Steve Hemingway

We rarely watch live TV. Either we use a Tivo, or the much more recent, but also far inferior, V+ box. I have complained about the uselessness of the V+ box in the past.

This entry is nothing to do with these PVRs per se. The problem is the failure of those who compile TV listings to recognise that people increasingly do not watch TV live. There is an honourable exception to this rule: On the Box.

I am typing this while half-watching a TV programme, so I'm afraid this is going to be a rather feeble entry.

Pensions seem a great thing. The government encourages pension savings by allowing us to save out of our gross income and by exempting pension savings from income and capital gains taxes.

So far so good. However, pension saving bears a huge burden of regulatory compliance. There are high costs associated with employing armies of actuaries to administer and oversee pension savings, and there are heavy opportunity costs of restricting savings to those areas the government deems suitable for pension investment.

I don't think that anybody really knows every rule that governs pensions. There are, as Google puts it 'about 11,200 pages' on the HMRC website that mention the word 'pension' or 'pensions'. I understand that early drafts of the overview of the so-called pensions simplification that came into force in April last year ran to over 3000 small-type pages.

It is not permitted for pensions to invest in residential property, and it is not permitted for pension equity to benefit from significant gearing, and it is not permitted for pension savings in close companies (fewer than ten shareholders). As far as I am concerned, these are not minor restrictions.

It is, it seems possible to invest in overseas companies, and these companies can invest in anything they like, including residential property. They are also permitted to borrow. It has been suggested to me that if I can 'round up' ten investors who would be interested in investing alongside me in a company, for example in the IoM, we can gear up this company and invest our capital in some suitable investment. These investors could invest some of their pension savings, as I plan to, or invest any other savings.

My preference would be for one of the offshore development vehicles set up by Chinese companies to benefit from a reduced Chinese tax charge. These are typically registered in the BVI or similar tax-haven countries, but investing in any Chinese property exposure seems good to me.

If you are interested in joining such a syndicate, please get in touch. I am not offering total democracy, but I will certainly be happy to discuss exactly what the moneys are invested in. As you have probably guessed, I have been in discussion with a pensions specialist about this kind of structure.

I have also discovered that, in principle, the requirement to liquidate the pension investment and purchase an annuity can be deferred at least until age 85. This removes one of the other major reservations I have about increased pension savings.

xml=/news/2007/08/21/ncancer121.xml">This article caught my attention. There has been outrage today that Rudi Guilliani has a ad which implies that prostate cancer survival rates are dramatically lower in the UK under its system of (expensive) socialized medicine than in the US.

The outrage seems to be that money is needed for medical care in the US. It is as if it is perfectly OK for more people to die from preventable illness in the UK because at least we don't require patients to have money.

The US system is a deeply flawed one, to be sure, but to defend the British system because it is morally superior even though it has worse health outcomes seems deeply perverse. But as Nigel Lawson once said, the NHS is the closest thing Britain has to a national religion.

I urge you to read this article and to give thanks to God for not being at the mercy of People who run Housing Benefit Departments.

In my day-job as a letting agent have a very limited contact with Housing Benefit Offices. My experience is not as negative as that of Intrepid Carpet, but I can well imagine what it is like for him. Generally Herts Lettings will not let to any tenants on Housing Benefit, not because we think that they will be bad tenants, but because we don't want to have to deal with Housing Benefit. Random amounts of rent are paid in an irregular stream, generally at intervals of one week or four weeks. Strange gaps appear around the end of the fiscal year. Generally the benefit is not sufficient to cover the rent and the tenant has to pay a supplement, usually via a monthly standing order, to compensate. Without a very good accounting system it is virtually impossible to keep track of arrears.

The bigger problem is that there really is no mechanism through which claimants are ever going to receive anything other than the most unsatisfactory treatment from the authorities. There is no economic incentive for councils to employ staff who are remotely efficient and so benefit offices, I am sure, will attract the most useless sorts. Failing to reply to written communication is no unheard of in business, but it is inconceivable that anyone ever loses his job in the state sector for this kind of failure.

