French downgrade wasn’t unexpected November 21, 2012 MOODY’S downgrade of France this week was hardly a surprise. Although blamed on the risk of Greece leaving the Eurozone, France’s structural challenges – its declining competitiveness, high unemployment, public debt and market rigidity – have long been worsening. The Eurozone crisis has only highlighted a more gradual decline in the country’s ability to compete [...]
It is shocking just how much tax most workers have to pay November 20, 2012 ONCE again, Boris Johnson is making sense on tax. He is right to be calling for a lower tax economy and to oppose increasing the tax on homeowners – while simultaneously demanding the elimination of the loopholes that mean that the current system is riddled with problems, especially when it comes to corporation tax. The [...]
We must ditch unfair loopholes – and then cut tax overall November 19, 2012 BRITAIN’S corporation tax system is broken. It is arbitrary, opaque, incomprehensible and unfair. At best, it is uncompetitive compared with other countries, such as Ireland; at worst it is a complete nightmare of complications and distorted incentives. Britain’s tax system is one of the worst things about the UK: It needs to be smashed up [...]
It is time for the BBC to allow its viewers freedom to choose November 12, 2012 WHAT a mess. The BBC, Britain’s most powerful and influential media company, is in crisis; the resignation of its director general hasn’t been enough to halt the chaos. Radical changes are needed to reform, strengthen and preserve the BBC; if Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, doesn’t want to introduce them then he [...]
End of quantitative easing will stop mad monetary recycling November 9, 2012 IT is time for George Osborne to start worrying. The Chancellor will be the biggest loser from the Bank of England’s right and proper decision to halt quantitative easing, at least for the time being. The biggest problem with QE – apart from its increasing lack of impact and the pain inflicted upon savers and [...]
The man who fell to earth November 1, 2012 FELIX Baumgartner is sitting in a Parisian hotel room having a wry chuckle about the likelihood, when plummeting out of space, of your skin boiling – a certainty in the case of pressurised spacesuit failure – or blood pushing your eyes out of their sockets – a distinct possibility if you get into a flat [...]
A fine watch is a connection to a sublime tradition November 1, 2012 Last week, while London was shrouded in fog, I found myself up in the clean air and bright sunshine of the Swiss Jura – the mountainous home of Swiss watchmaking. Trace an arc upwards from Geneva, as the Jura mountains curve their way along the French border towards Biel Bienne 100 miles north east, and [...]
The magical mystery of a tourbillon wristwatch November 1, 2012 If such a thing existed, a game of watch Top Trumps would have a number of horological functions vying for best-card-in-the-pack status. But because of its spellbinding romance, you’d struggle to trump the tourbillon. For collectors of prestige watches, it’s a complication that’s in a league of its own. A tourbillon is a device that [...]
Whirlwind wonders November 1, 2012 Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon The sort of watch to wear as you pen an eight-figure deal. Aside from being filthy handsome, it’s also jolly clever – its titanium tourbillon carriage weighs a feather-like 0.33 grams and sits in an automatic movement that comes in at just 6.4mm thick. £46,300 www.jaegerlecoultre.com Frederique Constant Slim Line [...]
Laurent Ferrier swells the ranks of collector brands in Mount Street’s niche luxury enclave November 1, 2012 At last month’s European Watch of the Year awards, hosted in London by 0024 WatchWorld magazine, the prize for the best watch between £8,000 and £25,000 was awarded to a brand most people will never have heard of. Francois-Paul Journe, whose Chronometre Souverain took the gong, makes fewer than 800 watches a year, each of [...]