Woke up with a cold this morning, and thought “wouldn’t it be nice to have a bank holiday today and get up a bit later?”. Fat chance though with our miserly quota of public days off, and a dreary 16 week run without hols between August and Xmas.

The Bank of England used to recognise more than 30 holidays and saints’ days, which were whittled back to a miserly four in 1834 (a bad thing). These were then increased to six (in practice) in 1871, when the cricket-mad Liberal MP John Lubbock introduced the Bank Holidays Act to include two traditional village cricketing days, but we then had to wait over 100 years for another day off, with the last two coming in the 70’s as a result of union campaigning.

But that’s still nearly 20 years ago, I reckon another couple are very much deserved. Especially so as in the Euro holiday league tables, we’re right at the bottom, and probably about to be relegated - The average European enjoys three more public holidays. Read the rest of this entry »

Tories under fire in the Guardian today for their non-dom tax plans, as it seems there may not actually be that many people to pay the non-dom charge. What surprised me most though was the tiny level of the charge - a fraction of what these people owe. Surely better to get as many as possible to pay a realistic tax rate (even if you want to be generous and give them some measure of a proportional discount for staying away) than to get lots of them coughing up peanuts? Read the rest of this entry »