Part of the problem is that benefits are impossibly complicated. There are hundreds of benefits that may be claimed and neither claimants nor staff are likely to be able to understand them. Nobody loses except the taxpayer, but since they are such a diffuse group they can never overcome the power of the vested interest.

Intrepid Carpet thinks that things might be a bit better under the Conservatives. I think this is unlikely although it is conceivable that some simplification might be attempted.

There is near panic over the loss of 25 million sets of personal details - NI numbers and bank details, as well as addresses. I really don't understand how this is a big problem. When I sign up a new tenant (a credit operation, for sure) then I always get sight of some photo ID - usually a passport. It simply would not be possible to rent a property from Herts Lettings as someone else just by having the data that was possibly stolen from the NAO.

I have bought things on eBay and been stunned that people will still insist on being paid by cheque rather than by BACS on the grounds that they are unwilling to reveal their sort code and account number, even though they do so every time they write a cheque (and require me to by virtue of asking to be paid by cheque).

Banks vary a great deal in their interpretation of money laundering regulations. I find that a fax to Cater Allen with a SWIFT Code and an account number is more than enough to get money to (for example) China, but if I try to make an international funds transfer using Intelligent Finance I have to provide name and address details not only of the beneficiary but also of the beneficiary's bank. This can be very tiresome over the phone and has resulted in my giving up on IF as a way of sending money abroad.

I have just signed up with OzForex. This was fairly tedious 'compliance-wise', but now promises to get me much more competitive exchange rates than any high street bank is ever going to give me, and, I hope, be rather quicker at transferring money to overseas beneficiaries. Frankly if the rates were the same I'd still choose to go with OzForex as it allow beneficiary details to be entered online, rather than via phone or fax. I am slightly amazed that Cater Allen doesn't require international TTs to be requested via a letter written on vellum and delivered by a courier riding on horseback, such is their aversion to all things modern.

This article explains how it came to pass that we know what Rupert and Elizabeth Murdoch, Oleg Deripaska, George Osborne, Peter Mandelson, David Cameron and Nat Rothschild were doing on and in the sea around Corfu during the summer.

It's interesting that the press gave the impression of David Cameron enjoying a rain-drenched and wind-blown holiday in Cornwall for his summer break, but more importantly it shows whose company our leading politicians choose to keep. It could hardly be otherwise. The population now takes very little interest in politics. They accept what they are told in The Sun and The Times, and what the various press offices of the main parties choose to communicate to the press. This all requires them to be on good terms with the media and with people who can give them money. No longer is it sufficient to get your wife to drive you around the village halls of England to get your message across. You must now, at the very least, set up WebCameron.

It's quite clear why politicians behave like this. People imagined that Tony Blair was some kind of aberration for being so obsessed with raising money for his party and himself, but really he, like the rest, is a creature of his environment. The unhappy thing is that it will inevitably lead to what we see in the USA: that is the systematic skewing of policies in favour of the selectorate - the people who actually choose the leaders. This selectorate is not exclusively wealthy businessmen. Certainly the unions remain powerful in the USA and in the UK. We will never see any kind of voucher system or realistic choice of schools because the teaching unions are opposed to it and they give a lot of money to the Democrats and to the Labour Party in their respective countries.

I am not a socialist, but do look for a level playing field in society. There will always be a conflict of interest between the haves and have nots (or maybe it is now the 'haves and have yachts'). Generally, a liberal economic agenda will result in a better outcome for everyone in society, but if the wealthy are seen to hijack decision making and tilt the playing field to their short-term advantage we will forever be bound into an economically inefficient organised society. It doesn't seem to me that there is a natural 'thermodynamic equilibrium' to which societies tend. If we allow the likes of Deripaska to exert the political influence they seek we will end in the UK like most of the pseudo-democracies of South East Asia or Latin America or, indeed, Deripaska's own Russia. I am not entirely sure that America, where democracy is more worshipped than practised is safe from going down this route.

The papers are full of enthusiasm for Barak Obama. The young voted for him overwhelmingly, seeing in him a route to a better life for themselves and their fellow countrymen.

