Clearing the Augean Stable

This new Civitas report, I can see why the reports are talking more about the marriage (actually, the cohabitation) penalty. But that isn't the part that leaps out at me. That is this:

On average each household with a total income of £25,000 paid taxes of £10,362 and received state benefits of £10,503, it found.

Looking at the actual report (OK, well, the press release, whow much of these things do you think journalists actually read?) that's not quite what they say.

The original statement indicates that we're simply churning the money to and from the same...

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The sterling turning point?

I'm fairly pessimistic about the prospects for sterling - or the GBPeso as some CoffeeHousers have dubbed it. But as a counterbalance to the stuff I've been posting recently, here is a forecast from Royal Bank of Scotland which reckons sterling has been oversold, the turning point has arrived and that we will be able to afford to go on holiday after all. Our pounds will be buying €1.20 by next Christmas and €1.30 by Christmas 2010, but we can forget about those $2 pounds. Here is its graph (below). RBS inverts things, and asks how many pence a Euro will buy. RBS reckons the BoE will cut rates to 1% by Easter and keep them there - but nonetheless argues sterling is "cheap by historic standards" and "eventually, this should tempt foreign investors to move back into sterling". Here's hoping.

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Lies, damned lies and.....

Well, yes, we all know how Disraeli's dictum ends, with "statistics". A very nice little piece in The Times today.

The rate of cervical cancer in teenagers has been rising by 6.8 per cent a year for the past 25 years - up five times overall - a conference on teenage health was told. Teen promiscuity was promptly presumed and condemned. So it was almost disappointing that 6.8 per cent turned out to equal about 0.1 to 0.2 cases a year (one extra case every five or ten years), leaving a total figure so small, and so little changed,...

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The cycles of names

Rowan Pelling discoers that names seem to run in fashions, possibly even in cycles.

Writing as someone who had to name a child in 2008, I am fascinated by prevailing trends in nomenclature. Anyone would think that Parliament had passed an Act decreeing that all girls had to be named after Edwardian scullery maids and all boys after Victorian stable lads. There are oodles of Rubys, Ellas, Graces and Lilys, and lashings of Jacks, Harrys and Alfies. You can't move at our primary school for tripping over Daisys and Archies.

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Capping interest rates

Nooooooo!

FSB national chairman John Wright said: "With base rates at 2pc and falling, the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England must look into capping interest rates charged on credit cards.

"A cap on interest rates will at a stroke not only reduce business costs but give consumers a real boost and cut the cost of borrowing."

The call came as the Business Debtline, a government-funded debt advice charity, said that the number of business owners calling for help had doubled compared with last year. Alongside its consumer debt advice...

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