economic situation is dire

[snowychap]

I'm undecided...

I think it would be very sad to extend the threatening officiousness of the census compliance program to an annual event.

I also fail to see how this compulsion will do anything to actually 'engage' people in politics.

...NB Note, this is not the same as calling for ID cards for everyone. Neither Sweden nor Finland have compulsory ID cards despite having population registration systems.

A scandinavian may say that, over here, though, it would be the next natural step.

I'm not sure on the form in Scandinavian countries with commercial organizations using that data on thei population registration, either.

As for comparing it to lists held by government in other forms which they should not be disclosing to unauthorized people (e.g. tax authorities, NHS records, &c.), that's bizarre.

[Genie]

The economy anyone?

[peterms]

I also fail to see how this compulsion will do anything to actually 'engage' people in politics.

In itself, it doesn't. It's more about reducing the barriers. Engagement would need a lot more positive steps, not just taking away one negative thing. And I don't imagine you will ever manage to engage everyone, but I would like to see a move away from this drift into apathy and disengagement, which seems to be what we have now.

[LondonLax]

Again, are you suggesting that it should be compulsory for individuals to register themselves on the electoral roll (with the threat, firstly, of fines for not doing so, no doubt)?

I'm undecided, as between making it as simple as possible with no link to perceived disadvantages like jury service, and making it compulsory.

Might also be interesting to hear more about the Scandinavian system of population registration, mentioned below the line in the Guardian article:

Speaking as a Scandinavian living in the UK, I think the UK's whole approach to many things is backward, clumsy and open to fraud. This includes your electoral registration system. In Sweden and FInland, the process that you have to conduct censuses, actively go out and make people register to vote, take 2 electricity bills to prove your address when you want to open a bank account etc would be considered an anathema. The UK needs to introduce a well-managed, sensible population registration system. In the Nordic countries, this means censuses are unnecessary as the population register is kept up to date. Voter lists are generated using it, it provides a source of checking people's identity for bank accounts, contracts etc. Yet, in the UK such an idea is bizarrely considered a violation of people's privacy. (Although weirdly it's fine to have CCTV cameras on every corner, unthinkable in Sweden). Why is this? Surely your tax authorities, NHS etc already maintain registers of people with NI numbers or NHS numbers, which is essentially the entire population. So, what would be the difference made in having a proper civil registration system.

NB Note, this is not the same as calling for ID cards for everyone. Neither Sweden nor Finland have compulsory ID cards despite having population registration systems.

I find the Scandinavian registration system a bit odd myself.

Everyone's name, address, phone numbers and even how much they earn(!) is listed on the tax department's website accessible by anyone. A lot of people in the UK don't even like their phone numbers being listed, let alone all that info being available.

There are a lot of stories about the difficulties faced by migrants to get onto the system and the bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through to get registered in the country if you weren't born there.

I'm interested in moving to Sweden myself so I’ve been looking into it all.

[peterms]

I find the Scandinavian registration system a bit odd myself.

That does sound a bit strange. Doesn't sound like that would fit easily into our culture, but perhaps something which didn't involve quite that level of public disclosure would work.

[Awol]

The economy anyone?

Still ****.

[Awol]

T_V,

More seriously it's pretty impossibe to talk about the economy without putting it into the context of the Euro situation - and that will attract some very choice posts from those who have been utterly wrong about the whole thing from the start.... Even ardent EU'philes like Paddy Ashdown are saying the game is up and we are in for a massive financial shock from the Eurozone.

The Italian banks have been downgraded, Greece is absolutely in the poop and will have to default and withdraw from the Euro. When that happens the European banks are going to take a massive hit and will need to be recapitialised (bail out the bankers Round 2) but the trouble for us is that a lot of that debt is reinsured by CDS's through London so we'll get clattered too.

Once Greece has gone the markets will focus on the rest of PIIGS and eventually the Euro implodes and we all fall down. It really is that bad imo.

[peterms]

The Italian banks have been downgraded, Greece is absolutely in the poop and will have to default and withdraw from the Euro. When that happens the European banks are going to take a massive hit and will need to be recapitialised (bail out the bankers Round 2) but the trouble for us is that a lot of that debt is reinsured by CDS's through London so we'll get clattered too.