I am rather less enthusiastic. I have almost lost hope in governments making our lives any better, certainly in comparison to the cost of them in terms of taxes paid. To my mind, governments always always stand in the way of progress. I have recently found things I wanted to do blocked by governments. I am very cross about the need for me to have an audit for one of my companies at a cost of about twenty times the cost of the bookkeeping that is to be audited. I feel frustrated that I am not allowed to see my pension fund's bank account balance except through a very occasional paper statement. I am frustrated that the law requires me to make a mark with a pen on a hard copy version of my accounts when all the accounting that went into producing them exists in digital form. My heart sinks when my accountant gives me the soft copy of my accounts as a scan of the signed printout.

My bank still requires me to communicate to them 'in writing', which means that I have to print out and entrust to a very unreliable postal service the most important instructions I will ever send them. Because I no longer own a fax machine my bank told me that the only way I can arrange CHAPS or SWIFT payments is to send them a letter. In order to re-establish my company's ownership of a domain name I am required to fax a request to Nominet on 'the companies letterhead', even though the company has never never had any requirement to communicate by headed letter throughout the twenty-two years of its existence.

I am advised by a Barclays call centre operative that for my protection my 12-digit customer number for use in telephone banking has to be different to my similarly-12-digit customer number for internet banking. When I state that I can see no situation where my security could be improved by having different customer numbers for the two means of accessing a common account (identified by a six-digit sort code plus an eight-digit account number, both unrelated to my two 12-digit identification numbers) my comment is met with incredulity.

Security is one of those goods that is priceless, a human right that must be provided regardless of cost. This way leads to the war in Iraq, the 'war on terror', the absurd expense of the department of homeland security, the incredible difficulty these days of doing ordinary transactions, and, spectacularly the use of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 to seize the assets of Landsbanki in the UK, which seems to have passed without serious comment from the press or the public.

This article, based on the Analysis programme to be broadcast tonight on R4 shows how in modern political debate no problem must be acknowledged to be difficult or impossible to solve. In fact politicians require every possible political problem to be solvable by a policy capable of being expressed in a soundbite of a handful of easy-to-parrot syllables. And Hazel Blears wonders why bloggers' responses are cynical.

The Wikipedia article on the crisis grows by the day. The FT is constantly filled with news about the latest manifestation of the collapse in demand.

What worries me is that at times of crisis we look to strong men to lead us out of the mess. Arnold Kling in his recent podcast on Econtalk made the point that actually there is no economic theory to guide the likes of Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Mervyn King, Gordon Brown et al. and that they really are making it up as they go along. Although it seems reasonable to preserve the financial system to allow the essential function of allocating capital and facilitating funds transfer and avoid the heavy costs of unwinding complex derivatives contracts entered into by failed investment banks, it is not clear that a transfer of huge sums from future taxpayers to the owners (and increasingly) to the managers of the banks is such a smart move in the long run.

The accepted wisdom in the 60's when we were faced with inflation was strong action. Similarly the problems of de-industrialisation in the UK at least, in the 70's, were addressed by industrial policy. The Great Depression lead to the setting up of a lot of institutions, including agricultural subsidies, Fannie Mae and Fanny Mac, and a mass of government intervention into private and public life that has never been reversed.

Looking at the home front, I am incandescent with rage that the utterly useless UK banks, which have treated their customers with undisguised contempt, and pursued a policy of ruthlessly reducing the pay (and therefore the quality) of their staff for years. I am indebted to Prof Robert Shaw for explaining how this works in his letter to the FT today.

It seems to me that what we need is not more regulation of banks, or indeed more subsidies, but more competition. The key to that is reducing the huge barriers to entry that still exist in running a bank in the UK.

Downing Street are taking the unusually brave step of actually engaging with the public, albeit only through YouTube. The idea of "Ask The PM" is this: think of a question you would like Gordon Brown to answer, then post it on YouTube and the most popular entries will be answered by the Prime Minister himself. The above short clip is designed to force GB to justify his policy.

Note that I am not necessarily opposed to a wealth transfer from my generation to later ones.

This post on the TPA website is one of the many about the raid on Damian Green's office. It makes the point that a huge amount of legislation has been passed which makes this kind of thing more likely, but it is only now that MPs seem to be remotely concerned about this kind of thing.

