A week is a long time

We seem to be bombarded by all sorts of news. It must be the 24-hour nature of news reporting these days. And the fact that we get news from all over the world as it happens.  

The war is Ukraine is still going on and we should not let that disappear from our daily news. There is still a lot happening and we should show our support of Ukraine by keeping it in the news.

But that is quite difficult with so much going on.

I do not know enough about the history of Gaza. So, I have no idea, which side is right. They are probably both right to an extent. But we seem to be witnessing one atrocity after another and I would think that any right-minded person would like to see those stop. The solution? God knows. And which God are we asking anyway?

Argentina has just elected an “interesting” prime minister. He seems to want change. Whilst we all want to encourage diversity of thought, there seems to be wide opinion that he may be a little bit too diverse.

On the home front, everything seems to be gearing towards an election. But we still seem to have politicians who open their mouth before engaging their brain. They certainly do not seem to have a reliable compliance oversight to stop them doing and saying stupid things.

My most worrying episode was Rishi Sunak describing inflation as a tax. And then doubling down on that when questioned. This is a man who has worked in financial services during his career and been Chancellor of the Exchequer. He seems not to understand basic GCSE economics.

Then we had the Autumn Statement, which was quite openly a sweetener towards the election with plenty of headline giveaways. Although on closer inspection, the number crunchers have proved that many people will be worse off.

There was a lot of speculation about Inheritance Tax being changed or even abolished. This did not happen as that was probably adjudged to be seen as offering benefits to rich people as so few people actually pay IHT.  But instead of that, the Chancellor went in almost the opposite direction.

From the Autmn Statement – The government also remains committed to ensuring early-stage, innovative companies have access to the investment they need to grow and develop. To continue supporting thousands of start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) each year who face the biggest challenges in accessing growth capital, the government will legislate to extend the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT) to 2035.

This is good news for all the contributors to my forthcoming reports on SEIS, EIS, VCT, BR and AIM Investments as it gives them certainty that their funds will maintain their tax efficiency for another 12 years.  A double-whammy, that may be a happy accident, is that many of these funds invest in new technology and Sustainable infra-structure, which should help our economy going forward,

And finally, having promised that it will happen some time in Q4, the FCA has finally Issued the Policy Statement PS23/16 – Sustainability Disclosure Requirements(SDR) and Investment Labels https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/sustainability-disclosure-and-labelling-regime-confirmed-fca  This will hopefully be the starting gun for advisers to finally be confident to start moving back to advising clients about the investments of the future.