Corporation Tax

A few years ago while I was sorting out my late father's estate, a solicitor said half-jokingly that Inheritance Tax is entirely voluntary. This is true: there are many ways a chap can prevent his estate having to forego 40% above £325,000. Chief amongst these is to spend your money before you die, or to give it away. Yer average tax consultant can find lots of other legal ways to do it, of course, just as David Cameron's father's advisers did. In a way, I can sympathise with avoiding Inheritance Tax because, after all, in most cases the money is mainly money which was taxed when it was earned (although not apparently in Cameron's case).

But it seems that Corporation Tax too has now become 'voluntary'. Starbucks have magnanimously announced that they will pay £20 million Corporation Tax over the next two years despite the various dodges which permit them legally not to do so. Well, thanks a bunch! No doubt the fat cats at Starbucks have reached the view that they can do without the negative publicity of the current campaign to boycott tax-dodging corporations.

The boycott campaign, however, won't solve the problem in the long-term. Corporations might do the decent thing for a while, but once the heat dies down they'll go back to their old ways. In any case, a boycott against the likes of Amazon and Google just isn't going to work.The tax laws need to be changed and the tax-dodgers should be pursued with the same vigour that the authorities employ to hound benefit claimants, issue parking tickets and collect council tax etc. And there should be no 'settlements' such as the one HMRC agreed with Vodafone. On the Government's own figures there is a tax gap of some £32 billion between what is expected and what the Treasury actually receives. The so-called structural deficit could be rectified remarkably quickly!

David Cameron: Corrupt or Does He think We are All Stupid?

No surprise there, then.

Lord Leveson spends several million quid on an inquiry, produces a report with clear recommendations and David Cameron rejects it. Could this be because he has always been in the pocket of Rupert Murdoch and was always going to reject statutory oversight of the muck-raking press, or does he think we're all stupid? It is quite obvious that the press is not fit to regulate itself, and neither are they all that concerned with accuracy, justice or consistency. Individual journalists might be, but their editors/publishers are not. The inquiry has shown that corruption and prejudice is rife; in any other context there would be statutory controls. But not, apparently, when there is the possibility that the perpetrator might be able to help a politician's chances of getting elected.

Bah.

David Cameron: Oh! What a Lovely War!

In another illustration of what a vacuous twit he is, David Cameron who, by some curious fluke or another, is the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has announced that his government is to spend £50 million on commemorating the First World War. He plans various festivities to mark the commencement of hostilities and the major battles thereafter, with a shindig four years later to mark the Armistice. Along the way, the Government is to facilitate in some way trips for school children to the battle sites and memorials in France and Belgium.

What a plonker. Who in their right mind celebrates the start of a war? Cameron says that it will remind us all of what it means to be British...Well, Mr Cameron, one of the things that being British meant a hundred years ago was the mentality that thought it was a good thing to go to war to establish who had the right to determine everyone else's future and who would control which colonies. It was about militarism, imperialism and nationalism and the outcome, besides the millions of deaths, was bad for everyone (except the profiteers).  

Will Cameron be commemorating the Sykes-Picquot agreement? This was the outcome of a carve up between British and French 'diplomats' of what would happen in the Middle East after the war - i.e. they drew lines on a map and arbitrarily allocated bits of territory to those who had been on their side during the war, meanwhile betraying others who had been promised rewards - hence we have Iraq, Iran, Syria, Jordan and so forth.  And anyone who has done GCSE History will be aware that the Treaty of Versailles was a total disaster for Europe. And doesn't Cameron know that secondary schools have been organising battlefield trips for years?

Cameron would do well to borrow the DVD of Oh! What a Lovely War which might give him a better perspective on the conflict and how badly it was managed. He should also read some of Wilfred Owen's poetry - Owen was moved to write his poetry when he realised that he and millions of others had been conned by their Governments into fighting industrialised warfare on the spurious basis that they would be 'liberating Belgium'. But Cameron knows all this as he's got 12 'O' Levels and 3 'A' Levels, including history.

Meanwhile, where is he getting the £50 million from?

George Osborne: Ignorance

Today's philosophical conundrum. Just as honesty is not always the best policy i.e. you shouldn't necessarily tell your Mum that she has a fat behind, sometimes it's best not to know the awful truth. And people are entitled to remain ignorant, if they so wish. But it is a shame when members of the Government pursue this right so determinedly.

So I'm going to abandon all this Socratic pondering for today, be honest, defy George Osborne's rights, and reveal the awful truth:

George, you are an idiot who doesn't have a clue what he's doing, and your pal Cameron is a vacuous twit.

Mick Jagger Walks Out

The NME reports that Mick Jagger has withdrawn from a tea party to which he was invited by David Cameron in Davos, Switzerland. Sir Jagger has belatedly realised that Cameron was using him to give himself some 'hip' credibility on the pretext that Jagger would be helping to promote Great Britain. Ole Jumpin' Jack Flash says he has always maintained an apolitical stance publicly and steered well clear of party politics which is true enough but you'd have thought he would have smelled a rat beforehand on receiving an invitation to a tea party from the likes of Cameron. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to be tainted by such association. But Sir Flash has always been a great one for mixing with those in high places and no doubt his ego felt good to be asked to be part of the gathering of the overblown plutocrats and self-appointed global business elite at the World Economic Forum where this shindig is taking place. Coincidentally, The Stones will be celbrating their 50th Anniversary this year.

Our picture shows Keith Richards' reaction to the news.

The Banker, the Daily Mail reader, and the Benefit Recipient

A correspondent in the Letters Page of today's Independent quotes the following joke to sum up current Government policy:

An investment banker, a Daily Mail reader and a benefit recipient are sitting round a plate with 12 biscuits on it. The banker takes 11 biscuits, then turns to the Daily Mail reader and says: “Watch out – that scrounger is after your biscuit.”

You could replace the words 'Daily Mail reader' with the name David Cameron or any of his jumped-up Tory half-wit colleagues, all of whom seem to be similarly deliberately ignorant and unable or unwilling to see where the problem actually lies. As the letter writer points out, they should be asking where the eleven biscuits went.

Politics: New Words

The Coalition Government has been 'in power' for 21 months now and in that time we have learned some new words to describe what they are up to. Here's half a dozen:

• Mispledge - Anything Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, might have said prior to a minute ago.
• Undeforestationageness - The somewhat embarrassing state in which Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, found herself having belatedly realised what a chump she was to propose selling off publicly owned forests and woodlands without first checking whether anyone else thought it was a good idea.
• Futtock - The shape of the imprint left in the sofa after Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has been sitting on it.
• Gove - A 'Big Idea' that some pranny or other (usually Michael Gove), mysteriously elevated beyond his level of competence, comes up with and to which everyone responds with disbelief, speechlessness and a frown before then setting out in some detail why it is a load of old cobblers and inviting the proposer to 'Shut up you twit'.
• Vacuosity - A statement of policy, spouted forth from David Cameron, in which he says that something or other is a problem and he is going to do something about it but he doesn't say what exactly that might be, nor does anything subsequently materialise.
• Dysastatistificated - The misleading use and manipulation of statistics in order to substantiate a prejudged position. Particularly popular with immigration Ministers, employment Ministers and other bigots.

Further contributions welcome.