Rapid Responses
Aim shares in Isas
[Re: Isa cash for SMEs, Monday]
David O’Hara has launched an e-petition to allow Aim shares to be included in Isas. We strongly support it. Inclusion would provide valuable fuel for the UK economy’s engines of growth – small and mid-sized companies. The government has cited various excuses for this exclusion, including the fact that firms can come to the Aim market without a trading record. But, those listed on the main market can do so as well, if they are biotech or mining firms. This doesn’t prevent them from being included in an Isa. We must improve liquidity in the small and mid-size quoted company sector. Including Aim shares in Isas is an effective way to do this.
Tim Ward, chief executive of The Quoted Companies Alliance.
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A Swedish model
[Re: The success of Scandinavia owes nothing to high taxes or welfare, yesterday]
I hope British social democrats have read this important piece. They forever hold up Sweden as the sort of society we should mimic. And, from this article, I take this to mean that we should rapidly adjust away from policy decisions that have clearly failed. Sweden may have once been a socialist heaven. But it learned its lesson and now it’s thriving.
Lewis Nash
The authors should add that the Swedish are brutally efficient in their public sector provision. It’s the precise opposite to the UK, where years of dithering has created pools of public sector waste and inefficiency.
Frank Salmon
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TOP TWEETS
How politicians think: Vince Cable never had a profit and loss responsibility in his life. Now he wants to control the economy.
@DraytonBird
Vince Cable’s business bank is a bad idea. Government doesn’t have a good history of backing winners. Remember British Leyland.
@benstoneham
The public accounts committee has found that the government’s flagship industrial policy has created just 2,400 jobs to date.
@ChukaUmunna
G4S didn’t deliver. It should be paid only for the staff it provided minus the expenses incurred by its incompetence.
@spuddysurti