Once Greece has gone the markets will focus on the rest of PIIGS and eventually the Euro implodes and we all fall down. It really is that bad imo.

It's worse.

We're exposed to Greek debt, but Germany is more so, and France has 4x the exposure we have.

France is as exposed to Italian debt as us, Germany, Holland, the US, Japan, Spain and Belgium added together. Italy has more debt than anyone else with a maturity of one year - over $400bn.

It looks less like a series of crises facing the PIIGS countries, and more a major systemic crisis sucking others in straight away.

Iceland seems to be doing better, though.

[tonyh29]

Another £469m to add to the "Squandered by labour" tally

A project to replace fire and rescue control rooms in England with nine regional centres ended in "complete failure" and cost the taxpayer £469m, MPs have found.

Full story brought to your from a part of the Murdoch empire , evil since 2009

[peterms]

Private Eye is interesting on HMRC, Vodaphone and others, and the tendency for the head of the organisation to settle for small amounts in the face of legal advice that they have a strong case and can get a far higher settlement. A chat over a nice lunch, a gentleman's agreement.

Update on HMRC and Vodafone.

It seems that HMRC have a special oversight board whose function is specifically to ensure that officials do not come to private arrangements in making deals with tax dodgers, presumably in major cases rather than every case - but the head of HMRC somehow managed to conclude a private deal with Vodafone without troubling to inform the board.

I'm wondering why the bloke is still in the job.

HMRC admits corporate tax deal errors

• Senior HMRC official tells Treasury select committee of mistakes in high-profile cases

• Vodafone and Goldman Sachs tax settlements in spotlight

Britain's most senior taxman has admitted making "governance errors" when agreeing multibillion-pound settlements with large companies.

Dave Hartnett, HMRC's head of tax, has conceded that Revenue officials did not follow correct procedures in two high-profile cases that could have left taxpayers millions of pounds out of pocket.

The errors are understood to relate to claims that Vodafone faced a £6bn tax bill – a figure HMRC has described as "urban myth" – but paid only £1.25bn to settle the dispute. There are also suggestions US investment bank Goldman Sachs avoided £10.8m of tax payments last year.

Hartnett told a Treasury select committee that HMRC settled a tax dispute without informing all members of its oversight board. "There was one where a settlement without the whole of the high risk corporate programme board being consulted before the taxpayer was told the case was settled," he said.

In the other case an official neglected for a time to inform the board, leading to a delay which could have resulted in less tax being collected.

The high risk corporate board's supervision is meant to ensure tax officials do not agree settlements in private deals.

"We have a process laid down, and it was not fully followed," Hartnett said, according to a transcript of the hearing published on Tuesday. "The process is designed to ensure that for cases over a particular amount of money, there is broad oversight among our tax leaders of a proposed settlement."

Hartnett refused to explain exactly what went wrong, how much tax may have been lost or confirm which companies may have escaped their full tax commitments.

Jesse Norman, a Conservative member of the committee, said parliament was being prevented from discovering whether or not taxpayers have been left out of pocket.

"There is significant public concern that recent settlements with Vodafone and Goldman Sachs have not been properly handled and have resulted in smaller payments than were in fact due.

"Yet Mr Hartnett has refused even to indicate whether interest was paid by Vodafone on the tax due, despite confirming that it is an offence not to pay interest on tax owing."

Norman said the tax system is "disfigured by a lack of accountability", and called for greater parliamentary and ministerial oversight.

"At present MPs can be briefed in confidence by the intelligence services, yet cannot find out any details of improper private tax deals done by the taxman. Even Treasury ministers are left in the dark."

Norman said evidence of HMRC's "governance errors" came to light only after a National Audit Office investigation.

Vodafone's settlement, which led to widespread protests, saw HMRC collect £1.25bn to draw a line under a long-running investigation into its 2000 takeover of German rival Mannesmann. Leaks from the department suggested HMRC had wanted to collect up to £6bn from Vodafone.

Chuka Umunna, the shadow minister for small business, has said Goldman avoided £10.8m in tax when the case was dropped last year. Private Eye claims to have seen internal documents that show Hartnett failed to follow standard guidelines applied to other tax disputes when he settled the dispute with Goldman.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Well, the doomsday clock is ticking, Greece looks like it will default.

Are we all **** then?

