1. If you haven't done so read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's piece in the Telegraph today. He makes the point that either it is announced straightaway that €2 trillion is to be made available to the EFSF (the EU's equivalent of the IMF) or that the EU is going to be abandoned in an orderly fashion. He says the choice is for either a spiralling crisis in the southern part of the euro zone that will cause a catastrophic financial collapse crisis or for Germany and its satellites to withdraw immediately from EMU so that the other states led by France can continue with the euro at a devalued rate. Will the pigmy eurocrats follow this advice? Seems unlikely as it is too sensible.
2. We all know the BBC hate the Republicans in general and Sarah Palin in particular but should they have allowed Richard Bacon on his BBC 5 show to tell people to watch a video of Doug Stanhope (a comedian apparently) making remarks about Sarah Palin's Down's Syndrome suffering son that the Down's Syndrome Association has described as abhorrent? Yet again the BBC has let us down. It can never be put in its place whilst we continue financing it in a manner which may have been acceptable when it first came into existence but which today is wholly inappropriate. The BBC belongs to those who pay for it and not to the people who work in it although you'd never guess that that was so.
3. The government is considering reducing the 50% tax rate to 45%. I can see the political reasoning behind this reduction but although a 40% tax rate was once considered cutting edge other countries have passed us by so if we want to regain our position we should reduce our rate to no more than 35% and our capital gains tax rate to 20%.
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