My bank, Cater Allen, doesn't really believe that communication via the internet will catch on, so it much prefers post and fax. In fact for CHAPS transfer the only real option is fax. Therefore I have to waste money signing up to services that allow me to send faxes from my PC. Pop Faxseems to be the best one that I could find.

Regular readers will know that an investment property of mine was used for growing cannabis. You can read the post again here. After a week being jerked around by Scottish and Southern (the electricity supplier) who repeatedly told me that 're-energizing' my property was a matter of hours away, I have now been told that, actually, they can't re-connect my property at all, but that I will have to apply for a connection just as if the property was a new build.

The company that is responsible for this is EDF Energy (Eastern). These at least answer the phone promptly, if you want to order a new supply. Unfortunately, they charge an arbitrary and enormous charge for connecting a property to the network. I was quoted 'up to two and a half thousand pounds' for the job. This involves connecting two core cables which are currently separated by about an inch of air. The time it will take to do this is 'up to ten weeks'. I suppose they are very busy, what with all the thousands of new houses going up all around Hertfordshire recently.

Of course they could charge me five thousand pounds, and I'd still pay, because I can't go anywhere else. This shows the power that comes from being a monopoly provider of a good or service. Supposedly regulators and government supervision tempers the tendency of monopolies to abuse their power, but it is an irresistible temptation. I heard the other day that if you want the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to transfer a work permit or other stamp from your old (foreign) passport to your new one, they will charge you five hundred pounds. This clearly bears no relation to the cost of performing the action, but is, presumably, judged to be about as high as they will get away with, just like my re-connection charge.

What angers me about this episode is that it was all so unnecessary. Sure, electricity was being stolen, but digging up the drive and cutting into the underground armoured cable was a totally disproportionate response, which the police and EDF Energy must have know would saddle the owner with huge delays and costs. Moreover, they must have known that the person who would bear the cost would the unwitting, and duped, owner, not the criminal gang that was running the operation.

As you probably will have guessed, this is not covered by my house insurance. I will blog about that another day.

This article by Jamie Whyte explains why it is such a bad idea for the state to interpose itself between willing producers and consumers, but also why the structure of politics makes it impossible for politicians not do exactly that. As Whyte says Alas, there is no prospect of an end to this waste, even if politicians understood it. When invisible costs are incurred for the sake of visible benefits, a politician will never consider them too great..

Terry Arthur, the author of an IEA estimate of the magnitude of this deadweight cost puts it at two-thirds of the value of tax collected, or, well over half a trillion pounds by my calculations. It seems astonishing that the bulk of those commenting on this article seem to think that this is a price well worth paying to avoid the cash nexus. This is typical of the responses:Human life has many "irrational" qualities that you ignore at your peril. Wives don't "pay" husbands to remain loyal fathers, Children don't "pay" parents to cook their meals for them. Friends don't "pay" each other for their company. Surely given the recent calamities it is clear that the gross simplification and standardization that has been brought into the understanding of human society needs to be radically changed, and that the "science" of economics needs to redefine what it can and cannot do. Then again, asking for humility and depth from a economists is like asking for an apology from a banker: a little futile..

So far so familiar. What is deeply depressing are the comments on Whyte's article. Even though this is the Times, not the Guardian or even the Morning Star the authors of the comments seem to believe that what is right and appropriate in a family environment (providing for other family members without the promise or receipt of payment) can be scaled up to work at the level of the state. Hayek called this "The Fatal Conceit". Sadly it appears to be as widespread and strongly held as ever.

An elderly relative who lived with us died recently. I am his executor and have been informing various organisations of his demise. One of these is the TV Licensing Authority. Initially I just went onto the website to buy myself a licence, but this seemed to want to backdate my application into the distant past.

I decided to take my chances of using the telephone. I just loathe calling about this sort of thing as I usually have to spend far longer than I would by using a website or sending an email or a letter. However I was able to give the current licence number to a helpful chap who said that I will not need to buy a licence until October when the current one runs out. This current one was valid for 3 years, so if my elderly relation had delayed dying until October I might have got a free licence until late in 2013.

