Oh dear Polly

Once she gets the bit between her teeth she doesn't let go easily, does she?

Labour could effectively end it by disallowing bonuses to be set against a company's tax as a legitimate expense. Research suggests that bonuses and performance-related pay serve no good purpose, though these false incentives have been a Labour article of faith, leaking into the public sector. "No more bonuses - an honest day's pay for an honest day's work" should be Labour policy: watch the Tories U-turn to oppose it.

We can all see what she means....that those few thousand City bankers shouldn't be...

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Colonies and feudal dependencies

George Monbiot is going on about how appalling it is that various British colonies are tax havens....pretty standard rhetoric really. But as far as I'm aware there's a small logical hole in the argument.

These figures scarcely do justice to the UK's responsibility for this menace. The website Shelter Offshore, which helps people to avoid their obligations to society, has just published its list of the world's "top 5 tax havens". Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man come first. "These highly respectable British offshore tax havens," the site tells us, "can be very attractive indeed", offering "superior...

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Caroline Kennedy

Umm, no, not quite.

For a generation whose shared memories include a photograph of a little boy and girl in sky-blue jackets at the state funeral of their father, yesterday's news that Caroline Kennedy was seeking to enter elected politics with a run for the Senate was sweet redemption.

At least for some. Reports that Kennedy, 51, the sole surviving child of the late John Kennedy, wanted to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate stirred up tender sentiments about the restoration of Camelot - and, in other quarters, a certain amount of political jealousy.

The New York...

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Daily Brief

Before his firm and its website were taken over by receivers, self-confessed fraud Bernard L. Madoff offered prospective clients this online description of his firm's mission:

"In an era of faceless organizations owned by other equally faceless organizations, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC harks back to an earlier era in the financial world: The owner's name is on the door. Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing and high ethical standard that has always been the firm's hallmark."

Touching.

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Newspaper economics

Jim Surowiecki's column on newspapers is a good one, especially when he talks about the drop-off in advertising revenues and newspapers' failure in the online space. I have to take issue with this, however:

People don't use the Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today they don't have to pay for it...
For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime--intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on--and the low costs of the new one. But

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