Ulfwood

A collection of film stars and charities have come together to rename the Tobin tax as the Robin Hood tax.  This tax was designed to lightly tax the financial markets for currency transactions in the US by the Nobel Laureate James Tobin in the 1970s, although never implemented.

The film director Richard Curtis (of Four Weddings & A Funeral fame) has put together a short film starring the actor Bill Nighy to promote the idea.

The tax involves a 0.05% slice on all speculative banking transactions, and it is said that it could produce up to $400 billion every year.  The cost of the tax would no doubt be passed onto investors since money doesn’t grow on trees, but would it be a fair way of damping the ardour of speculative investors whilst gathering greater tax revenue for ailing governments in a time of crisis? And does diminishing stock market speculation help the world in any way?

See the film here:

http://robinhoodtax.org.uk

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ulfwood.net

Many of the indigenous groups in the North Cachar Hills in the state of Assam, India are upset over plans to rename the district as Dima Hasao.  The groups of Kukis, Zeme Nagas, Hmar tribals and Khasis, who together have formed the Indigenous People’s Forum have complained that the renaming will favour the Dimasa tribe.  Both represent roughly 40% of the local population.

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Two state representatives in Springfield, Missouri, USA are at logger heads over plans to rename part of a road to ‘West Sunshine’ in memory of Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter and holocaust survivor.  Representative Lampe failed last year to get the same stretch of road named after the Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who was a leading 20th Century civil rights veteran and Jewish theologian.

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The story of Oasis may be coming to a close, as Liam Gallagher and his merry men continue on under a new name after his brother Noel finally quit last year.  The band that pushed them to fame in the era of BritPop will be renamed shortly, but they have already managed to produce the demos for half an album.  His derisory comments about the previous moniker were apparently made on the radio station XFM.  The big question is, will he find someone else to argue with?

The Uzbekis are renaming many streets in their capital Tashkent to simplify them and return old historical names; its also a way to ‘de-Russify’ their past.  So ‘Aleksei Tolstoy Street’ has become ‘Oloy Street’ and the area known as ‘40 Years of Victory’ has been renamed ‘Tuzel’, which means ‘flat area’.  Presumably this was viewed as being less contentious than ‘19 Years of Independence’…

After the success of the film Avatar, local Tujia people in central China want to rename their local Qiankunzhu mountains to the Hallelujah Mountains.  Their area was the inspiration for the film’s floating mountain, and there will be ‘miracle tours’ for eager tourists.  Presumably the miracle will be if you haven’t seen the film yet…

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