UK - People wanting work and vacancies

The jobs survey today appears to show a slowly improving picture. However what stands out to me is how many people are marked as 'inactive - wants a job'. This graph shows what I mean:



Here's the ratio of the total of these two data sets to the available vacancies.



Source: Office of National Statistics, tables MGSC (ILO Unemployment Level Ages 16-64 - Quarterly seasonally adjusted), LFM2 (Inactive - wants a job - Quarterly seasonally adjusted) and AP2Y (All vacancies - Quarterly seasonally adjusted).

Alternative Vote (AV) in simple terms

From all the reports about AV I've seen there seems to be a general attempt to portray AV as being hard to understand. But it's not hard, it's just different to what you're used to. About the best explanation I've seen involves chocolate bars.

Let's assume you've won in the ubiquitous school raffle and your prize is a chocolate bar. The choices are a Twix, a Mars Bar, a Marathon (yes a Marathon, this is Great Britain we're talking about), or a Bounty.

Now if I ask for a Twix and they have a Twix left in stock, then I'm happy. Twix is my favourite.

The issues arise if they don't have any Twix left, because then I'm just going to get a random selection of the others depending upon what is left. So I might get a Bounty, and I can't stand those.

What I want to be able to do is give my full order. I'd like a Twix, but failing that a Mars Bar. I'll have a Marathon at a push, but avoid a Bounty unless there is nothing else.

It doesn't stop you getting a Bounty (you might be a Twix person in an area of Bounty lovers and they've got a job lot in stock), but it makes it less likely that you will.

And AV works like that. What you're actually doing is telling the system how much you dislike each candidate. The higher the number, the more you dislike the candidate.

Which with politicians is probably the best way of looking at them.

HMRC to tax Monopoly income

In what can only be described as desperation by the Coalition government it looks like HMRC are seeking powers to apply Income Tax and National Insurance to the income from Monopoly games.

A government sponsored amendment was tabled this morning to the Finance (No. 3) Bill currently before parliament under the innocuously title of "Clarification of applicability of certain treaties". It looks like HMRC are seeking to rely on Article VIII of the IMF treaty to enforce conversion of all type of fiat currencies within their jurisdiction.

The HMRC argument is of course solid. Monopoly money has exactly the same backing as Sterling and they are, of course, much more interested in people earning £200 salaries than £2 million since at that level you can't afford clever lawyers and accountants to cause HMRC any trouble (like having to think before they act).

As it says in the notes accompanying the release "We expect people enjoying themselves for several hours on wet Sunday afternoons to pay their fair share of tax"

We have seen this sort of underhand trick before. HMRC introduced the IR35 legislation in much the same way. There were indications throughout the opposition years that the government would scrap IR35 when they got into power, but as usual what you say when seeking a vote is not what you do once you've got it.

About the best we can hope for now is that the exchange rate between Sterling and Monopoly cash will deteriorate further, which will probably happen given the government's current plans to run the country into the ground.

For more details see the press release