Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone made £65m selling faulty PPE to the Government. HMRC now wants £39m in unpaid tax — and we think we know why: Barrowman and Mone may have avoided tax on their £65m profit.

School closures are coming...

Important research on how to improve school results of poor kids. A Labour government will surely want to do this? Well done @simonburgess.bsky.social and co-authors.

Wider engagement on this disaster-by almost all media, government but also universities themselves-has been self-indicting for the last two years. No one does indeed seem to care about our national library.

My policy substack sets out how we can make wills easier, cheaper and prevent fraud. Free to read timleunig.substack.com/p/where-ther...

The problem with diagnosing "the electorate have unreasonable expectations around tax and spend" is that those expectations did not develop in a vacuum. They are the product of decades of politicians and the media telling them they can have x services with y tax levels, or not contradicting it.

In which case, add the post makers clear, emigration and immigration will be even bigger issues

Particularly fine piece by @noahsmith.bsky.social this morning - www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-giant-... (Big overlap with one of my standard guest lectures)

This is surely right

This is the best article that Caitlin Moran has ever written. @stianwestlake.bsky.social estlake will particularly appreciate it. www.thetimes.com/article/09da...

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A lovely piece by @tomforth.co.uk this morning for me to appreciate - tomforth.co.uk/controversia... - thank you.

Parkrun is an unwitting British public-health success - The Economist apple.news/Alk4tk1OhQpy...

Misunderstood! (Perhaps that is what Labour intended?) So have deleted. Thank you

Very good from @stephenkb.bsky.social

Great job here! Full or Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy LSE School of Public Policy   Full Professor salary no less than £107,994 per annum.  Associate Professor no less than £80,927 per annum.  Plus, may attract a salary supplement. Closes 30 November

I am not the anon former senior civil servant but I agree with them.

Delighted to be nominated for comment journalist of the year at the British Journalism Awards, alongside some fantastic peers 🎈🍾 pressgazette.co.uk/press-gazett...

That is true!

Bracing convo on what the UK cld do to boost economic growth w/ @timleunig.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

& see this: Let’s fall in love with cars again - on.ft.com/4ocB3Aw via @FT. In terms of growth, surely better to levy VAT on children's clothes and food (as they do in NZ) than to over tax travel?

Here @timleunig.bsky.social is on brilliant thought-provoking form Let’s fall in love with cars again - on.ft.com/4ocB3Aw

I thought that with my old Sony Xperia compact - but in reality I find my Pixel 8a fine.

Uncharacteristically conventional and wrong-headed thinking from @tom-clark.bsky.social. Why overtax something that leads to economic growth (travel), while undertaxing things that do not (children's clothes). See my chapter in: www.productivity.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

Fine piece from @johnharris1969.bsky.social on housing - too little of it, too costly, even in a relatively low housing cost place like Liverpool.

Some good news/ Home Office evaluation of the Refugee Transitions Outcomes Fund - pilot schemes to help employment, housing and integration for newly recognised refugees. Substantially improved employment outcomes & had positive fiscal impacts. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Or if the children are not accepted by their parents' original country, they would need to be taken into care here?

The fiscal position means the Chancellor should tax people like me more. But higher income tax risks people working less. Better to cut the ISA allowance - my article in today's still free-to-read Observer: observer.co.uk/news/busines...

@chrisgiles.ft.com column is fact filled and well worth reading

I agree with @gabrielmilland.bsky.social. This is a bad day for the @churchofengland.org, of which I count myself a member.

I hope this is effective. Be good to hit Putin where it hurts.

Taxpayer subsidised savings is a very expensive approach to solving what is really an insurance problem.

Why would you want to discourage work more than savings? That is what we do at the moment. My starting point it to tax everything equally.

The fiscal position, and that there is little to no evidence that they changed the level of savings (as opposed to the savings vehicle)

Taxpayer subsidised shavings are a very inefficient way to solve an insurance problem

I would have a lifetime cap on that as well

Hurrah! It is absolutely nuts that older richer people (like me) can save £20,000 a year tax free - which means taxes are higher for younger, poorer people. on.ft.com/4n5ec8A Rachel Reeves revives plans to overhaul cash Isas

Yes, with an emphasis on lots more houses in London, where all measures of affordability show they are most needed.

I agree with @jamesomalley.co.uk , wealth taxes are not very sensible.

@jpspencer.bsky.social - you are right! (Although if it was immediate, it would be a double whammy on anyone who had recently bought a home in the South - something my proposal overcomes)

I am delighted that Philippe Aghion has won (a quarter) of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Philippe taught me (and Mark Carney, among others) when we were Oxford grad students, back in the mid 1990s.

As the @FT said today "economic historians like it when economic historians get prizes" and so I am ABSOLUTEY DELIGHTED that Joel Mokyr has won (half) the Nobel Prize in Economics this year. www.ft.com/content/f392...

This week I have set out a cut to working age welfare that I think is both sensible and would be widely supported - timleunig.substack.com/p/how-to-cut... (£/free trial). [Sorry the link did not work earlier, all sorted now]

Outstanding from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com - the best way to get a job is to get a degree. You will almost almost always earn more as well.

We are adding data on UCAS choices to try to answer this. Look at people who applied for X but not all for the place

That is why we use median as well as mean earnings

I agree we should make housing transactions easier, but houses are cheap in the North East despite the same rules. Housing supply (lack thereof) is what makes prices high in the South East. Nothing else. Build more houses, solve the problem. Nothing else will solve it.

I love technological change, economic growth and @ourworldindata.org!

President Trump is merely bringing the US in line with US with the UK and EU on this.

The evidence is that if you study (say) theology at Oxford you will earn a lot less than if you study history or PPE. I think all kids should know that.