Elephantstrunk

Peter Preston challenges the Labour party on its European cowardice (and talks about Elephants).

The man with a mission to save the poor - and take on Microsoft
Now the The Times puffs Joe Stiglitz.

Inheritance tax makes little old ladies homeless and its all the fault of gay MPs according to The Telegraph. Despite New Labour approval from Stephen Byers, The Times has failed to jump on the bandwagon. Irwin Stelzer, no less, says this is all nonsense.
Janet Daley gets schooled by readers of her column. They point out […]

Owen Barder spots Alex Singleton reading the FT on Fairtrade and passes on some of the bitterness.
It is possibly a shame that some of the Peruvian farmers are not being paid the minimum wage but the worker questioned had travelled halfway across the country to work in the farm and was pleased because he was […]

Owen Barder notices the FT confirming a comment on Tyler Cowen’s Fairtrade perplex. As “Tom” says in Tyler’s comments, Fairtrade suppliers are not perfect employers and buy coffee from neighbours when they can sell more than they can produce. So what?
The Fairtrade producers quoted are still better employers than other coffee producers. The problem coffee […]

In the introductory chapter of “Good & Plenty”, Typer Cowen quotes another author as reckoning that the $5m invested in the arts through the WPA had produced work worth $450m in 1999. He then goes on to claim (p12) that since the stock market would have returned $730m that was not such a great investment. […]