IQ Debates
Tax the rich (more)
24th June, 2008Debate Details
The debate will take place at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR.
Doors open at 6pm, June 24th, 2008. The debate starts at 6.45pm and finishes at 8.30pm.
EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR SPECTATOR READERS: Come and enjoy a pre-debate drink with the Editor, Matthew d'Ancona, and attend this exclusive SOLD OUT debate held at the Royal Geographical Society's Ondaatje Theatre. The Spectator have formed an alliance with Intelligence Squared, joining our magazine and online elements with this dynamic debating forum. Tickets are strictly limited for Spectator readers, so we would recommend booking early to avoid disappointment.
Tickets are £35 per person. To reserve your place email info@intelligencesquared.com or call 0207 575 1812, quoting SP6.
Speakers for the motion:
Anthony Hilton: Financial Editor of the Evening Standard where he writes a weekly column on marketing, investor relations, pensions and economics. Winner in 2007 of the Decade of Excellence Award, the most prestigious award in business and financial journalism given annually by the World Press Awards. He was City Editor of the Times from 1981 to 1983, and City Editor of the Evening Standard from 1984 to 1989. He has also worked for the Observer, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express. In addition to journalism he has also had a commercial career, serving as managing director of the Evening Standard company for six years and being involved with the launch of several magazine and publishing companies. He is joint founder and non-executive chairman of one of these, The Newsdesk Media Group, a business which now employs 70 people in Britain and America, and turns over £8 million a year. He has made regular appearances on radio and television, filling the commentator's slot on Channel 4's TV Business programme for three years. He has written two books: How to Communicate Financial Information to Employees and City within a State, a study of how the City of London really works.
Professor John Kay: One of Britain's leading economists, John Kay began his academic career when he was elected a fellow of St John's College, Oxford at the age of 21, a position which he still holds. As research director and director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies he established it as one of Britain's most respected think tanks. Since then he has been a professor at the London Business School and the University of Oxford, and is currently a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. He was the first director of Oxford University's Said Business School. In 1986 he founded London Economics, a consulting business, of which he was executive chairman until 1996. He has been a director of Halifax plc and remains a director of several investment companies. He is chairman of Clear Capital, an independent equity research firm, recently established to meet the growing demand for unconflicted research in securities markets. A frequent writer, lecturer and broadcaster, he contributes a weekly column to the Financial Times. He is the author of Foundations of Corporate Success (1993), and The Business of Economics (1996). His most recent book, The Truth about Markets, was published in 2003 to wide critical acclaim. Two collections of recent writings have been published, Everlasting Light Bulbs in 2004, and The Hare & the Tortoise in 2006.
Polly Toynbee: Guardian columnist and president of the Social Policy Association. She was formerly BBC social affairs editor, columnist and associate editor of the Independent, co-editor of the Washington Monthly and a reporter and feature writer for the Observer. She has written several books: Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain (2003), Lost Children: Story of Adopted Children Searching for Their Mothers (1985), The Way We Live Now (1981), Hospital (1977), A Working Life (1970) and Leftovers (1969). She co-authored Better or Worse? Has Labour Delivered? (2005) with David Walker.
Speakers against the motion:
Lord Jacobs: Liberal Democrat Life Peer. Anthony Jacobs B.Com. FCA enjoyed a highly successful business career over thirty three years, during which time he was Chairman of Nig Securities Group (1957-1972), the Tricoville Group (1961-1990) and The British School of Motoring (1973-1990). He joined the Liberal Party in 1972 and became Economics and Taxation Advisor to the Liberal Party from 1973 to 1978. In 1984, he was elected Joint Treasurer of the Party and was returned unopposed each year until he stepped down in 1987. He supported the merger of the Liberal Party and SDP and served as Chairman of the Party in England and Vice-President of the Federal Party. In 1988, he received a Knighthood. Since entering the House of Lords in 1997 he has used his extensive business experience in the House to challenge the Government on a range of issues. He was an active member of the Tate Gallery Millennium fund-raising committee for the new Tate Bankside Gallery of Modern Art.
James Bartholomew: Author of The Welfare State We're In which was described as "a devastating critique" by Nobel Prize winner, Milton Friedman, and "brilliant, indeed chilling" by Frank Field MP. The book won the Institute of Economic Affairs' 2005 Arthur Seldon Award for Excellence. He is the Earhart Foundation Senior Fellow in Social Policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs. After training as a banker in the City of London he moved into journalism with the Financial Times and the Far Eastern Economic Review, for whom he worked in Hong Kong and Tokyo. Returning to England on the Trans-Siberian Railway through communist China and the Soviet Union, "an experience which influenced his political outlook", he subsequently became a leader writer on The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. He continues to write occasionally for both newspapers, as well as The Sunday Telegraph, the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Express and The Spectator on a freelance basis. He has also made many appearances on radio and television. But, for a year or two, much of his time is being taken up with home-educating his younger daughter. James Bartholomew's previous books were The Richest Man in the World: The Sultan of Brunei and Yew and Non-Yew, a book about garden snobbery.
Harry Enfield: Actor and comedian. After reading politics at York University and working for a while as a milkman, he embarked on a highly successful television career in the 1980s, creating with Paul Whitehouse such iconic characters as "Stavros", the Greek restaurant owner with fractured English, and "Loadsamoney", an obnoxious character who constantly boasted of how much money he earned, and who was eventually killed off when his creators became aware that he was being considered as a positive image. In the 1990s he developed his own BBC sketch show, playing more nationally recognized characters such as "Tim Nice-but-Dim" and "Wayne Slob". He reunited with Paul Whitehouse on the BBC's Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul in 2007, which has a particular emphasis on the British class system. This series especially lampoons the British upper and upper-middle classes as being somewhat dim, oblivious to the 'real' world around them and highly disparaging of 'lower class' citizens, whom they perceive as almost a different species.
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