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Anorak said:

Scott_P said:

BoZo threatening England might pull out of the World Cup.

Saves the embarrassment perhaps...

Perhaps we can see a few hundred paras dressed as normal supporters who 'accidentally' end up in the wrong bar.

Would be pleasing to see the Russian ultra-nationalists given both a literal and metaphorical bloody nose.

edmundintokyo said:

Nigelb said:

This looks encouraging:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/06/north-korea-promises-not-use-nuclear-weapons-against-south-border/
Pyongyang had indicated that it would not need to keep its nuclear weapons if military threats against the country are resolved and it receives a credible security guarantee, said the South Korean envoy.

Possible peace in Korea ?

It's hard to see how anyone would be able to give them a credible security guarantee after what the Americans did to Gaddafi.

hamiltonace said:

Just had an email from regulatory consultant explaining that BSI (British Standards) will become Dutch. As such their audits will comply with Dutch law and allow us to issue CE marks as before. The only question we don't know is if the UK Government will now accept that control of the medical devices sold in the UK is under the Dutch.

hamiltonace said:

Just had an email from regulatory consultant explaining that BSI (British Standards) will become Dutch. As such their audits will comply with Dutch law and allow us to issue CE marks as before. The only question we don't know is if the UK Government will now accept that control of the medical devices sold in the UK is under the Dutch.

hamiltonace said:

Just had an email from regulatory consultant explaining that BSI (British Standards) will become Dutch. As such their audits will comply with Dutch law and allow us to issue CE marks as before. The only question we don't know is if the UK Government will now accept that control of the medical devices sold in the UK is under the Dutch.

williamglenn said:

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/971012651957542912

Elliot said:

williamglenn said:

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/971012651957542912

Career civil servant opposes Brexit.

Andy_Cooke said:

DavidL said:

Talking of PPE my son is about to enter a school economics essay competition. The question is what taxes are good taxes?

Initial thoughts duties and other taxes designed to discourage self-destructive behaviours. Taxes which discourage excessive speculation perhaps. More arguably taxes designed to improve the Gini coefficient if you believe that increases societal stability. Possibly taxes which allow society to share in development gains that it has created or facilitated. Generally Colbert's goose may get a mention.

Any more out there suggestions?

Economically, taxes which don't create large tax wedges and discourage economic activity. All taxes incentivise reduction of the supply of what they're taxing - which is why taxes on land tend to be the less distorting (they've already stopped making it). The OECD did an empirical investigation on which taxes most and least affect economic activity here: http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=eco/wkp(2008)51&doclanguage=en

Short summary: profit taxes most reduce growth (economically, profit and growth can be near synonyms, so that's not surprising), then income taxes. Consumption taxes (eg VAT) have a significantly less effect and taxes on immovable land have the least negative effect (some designs of Land Value Tax - ie if based on the unimproved value of the land) have the near-unique property of increasing economic activity (if you're being taxed the same amount whether or not you've put something valuable on it, you may as well put something valuable on it and get the benefit).
A financial transactions tax has the opposite extreme effect of being able to reduce the economic activity by more than the amount it gathers in tax, due to reducing the amount of transactions in the economy.

TheWhiteRabbit said:

DavidL said:

Talking of PPE my son is about to enter a school economics essay competition. The question is what taxes are good taxes?

Initial thoughts duties and other taxes designed to discourage self-destructive behaviours. Taxes which discourage excessive speculation perhaps. More arguably taxes designed to improve the Gini coefficient if you believe that increases societal stability. Possibly taxes which allow society to share in development gains that it has created or facilitated. Generally Colbert's goose may get a mention.

Any more out there suggestions?

Work out the world you want to see, then work out how to get there.

There's not point trying to lower the GINI co-efficient unless you think the current one is too high.

If you think smoking is great, why discourage it - or to use a more difficult example, alcohol: is current consumption too high? If yes, why did we scrap the escalator, but if no, why tax it at all?

DavidL said:

Andy_Cooke said:

DavidL said:

Talking of PPE my son is about to enter a school economics essay competition. The question is what taxes are good taxes?

Initial thoughts duties and other taxes designed to discourage self-destructive behaviours. Taxes which discourage excessive speculation perhaps. More arguably taxes designed to improve the Gini coefficient if you believe that increases societal stability. Possibly taxes which allow society to share in development gains that it has created or facilitated. Generally Colbert's goose may get a mention.

Any more out there suggestions?

Economically, taxes which don't create large tax wedges and discourage economic activity. All taxes incentivise reduction of the supply of what they're taxing - which is why taxes on land tend to be the less distorting (they've already stopped making it). The OECD did an empirical investigation on which taxes most and least affect economic activity here: http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=eco/wkp(2008)51&doclanguage=en

Short summary: profit taxes most reduce growth (economically, profit and growth can be near synonyms, so that's not surprising), then income taxes. Consumption taxes (eg VAT) have a significantly less effect and taxes on immovable land have the least negative effect (some designs of Land Value Tax - ie if based on the unimproved value of the land) have the near-unique property of increasing economic activity (if you're being taxed the same amount whether or not you've put something valuable on it, you may as well put something valuable on it and get the benefit).
A financial transactions tax has the opposite extreme effect of being able to reduce the economic activity by more than the amount it gathers in tax, due to reducing the amount of transactions in the economy.

Bad link. Can you try again?

CarlottaVance said:

How old is 'old'? Depends on how old you are...

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/03/06/how-young-are-young-people-and-what-age-does-perso/

CarlottaVance said:

Elliot said:

hamiltonace said:

Just had an email from regulatory consultant explaining that BSI (British Standards) will become Dutch. As such their audits will comply with Dutch law and allow us to issue CE marks as before. The only question we don't know is if the UK Government will now accept that control of the medical devices sold in the UK is under the Dutch.

All British standards will become based on a country a third of the size. Sure.

BSI’s role as an EU Notified Body will not change following the recent UK decision to leave the EU. While the UK Government sets out the arrangements for its withdrawal from the EU, we will be working closely with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Department of Health to ensure continuity of our full scope designation as a Notified Body for Medical Devices.


https://www.bsigroup.com/en-IL/medical-devices/news-centre/enews/2016-enews/eu-referendum/

Charles said:

DavidL said:

Talking of PPE my son is about to enter a school economics essay competition. The question is what taxes are good taxes?

Initial thoughts duties and other taxes designed to discourage self-destructive behaviours. Taxes which discourage excessive speculation perhaps. More arguably taxes designed to improve the Gini coefficient if you believe that increases societal stability. Possibly taxes which allow society to share in development gains that it has created or facilitated. Generally Colbert's goose may get a mention.

Any more out there suggestions?

I’d start with defining what is a good tax and work from there

Something that is simple, easy/cheap to collect, hard to avoid, and non economically distorting.

You can then compare various types of tax (income, capital, wealth, employment, sales etc) against those before zeroing in on more specific taxes

From memory VAT comes pretty high up the spectrum of “good taxes”

In terms of ease of collection/difficulty of avoiding, land/property would first, then essential local consumption (VAT/Fuel duty), people (basic incomes) and finance last of all unfortunately.