Tax Research UK

No more free lunches.

My blog mentor, Dennis Howlett,  is moving to a partly paid for approach to blogging.

Much of his content will be free.

Some value added will be paid for.

As he says:

That’s taught me a lesson: see, hear, enjoy, consume…but think. That doesn’t always make me popular. But then I’m not doing this to be popular but because my true passion is value delivery.

I sense that despite this being the worst recession in living memory, and with the real prospect of a double dip, the time is right for me to up the stakes in value delivery. But it cannot be free forever. We all have to eat. We all have to provide. I am no different and am certainly not one of those people who has a secret stash that give me the luxury of not having to earn something along the way.

I think Dennis is right in his main market. He’s one of the world’s leading bloggers on accounting systems and the internet.

He has over 5,000 Twitter followers.

He has real influence in a paid for market.

My suspicion is that the change will work.

Right now it’s not a direction of travel I’m taking.

Richard Murphy Blogging

Link by Link - A Vision of Iceland as a Haven for Journalists - NYTimes.com.

As the New York Times reports:

A banking scandal nearly bankrupted this tiny island nation (population: barely 300,000) little more than a year ago, but Iceland is considering a new vision: to become a haven for journalists and publishers by offering some of the most aggressive protections for free speech and investigative journalism in the world.

The proposal, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, combines in a single piece of legislation provisions from around the world: whistle-blower laws and rules about Internet providers from the United States; source protection laws from Belgium; freedom of information laws from Estonia and Scotland, among others; and New York State’s law to counteract “libel tourism,” the practice of suing in courts, like Britain’s, where journalists have the hardest time prevailing.

“We would become the inverse of a tax haven,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Parliament and a sponsor of the initiative. “They are trying to make everything opaque. We are trying to make it transparent.”

I think that deserves an unambiguous welcome. I can see file servers moving to Iceland from all over the world. And, no doubt, they hope people too.

Richard Murphy Blogging

Two weeks ago I turned the comments facility on this site off. I’d had enough of the abuse: I’d had enough of the time wasting comments were causing. Most people whose opinion I trust still think this was the right thing to do.

Traffic data suggest they’re right. Page views were 12,627 the week I turned comments off. They were 10,558 last week but I did not blog for well over two days and it was half term. Unique visitors were 7,630 the first week, 7,210 last week. In both cases RSS feeds tend to add 1,000 or so reads a day. Average reads a month are a bit over 50,000 page views and 20,000 RSS reads at present. Comments seem to make little difference to this – certainly comments pages make up 10% or less of traffic, even when things were out of control.

So why turn things back on? I only do so reluctantly – but last week I got dragged into discussion on another blog. If I’m going to waste time on comments I’ve concluded I might as well do it here – certainly engaging on the site in question was a real waste of time. Debate with neoliberal ex-City traders on financial transaction taxes was always going to be fruitless, and was. When their moderation policy allows abuse I have no time left for them.

So, comments are allowed here again, but subject to the comments policy noted here. And please note, I will be ruthless in deleting comments I think do not comply. So please don’t waste your time submitting material I am bound to reject: hitting the delete button takes seconds – you’ll waste a lot more time constructing your comment that will be heading straight for the bin.

Richard Murphy Blogging

Since comments have been closed on the blog a number of people have mailed me on the new policy. One occasional commentator has regretted the change, and hopes positive comment can be allowed again soon. I’ll see. But most are like this correspondent:

Hi Richard

It’ll be really interesting to see what happens to your blog readership with the new comments policy. My guess is it’ll probably increase because the gaggle of right-wing commentators was turning off more people than they attracted.

I’d have ended up doing the same thing a lot sooner I think - you’ve been remarkably patient.

Some of the comments were so bad that they were kind of amusing though!

Best

So far this week has seen the highest readership day of the year so far, and it’s the highest pro rata readership week of the year so far. It’s 70% up on last year. And comments pages were, anyway, read by less than 10% of readers over all anyway. So I suspect my correspondent may well be right.

None of which says this policy will necessarily endure: I just need a break from the rubbish that has been flowing in to get some work done. That’s the main reason for the change. But if it does change I’ll be adopting a policy more like that of Tax Justice Network where the majority of all comments are deleted. I now see the virtue in that.

Richard Murphy Blogging

My appearance on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 on Monday released a torrent of abusive comment on here which did, at least in part, persuade me to change to my comments policy.

Amongst the comments made (now deleted) were many saying they hoped I was never allowed access to the media again. and that I was an appalling performer.

So, whilst the comments policy is, for the time being that they’re not welcome it is still pleasing to note that three days later I was back on the Jeremy Vine show, this time talking about the Robin Hood Tax campaign.

Clearly the BBC agrees that the commentators who piled in here got their observations wrong. Which justifies my view that they’re just time wasters.

Richard Murphy Blogging, Transaction Taxes

I have adopted a new comments policy for this blog. It is published here. It says:

Jane Austen did famously write in the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice that:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Some might dispute that, for a great many reasons. What appears to me, and those others who blog from within the mainstream social democratic tradition that is part of the core of the politics of most countries is a slightly different version of this sentence, that says:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a blogger not from the libertarian right of the political perspective in possession of a good argument, must be in want of a heavyweight comments moderation policy.

Those on the libertarian right will dispute that, of course, but it would seem they dispute everything. Everyone else knows it to be true.

I have struggled with this issue. I have been generous at allowing comments on this blog. I have occasionally been harsh and deleted a great many comments. The reality is it has made no difference: a small cohort of time-wasters who add, in my opinion and that of those whose opinions I respect, nothing to debate continue to post comments. Since I believe myself duty bound to read all these for legal due diligence purposes and rebut those I think wrong this has been taking up far too much of my time – and takes the debate  no further forward.

It  is increasingly, and unfortunately,  clear that the vast majority of those who do seek to comment come  from way beyond the fringes of political electoral credibility and seek only to harm and undermine society. It is not my duty or desire to assist them.

Interestingly, few from mainstream perspectives bother to comment: most have better things to do. To those who have, I offer my thanks.

Having reflected on this issue I have now decided that I do not have time to waste on this cohort of perpetual time wasters – many of whom are now offending those who offer reasonable, considered and moderate observation, who are also complaining as a result. This leaves me with just one option. I have for the time being decided to close the comments facility on this blog.

You are welcome to email me with comment if you so wish. Please note I will not feel obliged to reply.

You are also welcome to disagree with me, but if that is your wish please start your own blog. That is what freedom of speech requires. It does not require me to let you comment here.

I am looking forward to the consequent increase in my personal productivity.

Update: Thanks to those who have already emailed saying how much they approve of this change of policy

Richard Murphy Blogging

For those interested I should be on the Jeremy Vine show today at 1.30pm BBC Radio 2, discussing why George Osborne is wrong to obsess about AAA rating for the UK.

I think someone’s been reading this blog.

Richard Murphy Blogging, Economics

My previous blog post was the 4,444th on this blog.

Sorry, that’s now 4,445.

That’s 3.4 a day over 43 months.

Maybe I should get out more.

Comment is not needed!

Richard Murphy Blogging

My first Forbes column  - entitled End of High Living – has got into the current Forbes Top Rated listing.

Looks like the first may not be the last.

Richard Murphy Blogging

I was recently asked to write for Forbes on fairly regular basis. My first column, dealing with the consequences of the US pension deficit, is here.

I wrote it for this blog this morning, and it got waylaid into Forbes as the day progressed.

There are worse things that could happen to a blog, I guess.

Richard Murphy Blogging, Economics, Pensions