Letters to the editor
Bank ringfencing
[Re: Ringfencing is the wrong solution to the wrong problem, yesterday]
It’s right to point out that Northern Rock, HBOS, and Bradford and Bingley were largely retail banks. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem to solve. Retail banks have been relying on a flood of cheap money from the Bank of England, and are still reticent (or lack the incentive) to stop propping up zombie companies and mortgages. Whether we have structural reform or not, banks will still gratefully take Funding for Lending to throw at mortgages, and Britain’s property bubble will stay inflated. Gimmicks like structural separation may win votes from an ignorant electorate, but they won’t resolve systemic fault lines.
Matthew Nicolson
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Airline taxes
[Re: Axe tax and life growth, airlines urge Osborne, yesterday]
The airlines’ latest salvo in their campaign to persuade the public and the government that air passenger duty is damaging to the economy is a report they commissioned PwC to produce. They have subsequently claimed that the industry would be able to “move quickly to add new flights in and out of the UK”. But with the airline industry simultaneously complaining about lack of extra capacity at Heathrow, in particular, where would this increase in flights actually occur? This seems particularly pertinent given that these extra flights will supposedly lift GDP by 0.46 per cent.
Name withheld
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BEST OF TWITTER
The average water bill in the south west is now £500 per annum. A horrendous impact on low-income households.
@RichardWellings
Dell has gone private. But how will this allow the company to become more responsive to market changes?
@WillMackey
Dell will be the third largest US private company behind Cargill and Koch, and the twelfth or thirteenth globally.
@harryhenry
Fitch: Greece (which had the highest peak deficit of any Eurozone country) has done the most to balance its books.
@Frances_Coppola