There is now a proposed minimum entry fee into Venice of $2.85, rising to $5.00 and $10 in peak periods, if you haven’t booked into a hotel or paid a $6.00 tourist tax. The reason? 30 million visitors annually. Poor Venice! Overwhelmed by hordes of noisy tourists, groups from cruise ships, frequent flooding (75% of …
Between 2010 and 2020, local councils in yhe UK will have lost 60p out of every £1 the Government had provided for services. Councils have gone to great lengths to ensure the savings they have been forced to make have as little impact as possible on the quality of services provided to their residents. They …
Continue reading ‘In the UK: a never- ending series of cuts in local government funding’ »
President Trump has picked David Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, to be the Interior Department’s next secretary. Bernhardt, whose past clients include oil companies and others with business before the Interior Department, will lead an agency that oversees about 500 million acres as well as the energy production on that land. It has 70,000 employees …
Continue reading ‘The revolving door in the Republican administration’ »
The UK and Switzerland have signed a deal to continue trading after Brexit as they did before it. The “continuity agreement” – based on the EU’s existing free trade deal with Switzerland – was ratified on Monday. Around £32bn of trade is done between the UK and Switzerland each year, with 15,000 British exporters involved. …
It seems to me plausible to imagine that Trump could default on the US national debt. He could quite likely stand up at a rally when things get bumpy for him and say, “we don’t actually owe China that money,” Everywhere he goes Trump finds things that people trust and he undermines them e.g the …
