I just watched the 10 o'clock news (I am in London by the way, if anyone is reading this). Ethiopia. What the? They are all starving basically because the worldwide price of staples (foods that is, not the metal things) is too high. Perhaps I am being simplistic, as I can only rely on what I hear or read, but this is utterly ridiculous.
The problem can be sorted very simply. If the EU raised the import duty on rice or whatever (as far as I am aware, noone in the EU grows rice. We probably could in the paddy fields of East London what with all the rain), then that duty could be used to subsidise rice in those countries affected. Easy peasy. If the EU can piss about with import duty rates on crap like imported DVDs or Chinese underwear at short notice, they can do this. If rice cost me £1 a kilo more, I would not give one. I am not that bothered about rice anyway. Brown, stop sipping Pimms in Chequers, pull your finger out of your arse, and get this sorted. You promised solutions to ths sort of nonsense at G8 years ago.
By the way, if I do keep up this blogging malarkey, some of it will be to do with tax. This is because I am a tax lawyer. There, I have lost most of my potential audience already.
Tax law is a crap job, completely unworthwhile, all I do is interpret badly drafted tax laws made up by Whitehall lackeys trying to justify their existence, who are all as clueless as me. Why do I do it? Basically because it pays quite well. When I say well, not well in comparison to City Boy (the guy who writes in the London Paper, whose name escapes me), and when you take off tax it is sod all frankly. But then most of us earn sod all. Only self satisfied smug capitalist bastards like City Boy take home a real wage. And they are more pointless than, say, tax lawyers.