Martin Vander Weyer

What would a perfect tax system look like? For companies, profit taxes should be competitively low, to encourage inward investment, with generous reliefs for start-ups, research and capital projects; the corporate tax code should be designed to generate rising productivity and prosperity rather than to maximise short-term tax revenues, and companies should acknowledge a duty to contribute wherever their profits arise. For individuals, income tax rates should rise only to the lowest level that maximises revenue collection and thresholds should be high enough to keep low earners out of the net, while pension savers and first-time home-buyers should be incentivised.

Perhaps we should be relieved that Donald Trump has made a dull appointment to succeed Janet Yellen as chairman of the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. He might have picked another alt-right wacko or Kremlin stooge — or his Las Vegas buddy Phil Ruffin, the casino owner he allegedly thought of sending as envoy to China. But in fact he has chosen Jerome ‘Jay’ Powell, an identikit lawyer-turned-banker who has been called the candidate of ‘continuity’ and ‘compromise’ after a late run to beat frontrunner Kevin Warsh, a former Trump adviser with more aggressive opinions on the need for monetary tightening.

There are occasions when an apparently negative economic indicator is also in some sense positive. September’s 9 per cent drop in new car registrations compared with the same month last year was no bad thing if it means fewer people are loading themselves up with debt to buy cars — and won’t hurt British car factories that are part of a global supply chain. Likewise, falling London house prices may carry a negative message about international confidence in the UK, but will help London workers to buy homes. And a quarter-point interest rate rise may look like a sign of concern at the Bank of England and a worry for mortgage borrowers, but is actually a tiptoe back towards the economic normality we have almost forgotten.

Another week, another blue-chip in the dock. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has brought fraud charges against London-based mining giant Rio Tinto and two former executives in relation to an ill-starred coal venture in Mozambique. Whatever its legalities, this was a colossal corporate cock-up. In 2010, Rio paid $3.7 billion for Riversdale, an Australian company that controlled large coal deposits in the Tete region of Mozambique. The plan was to send coal by barge 400 miles down the Zambezi river to the coast, for shipping to Chinese power stations. But the coal reserves proved disappointing, while the Mozambique government refused to permit the barge operation and a rail link proved too expensive.

How did we mislay half a trillion pounds? Revised data from the Office for National Statistics has just reduced the UK’s ‘net international investment position’ from a surplus of £469 billion to a deficit of £22 billion. Downing Street dismissed this as ‘a technical revision’ — and in truth it’s not as bad it sounds, since what it tells us is that we own fewer foreign assets, and foreigners own more British assets, than had previously been recorded. Does national pride not attach to the idea that the rest of the world sees us as an investment safe haven? So why worry? Well, past miscounting apart, actual current trends in this respect do not encourage optimism.

How did we mislay half a trillion pounds? Revised data from the Office for National Statistics has just reduced the UK’s ‘net international investment position’ from a surplus of £469 billion to a deficit of £22 billion. Downing Street dismissed this as ‘a technical revision’ — and in truth it’s not as bad it sounds, since what it tells us is that we own fewer foreign assets, and foreigners own more British assets, than had previously been recorded. Does national pride not attach to the idea that the rest of the world sees us as an investment safe haven? So why worry? Well, past miscounting apart, actual current trends in this respect do not encourage optimism.

Sir Richard Greenbury, the former Marks & Spencer chairman who died last week aged 81, was one of those choleric but thin-skinned corporate chiefs (Sir Alastair Morton of Eurotunnel was another) who never learned to handle journalists. The Telegraph reporter Kate Rankine famously caused him to blow his top at a 1997 press conference by asking when he intended to retire; he made matters worse by describing her later as ‘a silly little girl’.

Monarch Airlines was the ghost of an earlier age of holiday travel. When I used to see its planes lined up at Leeds-Bradford airport alongside those of Ryanair and its brash northern rival Jet2, I sometimes wondered why Monarch was still there. Now it has been brought down by a combination of the weak pound, too much competition on Iberian routes and too little demand for terrorist-threatened ones to Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt. Even the orderly repatriation of 110,000 Monarch passengers has had an old-fashioned feel to it (perhaps even a touch of Dunkirk, for those who have seen that excellent film), enhanced by the reassuring tones of Dame Deirdre Hutton, the veteran quango queen who chairs the Civil Aviation Authority.

An Uber insider tells me not to write off the ride-hailing giant too soon, because it’s a very smart company for all its faults — and because the numbers of drivers and users for whom it is part of daily life will make it difficult for Transport for London to uphold its licence withdrawal on appeal, so long as Uber makes gestures of humility. But the moral of the story, says my source, is that as a ‘tech disrupter’ invading a regulated sector, the company created by Travis Kalanick ‘relished the fight with governments and entrenched interests far more than was normal or reasonable’, rather than seeking to be part of the urban fabric through collaboration or partnership.

The price of offshore wind power has halved, making those giant inshore turbine arrays we love to hate look competitive with new nuclear power for the first time. The headline number in this story is £57.50, which is the guaranteed electricity price per megawatt hour bid by two windfarm ventures in the government’s latest ‘contracts for difference’ subsidy auction. Both due for first delivery in 2022-23, these projects at Hornsea on the East Yorkshire coast and Moray East off the north of Scotland, are between them theoretically capable of powering 2.4 million homes. Just two years ago, windfarms were bidding up to £120 per megawatt hour in comparable auctions; their slashed pricing today can be set alongside the £92.

Should we place faith in a survey, conducted in June but published this week, that says London is still the world’s pre-eminent financial centre? Yes, in the sense that no one challenges that long-standing claim as of today; no, in the sense that complacency would be a huge mistake while every financial firm operating in the City, the West End and Canary Wharf is busy making contingency plans for a bad Brexit outcome.