Category Archives: Society

Britain, Business, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Budget 2018: ‘A shot in the arm’ for British businesses

BUDGET

BUSINESS leaders have welcomed a shot in the arm for the British economy following the Chancellor’s pro-enterprise Budget.

In the final Budget before Brexit, Philip Hammond announced a raft of fresh tax reliefs and spending pledges to help solve the UK’s ongoing productivity problem.

The plan included extra funding for research and development “to secure the UK’s position as a world leader in new and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion and quantum computing”.

Seeking to exploit concerns about how the economy would operate under a Labour government, the Chancellor said: “We will always back enterprise. As we finalise our departure from the EU, we must unleash the investment that will drive our future prosperity.

“So I can announce a package of measures to stimulate business investment and send a message loud and clear to the rest of the world: Britain is open for business.”

Among the policies Mr Hammond announced were:

. An increase in the annual investment allowance (AIA) from £200,000 to £1m for two years, giving extra relief to firms that invest in machinery;

. Tax breaks to encourage businesses to invest more in factories, offices and other places of work;

. £1.6bn for R&D to promote science and tech innovation;

. £50m for artificial intelligence fellowships;

. A two-year freeze on the VAT threshold.

The measures were welcomed by business.

The director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, Adam Marshall, said: “Philip Hammond has sent important and positive signals to businesses across the UK, many of whom have been wavering on investment and hiring.”

On the increase in the AIA, he added: “This will be a huge shot in the arm for businesses across the country, giving many thousands of firms renewed confidence to invest and grow.”

Among the science-friendly measures, the Government will plough £50m in new Turing AI Fellowships to lure artificial intelligence researchers to the UK, £235m to support the development of quantum technologies and increased funding to explore distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain.

Under the Industrial Strategy, total R&D investment is due to hit 2.4pc of GDP by 2027.

One of Mr Hammond’s headline business policies was a change to the Annual Investment Allowance. While business groups were mostly supportive of the move – with the allowance rising from £200,000 to £1m for two years starting in January 2019 – analysts added that firms might choose to delay investment plans to coincide with when the higher rate of relief will come into force.

A real estate tax partner at PwC said: “Longer term, this should encourage much more investment, but short-term there may be a lag while businesses wait for January.”

Entrepreneurs were directly targeted through an extension to the British Business Bank’s start-up loans programme, which will run until 2021, and amendments to a policy called Entrepreneurs’ Relief – which had been in the line to be scrapped.

They pay a lower rate of tax at 10pc, compared with the standard rate of 20pc on capital gains when they sell off some or all of their business assets.

Mr Hammond has now doubled the minimum qualifying period from 12 months to two years and shareholders will now have to hold a 5pc economic stake in the company to receive the relief.

The Chancellor also announced smaller-scale measures, such as £20m of skill-training pilot schemes.

In a Budget that was welcomed for supporting smaller and more risky start-up businesses, the Chancellor said he would help UK pension funds invest in such firms.

The Treasury will consult next year on the pension charges cap, which restricts the amount some pension providers can charge in fees.

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Britain, Government, National Security, Society, Terrorism

Right-wing extremists to be monitored by MI5

BRITAIN

BRITISH intelligence is to take responsibility for tackling the terror threat from Right-wing extremists as part of a major overhaul.

Amid increasing concern that white supremacists are trying to stir up a racial and religious war on UK streets, MI5 will for the first time take the lead in combating the problem.

In the past, the police have been directly tasked with monitoring far-Right groups. It means the ideology will sit in the same security service portfolio as Islamist terrorism.

Extreme Right-wing activity will be designated as posing a key threat to national security.

Four far-Right terror plots have been thwarted in Britain since 2017, compared to 13 involving Muslim fanatics. The authorities have expressed fears about a resurgence from neo-Nazi groups, especially since the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by white supremacist Thomas Mair in 2016.

In February, Darren Osborne was jailed for life for attacking Muslim worshippers with a van in Finsbury Park, North London, in June 2017.

And, in the past week, a man has been charged with sending 13 pipe bombs to opponents of President Donald Trump. A second man was arrested for murdering 11 Jewish worshippers during an anti-Semitic gun attack at a synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh.

