For more on Eyelash visit their website and the album is available from Amazon. I’ve ordered my copy.

Well, it turns out that one of the cards held an intriguing piece of information. Fiona Salomon, who is, I am told, my second cousin, is a singer. A bit of research later she is rather a good singer who at times performs under the name Ofelia Webb and as Ruby May with a pianist named (rather wonderfully) Sophie Smiles. So having never met her and only just discovered I’m obscurely related to her, here is a great big plug for the excellent Fiona Salomon. The track below is called Taxi Cabs.

You find more of her music at her YouTube, SoundCloud, MySpace

2) Capitalism is not a theory which feeds bankers bonuses, it is a principle of competition that works to the benefit of the customer. You can oppose high levels of executive pay, undeserved bonuses and call for changes to tax avoidance laws without being classed as anti-capitalist (the BBC, Sky and Business Secretary also need to learn this distinction)

3) If the protesters are in their camps all day, one presumes most are not working. They are also not paying to have their tent in that location. Is it not then a bit rich to dictate how other people’s tax should be spent?

4) I don’t believe that the camps are iPhone, HTC and Blackberry free zones, so the protesters must know what is happening around Europe. We simply can’t keep spending money that the country doesn’t have and, while there is a case to be made for revising the tax rates, a cursory look at the economics shows the “tax the rich” line would not fill the void.

5) If you really are the 99%, you can come out of your tents and just use your vote to change direction.

The United Nations expect that the 7 billionth person in the World will be born today. It will be pretty much impossible to work out exactly which child is number 7 billion, so I apologise for not knowing whether this letter should be written in pink or in blue.

As you grow up you will no doubt hear many stories of how the global population is unsustainable. These concerns will focus on food, energy usage and damage to the environment. They are all legitimate challenges we have to face, but they are not apocalyptic. The truth is people have been coming up with solutions to what have seemed like insurmountable challenges for thousands of years and they will continue to do so.

You will discover a World that does suffer from many problems, injustices and conflict. I cannot deny that to be the case. You will also discover a world in which communications are better than ever, knowledge is shared in a way that was impossible less than a generation ago, and there is a good chance you will be born into a nation where the crime rate is lower than at the time your parents were born. Perhaps most tellingly of all you will grow up in a World in which over 50% of the population live in cities. Why is this important? It shows that people are choosing to live side by side. 

To break down the population by statistics is to ignore the genius in our diversity. Perhaps today we will see the birth of the next great composer, engineer, political leader or humanitarian. Maybe the great innovation that answers the question of how to make a growing population on Earth more sustainable is to be discovered by one of those born on this day.

As you grow you will find that people are imperfect but you’ll also discover people are brilliant.

Best wishes

Just one of the other 7 billion out there.

Tax paid by the individual (including income tax and employees National Insurance)

If you reduce the amount of tax on an individual then they are left with more money to spend. This money is then spent on goods and services which in turn helps the businesses providing them to grow. Those businesses will make larger profits and pay more tax at the existing rate as a result. The businesses may also start to employ more people and that results in those new employees paying more tax to the Government and also starts them off on the same cycle as mentioned above because they now have more money to spend due to their new job. The individual gets more of the things they want. The business makes more money. The Government gets the tax receipts of the increased business.

Tax paid by business (including Corporation Tax and employers National Insurance)

If tax for business is reduced then the company has more money to spend on expanding the business and recruiting people to new jobs. As the business expands then the likelihood is that the profit margin will too. This increases the base from which the Government collects tax. The new recruits pay tax on their earnings and also have more money to spend which leads to the cycle noted in the paragraph above. The company has more money to spend, expands, recruits more people and makes more money which in turn is taxed by a Government who will also be paying out less in benefits because of the increase in employment.

This is a simplified version of the principle, but it is already far more in depth than a lot of news coverage on the logic of cutting taxation. The Government have broadly the right approach to tackling the deficit in my view, but growth is not coming as quickly as had been hoped. That growth can be spurred by carefully selected reductions in tax.

An experimental data illustration of migration flow with some interesting statistics.

I do think it wrong to try and stop players taking part in the Olympics and I want my home country taking part, especially as the one event being held in Wales is football. However, my bigger concern is the FAW’s stance matches the old criticism of an inward looking and insecure Wales. The threat to the long term future of the national team is nonsense, I’m less sure about the threat to Wales’ position in the hierarchy of FIFA, but lets just say FIFA has more than a few problems at the moment anyway.

I want Wales taking part on the World stage whether it be in sport or the arts or politics or business. I want people to see us as self-confident and outward looking.

It would be humiliating to have the global media on hand to laugh at an insecure Wales when they cover football at the Millennium Stadium if an all-English Team GB takes the field -at risk of being booed by a crowd who perceive them to be England.

The alternative is for the FAW to embrace the event. Let Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsay, Jess Fishlock et al show the World the quality of Welsh players. Let the Millennium Stadium be seen by non-rugby nations in all its glory. Let Cardiff and Wales welcome the World with open arms and the warmth we all know.