December 2014

Let’s have a music post. So we went to this, Crouch End’s version of the Camden Crawl/Land of Kings/presumably originally SXSW. It was…slightly awkward. Well, an ice cream shop is always going to be a bit sporky as a music venue, however hipstery. Also, the organisers didn’t schedule anything after 10.30pm, so it cuts off…

Read More Music post

As a spin-off from #defenduss, Martin O’Neill circulated this report by a US thinktank, which demonstrates that final-salary pensions are actually cheaper to provide than the defined-contribution sort. The point is simple, but far from trivial – as Max Sawicky is fond of saying about US Social Security, a defined-benefit system is insurance, not mere…

Read More the wider relevance of #defenduss. defined contribution is the new sugar