Best Of

R4 Today; someone is building some sort of funfair in Bedfordshire; which is fine, as long as attendance is not compulsory. This is of such cultural significance that a 'culture' minister comes on to talk about it. A funfair with rides, not the place of Pirandello in European culture or Merovingian reliquaries.

More to the point, they expect 8 million customers a year and to employ tens of thousands. Which is good too. This expectation does not suggest that capitalism believes we are a nation impoverished, unemployable, bed bound, shoeless, homeless, on the sick, childless or travelling only on foot accompanied by a stick and a spotted handkerchief.

fun and Bedfordshire in the same sentence?

Bedfordshire is the birthplace of that witty and hilariously comic fun book 'Pilgrim's Progress'.

Any amusement park in the county should be called 'Vanity Fair'.

Never forget that Bedfordshire is also the birthplace of the hallowed institution known as Political Betting. 😄

So that's what's tanking treasuries.

Trump's economic chief just revealed plans to TAX foreign holdings of US financial assets. Hidden in plain sight.
Miran outlined 5 forms of "burden sharing" for countries benefiting from the US dollar reserve system:
Four of these deal with reducing trade surpluses (more US exports, less US imports, etc.) - essentially reducing their net accumulation of US financial assets.
But the 5th proposal is the bombshell: Countries "could simply write checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods."
Translation: You can keep holding US Treasuries and dollar financial assets, but you'll now pay a tax for the privilege.
It's now almost a slam dunk that the administration's upcoming tax bill (likely in May) will include a provision bringing back the 30% foreign withholding tax on interest income that was eliminated in 1984.
We predicted exactly this move in our ‘Dollar’s Dilemma’ and ‘Sovereign Wealth Effect’ reports published in Dec and Feb...
https://x.com/michaeljmcnair/status/1909632751306780765

I don’t understand what any of this means

Have you applied to Trump's Cabinet?

Homebrew economics

My mate and I have spent about £1800 on equipment. We've got a thirty litre mash boiler, and four stainless steel fermenters. Plus various other tubes, filters, buckets

And bottles

We bought 250 bottles, and we've been collecting them from mates, but we need more

We're making about 45 litres a week of really decent tasting, strong ale - between 5.5 and 6% ABV, for about £35 ingredients - so about 40p for each half litre bottle

If I were to include my labour as a cost, even at third world wages, I'd be better off buying beer. But I'm absolutely loving doing it, and vastly preferring my beer over those I can buy

We've so far bottled 400 half litre bottles, and we have another 190ish in the fermenters

I reckon I need to get to about 2000 bottles to make the beer cheaper than the shops, including the cost of the kit

We're planning to buy bigger kit, to make the work more efficient, and sell our surplus to mates to help cover the capital cost

So Trump wants the EU to give a subsidy to the USA which it doesn’t give to its own manufacturers .

Why is the EU even bothering to try and negotiate ?

Yes, there is absolutely no point negotiating.

They should be following China's lead & retaliating.

The quicker & harder the retaliation, the faster the S&P will fall. And the faster the S&P falls, the greater will be incentive for other parties to step in & stop Trump.

Europe and the UK are in danger of making the same mistake they made with Putin. If you appease bullies they come back for more.

Just as with Putin, those who live next door have the measure of the man and are not being taken for suckers. Europe should learn from Canada.

As much as a lot of us are revelling in the errors of the US, let’s not lose sight of the errors of the UK.

I’m just back home from an afternoon/evening with a new “21-E” - a high net worth Who is moving here for tax reasons from the UK.

He’s late 30’s, a delightful chap, lovely young family, worth high 8 figures at the moment. He’s moving his tech co here because of UK taxes and very, very much, his feels that under Labour he will be a constant cash cow/evil problem.

He is also moving to here over the coming year most of the top people from his company.

On Friday I’m meeting another big tech person who needs a bit of advice as he is moving here, along with key staff and their money.

So the US is shitting the bed but don’t forget the massive arse explosion the UK has done.

The UK could kill it if they reverse non-dom matters and frankly go beyond that, issue loads of 5 year income/cgt tax free periods for people moving to the uk if they bring businesses.

There has probably never been a better time for the uk to reverse the transatlantic brain drain and the innovation and tax potential.

Why the hell should the gilded tech-bros be tax exempt while we PAYE plebs pay?

They make their money because we pay for the physical and legal infrastructure of the country.

We need some collective action.



Don't fly on an American airline.

.

Probably a very wise safety tip.

2 flights on United coming up this Thursday.

But I’m consistently good at avoiding baseball references in work. We need to enforce a complete boycott of baseball terminology, and introduce more cricket, rugby and football into biz jargon.

Out with touch base, circle back, wheelhouse, curveball, three strikes and you’re out; in with close of play, sticky wicket, straight bat, stumped, open goal, kicked into touch, back of the net, and scrum teams.

That's a bit of a left-field idea.

Rugby is just American "football" without the namby-pamby armor, er, I mean armour!

No it isn't.. for starters US football allows forward passes and has ridiculous words such as scrimmage instead of scrummage. .

Thanks to NZ inspired rule tinkering union also seems to allow forward passes most of the time. Some bullshit about players momentum making it seem that passes are forward when they are not…

League’s very twitchy about forward passes and being offside.

Gerrem onside is a favourite shout.

Long term fan of Bath. Constantly amused by my fellow supporters lack of understanding of the spectacle in front of them. The idea that there is only an offside during scrums, line outs, mauls and rucks is beyond them.

I once tried to understand the rules of rugby, but in the end decided to stick to translating the dead sea scrolls into Amharic to keep life simple. A rugby playing friend tells me that the players don't understand them either.