Beware the AI scam coming your way
A 'friend' calls your mobile and asks for £15,000. You know it's him because his name and number are displayed on your phone in the usual way. He says it's an emergency and he's in an awful mess and needs your help. You saw him a few weeks back and he seemed fine. You tell him his voice sounds a little odd and he says he has a cold. You listen to him and say you will call him back.
This is exactly what happened to a friend of mine as he was driving on the motorway last month. His 'friend' it turns out was a scammer using AI to imitate the real friend's voice and somehow they can 'adopt' the genuine phone number. My friend rang around and others had received a similar call. When he finally made contact with his genuine friend it turned out his phone had been hacked.
Apparently the scam was quite convincing and they will improve rapidly. BEWARE when talking to anyone - even if you know them well - if they ask you for something. Assume every request is fake unless you are certain it is NOT!!! It's going to get much much worse.
I have just activated a 'scam alert' feature on my phone. Apparently Google can identify many scams and a warning will flash up on my phone to alert me. This is great use of technology counteracting the criminal use of technology that professional scammers are using with more and more sophistication.
Candlelight Concert at the Holywell Music Room
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| The Unity String Quartet, Holywell Music Room |
Our first visit to the Holywell Music Room in Oxford was to experience a string quartet playing some of Abba and Queen's greatest music.
It was an elegant and beautiful evening in what is said to be the first purpose built music room in Europe.
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| By J.M. Lystad - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 Holywell Music Room built in 1748, Holywell St, Oxford |
Why I disagree with Gary Stevenson
Gary Stevenson is a high profile British political Youtuber who has created a large following advocating higher taxes on the very rich. I have been following him; he is a successful economist and he understands his stuff and has a talent for explaining complex issues simply. However, where I fail to agree (and I wish I could agree with him) is that he believes there are ways of taxing the super-rich without making them leave the UK.
Here are some facts:
1. The top 5% of earners pay almost half all income tax collected by the government. The top 1% pay over a quarter.
An article in the FT on November 21st shows that the average Brit pays less tax than average Americans and that top earners pay equivalent to Norway and Denmark, among the highest in the world:
2. Income tax is the single largest stream of government revenue by a large factor even if you exclude the national insurance contributions paid alongside it. And now we know who pays for half of it:
3. There is now clear evidence that many rich people have left the country. Sales of luxury items have fallen significantly in the last couple of years. This is because people are leaving the country, fewer wealthy tourists are visiting and the middle classes are being squeezed and purchasing fewer luxuries.
"Emigration is rising — and it’s not just millionaires. Data from the Office for National Statistics this week showed that the number of people leaving Britain for good rose 39 per cent in the past three years, to 669,000 in 2024." The Times 21/11/2025
Surely the answer is to make our country MORE and not LESS attractive to rich people so that they come and live here, spend money here and pay taxes here. They are subsidising the rest of us. As they go, the rest of us are having to pay more and more in tax to make up for their loss.
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| This shows how the tax revenues start to decline as the tax rate goes over 40%. Real data is very hard to find but each time the UK (e.g. Wilson) or the French (e.g. Hollande) have hiked tax rates for the very rich, it has failed and they have had to put them back down. |
In the last few weeks, more very wealthy people have left the UK, including Laksmi Mittal (to Switzerland and Dubai) who has regularly topped the Sunday Times Rich List, and James Brocklebank, senior partner at a Private Equity firm (to Luxembourg). We will be much poorer without them. Popular destinations are the UAE (especially Dubai/Abu Dhabi), Switzerland, EU countries (Italy, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus), and other tax-friendlier jurisdictions.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the top UK 1000 earners pay an average of £4 to £6 million in income tax annually.
You can do the maths. If a quarter of the Top 5% of tax payers left, 12% of the current total tax take would need to be found elsewhere. (Around £40bn or an extra 6p on the basic rate of tax). This would be 're-distributed' to the rest of us with the middle classes taking a hefty slice. It's called socialism.
Those Autumn Leaves
It's that time of year again and it's spectacular!
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| Cotinus in my garden |
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| Liquid Ambers at the Said Business School |
Rachel Reeves' November 26th Budget in one sentence (ish)
Taxes up and Spending Up = Socialism; growth will remain anemic (scarcely over 1% for the next years) so the country's economic malaise will continue to deteriorate. The only way out of the mess is to get a big boost to growth. GDP growth in the USA is almost 4%.
The budget did not address this, proving socialists don't understand economics.
Quote for the Month
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Miles Kington.
Prosperity is growing the economy to make everyone richer; Socialism is growing the welfare budget to make everyone poorer.
La prospérité consiste à faire croître l'économie pour enrichir tout le monde ; le socialisme consiste à augmenter le budget de la protection sociale pour appauvrir tout le monde.
Adam Sidbury
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