In the UK, there are about 100 live investigations into extreme Right-wing individuals and groups. Although the threat is not assessed to be of the same magnitude as that posed by Islamic State or Al-Qaeda, security chiefs are aware that extreme Right-wing organisations are attempting to provoke violence and by sowing discord.

MI5’s techniques and greater powers of surveillance will allow intelligence agents to discover more about threats posed by the extreme right than the police are able to.

It will formally take responsibility for identifying suspects, assessing their danger, analyse networks of extremists and rank threats.

Police will stay in charge when it comes to launching an operation to disrupt a plot or by making arrests.

Last month, Home Office figures revealed the number of white terror suspects being apprehended or arrested was higher than those who were Asian for the first time since the July 7 bombings in 2005. In the year to June, 133 were white and 129 were Asian ethnic background.

Neil Basu, Britain’s top counter-terrorism police officer, told the home affairs select committee that the extreme Right-wing was growing across Europe. He said: “There is no doubt that crosses the border into the UK and there have been attempts by groups here to coordinate with European partners as well.”

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Britain, First World War, History, Society

Great War Centenary: Respect the decision of our forebears

WW1 AND ITS CENTENARY

THE First World War was the primal disaster of modern times. Debate rages over whether to mark its centenary next month as a victory or as a catastrophe that should have been avoided.

The war began four decades of violence, hatred and cruelty that the peoples of 1914 could not have foreseen in their darkest nightmares. Across Europe, nine million soldiers died. In Britain, one in three men aged 19 to 22 in 1914 were killed. The cost could have paid for thousands of hospitals and schools, and a university for every city.

The argument that Britain should have kept out of the war seems, therefore, insurmountable. Most people in July 1914 assumed it would: the prime minister, HH Asquith, thought there was “no reason why we should be anything more than spectators”. The Cabinet, Parliament and public opinion agreed, and the government tried hard to defuse the crisis.

So, what changed?

Germany launched a surprise invasion of Luxembourg, France and Belgium. The social reformer, Beatrice Webb, decided that “even staunch Liberals agree that we had to stand by Belgium”. They thought Britain had to resist a direct threat to its security and uphold international law and order against “militarism”. Wrote the diarist Ada Reece: “We must fight, but all are agreed that it will be more terrible than any previous war [and] the ultimate consequences… none can foresee.”

Given that she was right about the consequences, should they still have kept out? Three arguments are produced to say yes. First, that it was not our fight. Secondly, that the war was futile. Thirdly, that without British intervention, Germany would have won quickly, and Europe would soon have acquiesced in its domination – a lesser evil than the horrors to come.

All these arguments are founded on very optimistic guesses. More pessimistic scenarios are at least as plausible. As early as September 1914, the German government decided that Belgium would become a “vassal state”, with its ports “at our military disposal” to directly threaten Britain. To ensure “security for the German Reich in West and East for all imaginable time”, Germany planned to annex large parts of northern France, impose a crippling financial indemnity, make France “economically dependent on Germany” and exclude British commerce. Neutral Holland would become “dependent”. Vast territories would be taken from Russia to “thrust [it] back as far as possible” – precisely what happened in 1917.

Had Germany won, democracy and liberal government would have faced a bleak feature. Authoritarian regimes would have been in the driving seat. French democracy might well have collapsed, as it did in 1940. What German soldiers and governors actually did is telling – more than 6,000 civilians in Belgium and France were massacred in the first weeks of the war by invading troops, occupied territories were subjected to military rule, and they subsequently suffered semi-starvation, mass forced labour and systematic economic devastation.

In short, Britain faced a prospect in 1914 not so different from that in 1939. It could have survived, even as a cowed and impoverished satellite state, and it is possible to consider that this would have been a lesser evil than the brutal carnage of the trenches. But in 1914, government and people decided otherwise. For one thing, they feared being forced into a future war without allies against a German-dominated coalition. They were probably right to fear what a victorious Germany might do, but they underestimated – like everyone else – the cost of preventing it. Nevertheless, most of them always believed it was worth the sacrifice.

We can choose to disagree with our forebears, but theirs was not a senseless decision – they had no safe option. If tomorrow the Russian army marched through Poland, and we were faced with the prospect of hostile aircraft based just across the Channel, would we react any differently? Let us hope we never face such a choice as the people of 1914 did. Their determination gave democracy and freedom a chance, even though it took a second war to complete the victory.

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