There have been no recent changes to my portfolio holdings, but here's a reminder for anyone who is interested. From largest to smallest. Top five positions = 53% of total. Top 10 = 80%.
The incoming auto-enrolment system in Ireland sounds horrible:
- a quasi-mandatory system, reducing take-home pay even more for employees.
- even higher costs for employers.
- a huge new govt subsidy for pensions (how can they afford to do this but not to cut income tax?)
1/5
- govt subsidies are applied equally regardless of tax bracket, so a pension becomes another form of income redistribution.
- money gets locked up in the system for 40+ years.
- new central processing authority to administer it, creating more unnecessary civil servant jobs.
2/5
- the existing PRSI deduction was already supposed to provide a decent pension. But there will be no change to PRSI.
- there will only be FOUR investment funds to choose from, for the entire country! An amazing lack of choice. Maybe let people invest their own money?
3/5
Ireland's "Commission on Taxation and Welfare" has triggered outrage with alleged proposals to reduce inheritance tax relief, raise diesel duty, etc.
As with NPHET, the likely purpose of COTW is to float bad ideas, so that government can see which ones are viable.
A short🧵.
Media reports have disclosed the alleged proposals from COTW, but have said almost nothing about who or what COTW is. The ordinary reader is left wondering who to blame for all of the bad ideas.
This is where I come in with a relevant link and a summary.
We can now calculate Ireland's death rates for every age group and for every year up to and including 2021, with the help of freshly released CSO figures and the CSO's population estimates.
I've done this. Some interesting results:
👇👇👇
Firstly, Covid-19 coincided with Ireland's 85+ population achieving their lowest ever death rates in each of the past two years.
An amazing result in the circumstances:
The results are only slightly less positive for the grey-haired 65-84 cohort.
Three out of the four categories here had a small increase in 2021 over the prior year.
But 2021 was still safer for every category in this cohort compared to 2018:
I'm glad to see that @thejournal_ie is hiring more fact-checkers.
For example, one of the most pernicious conspiracy theories going round is that the financial influence of Bill Gates affects global media coverage of Covid-19.
Here's an example of the misinformation I'm talking about.
The Journal itself offers paid internships, called "Google News Initiative Fellowships", in partnership with something called the European Journalism Centre.
When you look into the European Journalism Centre, based in the Netherlands, you find that its "global partners" include both the Open Society Foundations (i.e. George Soros) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
TheJournal says that each of the Covid vaccines meets rigorous standards and that "comprehensive data is provided".
But is that really true?
👇🏻👇🏻
According to the Collins Dictionary, comprehensive means that it includes "everything that is needed or relevant".
I've already reviewed AZ and Janssen.
Let's see how comprehensive the Pfizer data is, using the EMA's Risk Management Plan which was signed off on 29th April 2021.
Scroll to page 85 and you find... Missing Information. But the fact-checker at TheJournal said that the information was comprehensive, so shouldn't this section be empty?
"The safety profile of the vaccine is not known in pregnant or breastfeeding women."