Senior Labour figures accepted valuable gifts from Google in the days before abandoning a plan to tax digital giants more, openDemocracy can reveal. Labour’s shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, his senior parliamentary assistant (who is his wife), and Keir Starmer’s political director all attended Glastonbury festival in June as guests of YouTube, which is owned by Google. Including accommodation and ‘hospitality’, Reynolds estimates his Glastonbury package for two was worth £3,377 – significantly more than the cost of two regular tickets, which were £335 each. The next day, reports emerged that Labour had ditched its proposal to hike tax on digital businesses like Google. The Digital Services Tax, introduced in 2020, is a 2% levy on the UK income of online companies like search engines and social media platforms. In August last year, Reynolds and his shadow chancellor colleague Rachel Reeves had called for an increase in the tax to 10%, saying the income would be used t...
Robbing Peter to pay Paul The pain will return harder, longer and stronger until this debt ceiling is managed. Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images As the US crashed into the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling yesterday, the Treasury Department began taking what it called “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government from defaulting on its debts and sparking an economic crisis. What does that actually mean? These measures are a series of deep-cut accounting moves that allow the Treasury to continue making its payments. They include: Suspending reinvestments into government funds for retired federal employees, such as the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. Selling existing investments in those funds to free up more outstanding debt. And while these measures definitely aren’t ordinary…they probably aren’t so “extra,” either. The Treasury has resorted to them more than 12 times since 1985, including during the last debt-ceiling standoff in 2021. St...
e what others are saying about this topic: Open on Linkedin Huge breakthrough for non-invasive glucose monitoring on Apple Watch Apple just made a huge breakthrough for non-invasive glucose monitoring on Apple Watch, and this will be their Next BIG Thing 🤯 The tech powerhouse reportedly has a moonshot-style project underway that dates back to the Steve Jobs era: noninvasive and continuous blood glucose monitoring🩸 Dubbed E5, this secret endeavor’s ultimate goal is to measure how much glucose is in someone’s body without needing to prick the skin for blood. After hitting major milestones recently, the company now believes it could eventually bring glucose monitoring to market as part of the Apple Watch ⌚️ The technology is still years away...
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