We have to stop thinking about pensions and benefits as 'spending'. They're transfer payments, or redistribution - quite different! - so they should be paid for by taxation or contribution, and should be treated distinctly in the accounts.

Do you mean you can teach without first having to move the furniture?

Jonathan presents it as I was taught it. Managing the economy has to be thought about in a different way to balancing the public finances. tinyurl/bdeecy93

'Welfare' and 'pensions' are transfer payments: the money is still there, in the economy, it's just being moved. We ought to account for them differently.

No, it doesn't. According to the article, the UK Foreign Office told him that he was now on the USA's list of potential sanctions: 'il figure sur la liste des fonctionnaires de la CPI susceptibles d'être sanctionnés par la nouvelle administration américaine."

In 1951, Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle joined Nye Bevan, resigning in protest against the Labour government's introduction of NHS charges. Whatever happened to them?

The OECD's "Pensions at a glance" reports % of GDP accounted for by public and private provision.

There are still things that might be done with PIP. Uncouple Mobility Allowance. Revive SDA. Reset extensions. Review assessments. But there's a basic problem: first, you need to understand what PIP is and how it works. The government doesn't.

The public finance argument is not sound. Benefits are 'transfer payments'; when paid for by tax, they are redistributive, and any economic effects (presumptively neutral) are marginal. The decision to cut benefits is at root a decision not to redistribute - down to politics, not economics.

* Copyright is not designed to protect creative work: it protects rights holders instead.
* IP laws are never just about creativity - they apply to science and data too.
* IP may impede creativity - eg intertexuality, pastiche.
* IP laws governing terms, succession and ownership are in a mess.

The key benefit for people with disabilities, PIP, is not means-tested; it doesn't 'only' go to people on low incomes. Together, the cut to WFP and the proposed cuts to PIP represent an attack on the core principle of universality. Consider that health and education are also universal services.

A "large chunk" of the cut also fell on pensioners with modest incomes, and another 'large chunk" on those with low incomes. The distribution of pensioners' sources of income can be found at www.gov.uk/government/s....

They didn't target the cut on rich pensioners. They took it from the basic pension. Benefits have to be judged, not by their title, but by how they add to final income; the cut reduced final annual income for every recipient of the state pension.