richard Murphy. [...]
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was an economic theorist whose views on money and unemployment became some of the most influential of the twentieth century, shaping government politice worldwide. Seeming to forget how badly that century went in its latter half as much as the first, scores of leftists have now been turning to various versions [...]
This week has seen a huge furore over the Government’s “workfare” scheme, whereby unemployed people, and those on disability benefits, can be forced to work for 30 hours a week. If they refuse, they can have their benefits removed for a period of three months. Amidst the uproar, I thought it might be worthwhile to [...]
Athens has begun to burn. Since 2008, Greece has sacrificed everything – up to and including its multi-party democracy – in order to ensure that French and German banks can continue to recieve tribute on their loans, and that the Euro can go on in its present form. On sunday night, a people with little [...]
Imagine a door-to-door salesman comes to your house one day to try and sell you a burglar alarm by telling you about the terribly high crime rate is in your area. You’re not convinced, so you tell him you don’t want one. A little while later that same salesman breaks into your house, nicks the [...]
This is a guest post by Natty As we all struggle to grasp what David Cameron’s veto in Brussels last Friday actually means, one theme continues to re-emerge. Indeed it’s a theme that has emerged time and time again in the history of British politics. When asking ourselves why the PM decided to ostracise the [...]
Well, my friends, the suspension of Greek democracy appears to be complete. When Papanderou was forced out, to be replaced by a government of national unity. I remarked: Greece’s multi-party democracy has in effect been supplanted by one party – The Austerity Party. The political elites have, in effect, formed a cartel. Greece’s major parties [...]
There are serious tensions building up within the Conservative Party ahead of tomorrow, as MPs prepare on whether Britain should have an in/out referendum on the EU. Cameron has whipped has MPs to vote against it, and the possibility of a minor rebellion has generated numerous column inches. However most commentators have failed to grasp [...]
On reading George Osborne’s oh-so-convincing CiF piece setting out exactly how tough he’s going to get with tax dodgers (they’re “like benefit cheats” apparently – can you imagine the depths of their perfidy?), one sentence in particular jumped out at me: Tax evaders also make use of tax loopholes, and the truth is that over [...]
Last night, the American House of Representatives passed legislation to raise the debt ceiling and heavily cut public spending – a historic move if you take into account the first has never been conditional on the latter. Today, the Senate unsurprisingly passed it. This trimming of the budget was inevitable considering the normalisation of neoliberal policies. [...]