[leviramsey]

Iceland seems to be doing better, though.

Absolutely.

Default and bankruptcy purge the rottenness and allow for reform and recovery.

Tim Cavanaugh writes in the new issue of Reason (article will come online in a few weeks, but I'll type it in myself)

The most important question we can learn about Iceland these days (after "How come Iceland is green and Greenland is icy?") is what we can learn from its economic recovery. In 2008, the tiny island nation in the North Atlantic became a byword for both boom-time excess and recessionary disaster. After inflating its financial sector with a pile of foreign-currency debt and risky combinations of short-term debt instruments with long-term loans, Iceland, which is not a member of the EU, endured one of the most unpleasant recessions in recent memory.

The country's three largest banks, with combined assets of more than 11 times Iceland's GDP, proved too big to fail and then too big to rescue, bankrupting the central bank that took them over and leaving foreign creditors empty-handed. Inflation in the import-heavy economy reached 18 percent while the stock market plunged 90 percent. Between 2007 and 2009, GDP dropped 40 percent. The krona turned into a pariah currency, and even the country's durable fishing and aluminum businesses were crippled by heavy leverage.

A collapse of this side needs a villain, and it will surprise no one to learn that libertarians, who hold an iron grip on political and economic practice throughout the world, took the blame. In a 2008 story for Fortune, Peter Gumble blamed deregulation and putatively free market reforms for destroying the banking system. New York Times economic poetaster Paul Krugman said the small island nation had been "hijacked by a combination of free-market ideology and crony capitalism". Huffington Post columnist Iris Erlingsdottir blamed the late Milton Friedman (who had once praised 10th century Iceland's approach to government) for failing to "take into account the predictably irrational character of human nature," and concluded, "It is time for the grownups to take over again."

As always, we had to look to the legendary Icelandic songstress Bjork for real wisdom. In a London Times essay blasting the country's ruling conservatives, Bjork lamented the way the boom/bust cycle had wiped out small entrepreneurs as big money pursued an oversupply of

aluminum smelters -- which was not an excrescence of the free market but a product of public industrial policy. Former Reykjavik mayor and Prime Minister David Oddsson did indeed pepper his tenure as head of Iceland's central bank with free market rhetoric. But that is about as far as it went. In their study of the crisis, Deep Freeze: Iceland's Economic Collapse, Philipp Bagus and David Howden illustrate how thoroughly Iceland's boom combined a Scandinavian nanny state -- which consumes 41% of GDP and features unemployment insurance that provides three years of benefits -- with the worst practices of boom-happy central bankers and government agencies everywhere.

For every government-driven bad improvement you can find in the west, you'll find boom-era Iceland taking it to the next level. Where the Federal Reserve's promise to backstop financial institutions was merely implicit, the Central Bank of Iceland in 2001 gave an explicit guarantee to big banks, making it inevitable that they would become bloated with risky and ultimately toxic assets. Our own government-sponsored -- and as of 2008, government-owned -- entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made a hash out of responsible lending by buying mortgages on the secondary market and lying about the poor quality of the debt on their books. But Iceland's government-run Housing Financing Fund managed to do even worse, lending directly to borrowers and competing with private lenders on both interest rates and loan quality. By mid-decade, 90 percent of Icelandic households had government loans, and no-money-down home purchases were as common in Iceland as they were in Florida.

When the predictable emergency hit, neither the government nor the private financial institutions had cash to redeem the large number of foreign-denominated loans. While the IMF eventually cobbled together a small bailout package, for the most part Iceland was alone. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown invoked anti-terrorism legislation against the charter members of NATO, trying to force Icelandic banks to repay British lenders. Russia promised a bailout but failed to deliver. The EU was, and remains, too preoccupied with its own profligate states to give attention to a remote island.

The international neglect turned out to be Iceland's saving grace. The crisis ended almost as quickly as it had begun. The OECD expects Iceland's economy to grow by 2% this year and next. That's not enough to replace the post-2007 loss, but it's more than enough to return to the pre-boom trend line, and it's much stronger than the performance of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, affectionately known as the PIIGS economies. Iceland's long term interest rate, a not-inconsiderable 8 percent, compares well with Greece's, which is astounding when you consider that Iceland has endured a default that Greece, at least in name, has so far avoided. The difference in unemployment -- 5.8 percent for Iceland against 16 percent for Greece -- is even more striking. Iceland expects to have a balanced budget in 2013.