Obviously this is nice for me, but it seems a bit unfair to millions of other licence holders. Frankly, the whole idea of giving old people free stuff is generally just a little bribe to keep them onside, as the stuff is not actually free, but just paid for by all the people who don't get the bribe (younger licence payers in this case).

The TV Licence is just a regressive hypothecated tax. I would happily pay the same sum to access the BBC's output but the compulsory nature of the charge just leads to the usually thuggery and bullying. If you don't believe me, take a look at this site.

The Olympic movement has noble origins, and undoubtedly gives some good publicity to minor sports that otherwise would get very little. When else would we be glued to the TV to watch a curling event?

However, the cost has been getting alarmingly out of control. The cost of the Beijing games is of course a state secret, but has been estimated at around $50 billion. This is a lot of money even for a country as rich as China, and translates into a lot of rice that could otherwise be eaten by starving peasants.

Of course, nobody likes to be heard saying at the Olympic Games are rubbish. It's even as unacceptable as saying that the Paralympic Games are an embarrassment. The games are a perfect event for politicians, national and local, and media types, to get a free holiday at the taxpayers expense. Martin Lewis would definitely approve because, because of the extraordinary sums spent on preparations and security, the games are stage micro-managed to ensure that they produce only Good News.

Politicians always argue that the games bring in extra revenue in the form of tourism, even though the evidence is that real tourists actively avoid going to a country at the time that the games are taking place. Certainly the games are a perfect excuse for hotels and airlines to hugely increase their prices, but their windfall must be largely offset by low numbers. I was actually in Beijing at the time of the last games and the cost of accommodation had indeed increased around tenfold compared to normal. What I found amazing though was that hotel occupancy in the city was, during the period of the games, less than forty percent of normal. I am confident that during the London games we'll see a similar exodus of normal tourists from the City, to be replaced by a smaller, but infinitely better funded, members of the political class.

It is interesting to consider what long-term benefits accrued to Greece after its hosting of the Olympics in 2004. This article, written at the time, predicted that it would all end in tears: how prescient this now seems as we watch the collapse of the Greek economy brought about by its government's inability to get control of costs. One thing that is a racing certainty is that the London Olympics will cost many times more than the original budget, e.g. here. Don't forget that the original forecast cost to the public purse was a mere 3.4 billion pounds!

Three white-collar convicts are chatting over their daily prison meal.

"What are you guys in for?" asks convict one.

"I set my prices too low and was convicted of predatory pricing" says convict two.

"Funny, my prices were higher then my competition and they hit me with monopoly pricing" says convict three.

"Ha! My prices were exactly the same as my competitors and they threw the book at me for collusion" says convict one in response.

This is a joke shamelessly stolen from the What the Hell do I Know? blog.

Basically, the argument is that there is no evidence that "competition authorities" have ever actually done any good in terms of levelling the playing field between producer and consumer. The reason is that cartels and monopolies naturally implode as economic rents attract the interest of firms in different industries, and different countries. Of course trade barriers in the form of tariffs slow down this process, and heavy regulation of the industry within a country also does. Clearly, in the case of services that Google provides, neither of these factors apply.

The political class of course is much more comfortable launching this kind of investigation than one into competition, say, in banking services, or utilities, or telecommunications services, fixed or mobile, or broadband provision, because the management of companies in these industries have taken great care to develop strong relationships with politicians. Did I really say that?

I occasionally went to a bar in Singapore. Its walls were heavily nicotine stained because people frequently smoked there. The interesting thing is that it was, and I have no doubt still is, to smoke indoors in a public place in Singapore. However, even with the draconian approach to enforcement for which Singapore is famous, the barman felt perfectly relaxed about allowing people to smoke because he knew that everyone who drank there was aware of what was going on and had a huge choice of bars nearby where they could drink in a smoke-free atmosphere. How sad it is that the UK health fascists cannot tolerate such an approach.

I actually think that in some ways the longer Nick stays in jail the better, because it will highlight how bad this act is, but I feel sorry for the guy, so perhaps you'd better cough up. I have done so. At least your money will do no harm, unlike the money raised by that useful idiot Bob Geldorf in Live Aid, which, like so much aid money and charity that is given to Africa, principally was used to buy guns.