Flutter's FanDuel faces US lawsuit over predatory marketing
S ince he took office in December 2020, the mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott, has been on a mission to address the the city's challenges.
Crime has dropped, with murders falling 20 per cent last year. Scott has also been tackling the city's empty, abandoned houses, investing in youth services and repairing its crumbling infrastructure.
This year, he took on another challenge: the damage he says is being done by the growth in online sports betting. In April he launched a lawsuit against gambling firms, including FanDuel, which is owned by Flutter Entertainment, based in Dublin. Scott alleged that FanDuel had been targeting some of the most vulnerable Baltimoreans, inducing them to bet beyond their means and using sophisticated and misleading sales tactics to do so.
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BBC News
43 minutes ago
- BBC News
Humphries beats Aspinall in US Darts Masters final
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The Beatles and Kinks would be howling about tax in Labour's Britain
'If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet / Cause I'm the taxman / Yeah, I'm the taxman.' Those lyrics by George Harrison are from Taxman, the first song on the Beatles' Revolver album, released in 1966. That same year, the Kinks released Sunny Afternoon, with Ray Davies' blunt first line: 'The taxman's taken all my dough.' Artists and songwriters are often ahead of the curve – quite literally in this case. For it wasn't until 1974 that US economist Arthur Laffer drew a line on a napkin capturing what Harrison and Davies were saying: as tax rates rise beyond a certain point, entrepreneurs and wealth creators get cheesed off. They then do less – or move overseas – and the broader economy suffers. What become known as the Laffer curve, sketched at a smart Washington restaurant during a dinner with Republican Party bigwigs, had a profound impact on policymaking in America and elsewhere. Its core idea – that there's an optimal tax rate that maximises revenue, beyond which higher rates lower total revenues by stifling economic activity – was adopted by Ronald Reagan, a showbiz-star-turned-policymaker, as he entered the White House in 1981. Laffer's insight fed into 'supply-side economics' – the school of thought that finally countered post-war 'big state' ideology. It's no good just borrowing and spending more government money in a bid to boost growth if the tax burden crushes genuine commerce. Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 sparked much howling from vested interests grown fat on state largesse. But it cut income tax significantly – and the US averaged 3.5pc annual growth for the rest of the decade, rescuing the world's biggest economy from 1970s stagnation. Approaching the first anniversary of this Labour Government, UK tax revenues are heading for 38pc of GDP, the highest tax burden since the early 1960s – above levels which riled the Beatles and the Kinks. Yet the public finances are extremely precarious. The Government borrowed £148bn during the fiscal year that ended in April, £61bn more than the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated when that same fiscal year started. It's important to remember the vast scale of that 12-month forecasting error during current rows over whether Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, has a single-digit-billion buffer in the national accounts in four years' time – the 'fiscal headroom' that dominates political discussion. Arguing obsessively about contingencies of less than 1pc of public spending which may or may not exist in 2029 is pure displacement activity. Our political and media class meanwhile all but ignores today's stark realities – an annual debt interest bill that's twice yearly defence spending and gilt yields consistently way above those seen during Liz Truss's mini-Budget crisis of October 2022. Yes, it's important to rein-in our runaway benefits bill. Even before the Government's latest cave-in, spending on sickness and disability benefits was set to rise sharply by the end of this decade, from under £50bn to well over £70bn a year, albeit by a few billion less after Labour announced its welfare reforms. Now that Sir Keir Starmer has folded, even that minor slowdown in the rate of increase of benefit spending won't happen. The only way to fix the public finances is to get growth going, so tax revenues rise and our vast 100pc-of-GDP-plus debt burden, and near-crisis-level debt service costs, fall as a share of national income. But Labour's tax rises since last July have crushed economic activity, curtailing tax revenues and weakening the public finances further – a sure sign we're beyond the peak of the Laffer curve, with yet higher tax rates set to prove even more counter-productive. The disastrous rise in employers' National Insurance contributions (NICs) has hammered hiring, undermining NIC revenues overall. Employment has fallen every month since the policy was unveiled in last October's budget, by an astonishing 109,000 in May alone, the month after this tax on jobs was introduced. During that same autumn Budget, Reeves raised capital gains tax from 10pc to 18pc for basic-rate taxpayers and 20pc to 24pc for those paying the higher rate. The Office for Budget Responsibility has since sharply downgraded capital gains tax (CGT) revenue forecasts, wiping £23bn off the projected tax take by 2030. Labour indulged its ideological fantasies by loading more taxes on non-dom international financiers based in the UK. Now multiple billionaires have fled and foreign direct investment projects have fallen to a two-decade low – imagine the jobs and tax revenues we've lost. Building on Tory mistakes, Labour increased taxes even more on North Sea drilling, killing off countless energy extraction projects, again destroying valuable revenue streams. Then there's the spiteful imposition of VAT on school fees which has seen four times more pupils withdrawn by cash-strapped households than ministers predicted and countless school closures – another case of more taxation destroying ambition and enterprise, hitting revenues overall. Back in the early 1980s, inspired by Laffer and Reagan, Margaret Thatcher's Tories lowered tax rates, setting Britain on a path to recovery. David Cameron and Theresa May's governments gradually cut corporation tax (CT) from 28pc in 2010 to 19pc by 2017, with CT revenues hitting 2.7pc of GDP by 2019, up from 2.1pc a decade earlier when the tax rate was much higher. Taxation is complicated – the historical and contemporary examples above are subject to other factors, too. But evidence of many decades shows that countries where the state is relatively small grow faster and are more prosperous, with those consistently spending beyond their means collapsing into crisis. The Beatles and the Kinks didn't leave the UK for tax purposes, unlike the Rolling Stones. But their songs captured the national mood, speaking for the silent majority, a mood that prevails today. Taxation is far too high – and raising tax rates even more will only compound Britain's fiscal and commercial weakness.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Jake Paul scorecards revealed with YouTube star DOMINATING Julio Cesar Chavez Jr after losing just ONE round
JAKE PAUL's dominating win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr was clear to see after the scorecards were revealed. The YouTuber-turned-boxer secured an easy victory against the Mexican at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. 4 4 4 Paul, 28, controlled the fight as he was named the unanimous winner by the judges. Chavez struggled to get forward in the fight until the final few rounds. This was reflected in the judges' cards as Paul claimed every single round except for just ONE. The scorecard shows that in round nine, two judges thought that Chavez was the winner 10-9 over Paul. It was far too little, far too late for Chavez to claw back a points victory as Paul had already won the first eight rounds. His fight back was also short-lived as two of the three judges also gave round 10 to Paul. The Problem Child has given his verdict on the victory as he hit out at his critics. He said: "All the boos are words and actions speak louder than words so you can shut the f*** up. JOIN SUN VEGAS: GET £50 BONUS "I beat your boy. Nah he is a warrior but so am I. "I think I did great against a former world champion who has never been stopped and I dominated him. "Yeah 100 per cent I'm staying active, I'm fighting everybody. "I'll fight anyone, any time, anywhere, any place." Paul also took the opportunity to call out British boxing icon Anthony Joshua. It comes a day after AJ sent him a message urging him to be careful what he wishes for. Meanwhile, Chavez admitted that he is ready for more fights after the bout with the YouTuber. 4