Paul Krugman naturally draws the wrong conclusion, contending that Iceland saved itself through rapid inflation and capital controls. This is like saying that the March tsunami gave the people of Tohoku a nice chance to go swimming: Iceland's central bank tried desperately to control the krona's collapse before giving up. Nevertheless Erlingsdottir is correct: the "grownups" -- a center-left coalition led by Social Democrat Johanna Sigurdardottir -- are back in charge and are doing their best to double down on the bad policies of the past, including reducing fish quotas when local fishermen most need to be producing and selling. The government is also, in the face of strong popular opposition, moving toward EU membership, which has worked out so beautifully for other troubled European economies.

So what's causing the recovery? The plain-sight answer is the one nobody will consider: Iceland is coming back specifically because its banks went out of business. That happened in spite of strenuous public efforts, but the removal of the tiny nation's colossally bloated financial sector turns out not to have eliminated all that much value.

It bears repeating that banks are not creators of wealth. They are places where you store the surplus value generated by productive enterprise. In very narrow circumstances that surplus value can be loaned out at a profit, but a financial sector is icing, not the cake. This should be common sense, but apparently it is wisdom so rare it can only be learned in countries small enough and remote enough to avoid the deadly medicine of the global financial markets.

[legov]

Jesus, these Republicans sicken me so much.

[JulieB]

Regarding the impending Greek Debt default & Eurozone crisis...... this video is depressingly hilarious but is so true and as topical as ever.

[DanishVillan]

I find the Scandinavian registration system a bit odd myself.

Everyone's name, address, phone numbers and even how much they earn(!) is listed on the tax department's website accessible by anyone. A lot of people in the UK don't even like their phone numbers being listed, let alone all that info being available.

There are a lot of stories about the difficulties faced by migrants to get onto the system and the bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through to get registered in the country if you weren't born there.

I'm interested in moving to Sweden myself so I’ve been looking into it all.

That is not true for all of Scandinavia. You will not find any of those figures in Denmark. Especially the earnings.

We do have ID cards (social security) and we have all been reduced to CPR-numbers, given by birth or when becoming a citizen, but the personal information is not public. You need to be a controller for that.

Regarding the economy...Buy the dip and get more gold!

[tonyh29]

So Ed Balls has changed his tune on the economy now ..... shame he wasn't so prudent when he was helping Gordon bankrupt a nation

[VILLAFC2000]

So Ed Balls has changed his tune on the economy now ..... shame he wasn't so prudent when he was helping Gordon bankrupt a nation

Thar old Chesnut...!

I think you will find that points towards growth is better than sticking your head in the sand like an Ostrich hoping that things get better.

Then again I guess its OK if you're a Multi million air, who represents the top .5% wealthiest people in the country.

All in together we are certainly not.

[snowychap]

So Ed Balls has changed his tune on the economy now

Has he? Not sure I heard that.

[peterms]

So Ed Balls has changed his tune on the economy now ..... shame he wasn't so prudent when he was helping Gordon bankrupt a nation

It's an astonishing line to take. I haven't read the speech, just read the Grauniad summary, which I take to be not libellously inaccurate.

He will also tell delegates that if there is any windfall from the sale of state-owned bank shares such as RBS, the cash will be used exclusively to pay down the deficit and not boost state spending.

Translation: we will use any windfall income to reduce demand and shrink gdp, throwing more people on to the dole, closing more businesses, making recovery ever harder. This is because, out of political cowardice, I have become a captive of the popular press and mainstream economists, and have lost the capacity for critical thought.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that turning around public opinion was "hard".

Translation: ...so we're not going to bother trying.

When he was appointed, I had some hope that he would try to shake the Labour Party out of its complacent and stupid acceptance of the status quo, and challenge the mindless and ignorant shite which is pumped our way every hour of every day by every media channel including the Beeb.

It seems he is making the usual electoral calculation about tacking to the right in the hope of squeezing a few more votes out of the Lib/Tory floaters, assuming that everyone to the left of that will vote Labour no matter what illiterate shite they spout.

Bad move, Ed.

[Risso]

It isn't really going to matter what he says or does while Ed Milliband is in charge, is it?