Category Archives: Grubby Capitalism

Football and Tax

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In the midst of the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth following England’s entirely predictable premature elimination from yet another football tournament comes a different take on our national sport in this week’s Private Eye.
It goes without saying that England are simply not good enough to compete effectively on the European (let alone World) stage and many experts have provided explanations for this from the over-coaching of youngsters to too much football played at the highest level. Private Eye, however, put it down to “state-sponsored tax dodging” and I think they have a point.

Due to the UK’s tax rules for non-domiciled residents, the world’s finest footballers can be attracted to this country in the knowledge that their astronomical wages will be largely untouched by the taxman by the use of completely legal offshore accounts. Further, it is cheaper and more tax efficient for an English football club to sign up foreign footballers than it is to invest in English players.

Since money is of course the main driving force of the English Premiership it is obvious that the development of home grown talent is way down on their list of priorities. It seems therefore that unless and until our tax laws are amended England (and all the home countries) will be doomed to perpetual failure and under achievement.

Reality Check

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Our Prime Minister referred to comedian Jimmy Carr as being “morally wrong” in arranging his finances in such a way that he pays minimal tax to the State. Other than the fact that Carr is a high profile figure, who has since declared that he has “made a terrible error of judgement” (and he would say that, wouldn’t he?), why pick on him?

Tax avoidance is rife in this country, and I’m sure all over the world, and Jimmy Carr is merely one of hundreds of thousands in England alone. Those who govern us need to face and deal with reality rather than preach from the pulpit and moralize on society’s wrongs. The reality is that man is, was and always will be a greedy avaricious creature and power and money corrupt. Those truths are unalterable and are sadly without cure. There is no point in criticizing those who pay millions of pounds each year to flashy lawyers and tax accountants to arrange their affairs to the detriment of the taxman because they won’t do anything about it. Money is their God and for many is their sole raison d’etre.

The Prime Minister is right, it is immoral (but not illegal) to avoid tax, especially when the miscreants still reap the benefit of all the services that the State provides with money taken from those who are morally sound or, as in the case of PAYE employees, have no choice but to pay their taxes. What the Prime Minister and his Government have to do is close down all the legal  loopholes that the immoral exploit so that they too have no choice but to pay their full contribution to the State’s coffers.

It’s a matter of common sense and is really quite simple to remedy. Parliament needs to pass legislation compelling every UK citizen and/or resident of the UK to pay tax on all  his or her personal and corporate earnings. It needs to pass legislation ending forthwith the benefits of off-shore banking and tax havens and ensure that every last penny is accounted for to the Exchequer. It will, of course, require some top lawyers and accountants to put this in place and make it completely watertight but the Government surely has these people at its disposal.

Most importantly, the necessary legislation will require the political will and sound morality of those who govern us and that, when I think about it, is why it will probably never happen.

More Sleaze

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 So it costs £250,000 to enter the Conservative Party “premier league” and purchase a meeting or even dine with the Prime Minister according to a Conservative Party treasurer, Peter Cruddas, who resigned yesterday following revelations in the Sunday Times.

I’d like to say how surprised and outraged I am by this latest scandal and affront to the democratic processes of our once great country but unfortunately my reaction, like that of many other people I imagine, was more like “oh dear, here we go again”!
Of course, the revelations, if  true, raise several important issues, amongst which is was the Prime Minister aware of these payments? Further, did those payments, leading to meetings with the Prime Minister, actually buy favours and undue influence for the donors? If either answer is in the affirmative then Prime Minister David Cameron could be in big trouble although I suspect, like Tony Blair before him, he will simply wriggle out of it, we’ll forget about it and the unsavoury circus of British Politics will trundle along like it always does.

Fat Britain

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We are often told by medical experts and government officials that the UK is in the flabby grip of an obesity epidemic although, frankly, you’d have to live in a monastery or be completely housebound with no television to be unaware of this fact. The briefest of visits to your local high street will certainly give you the impression that we have been taken over by thousands of invaders from the Planet Blubber or the offspring of Jabba the Hut!

It’s sometimes hard to make your way down supermarket aisles, blocked as they are by huge beasts loading their trolleys with frozen pizzas, bogof own-brand sausages and multipacks of Walkers crisps. Fastfood shops are packed full of customers salivating at the thought of their 24 deepfried chicken pieces loaded into gallon size cardboard buckets and young girls, their huge guts bloated by a lifetime of chip fat and fried bread, stand around swigging cola and smoking cheap cigarettes in between their feeds. Yes, welcome to modern Britain.

Don’t get me wrong, I realise that some people cannot help their weight, whether through some medical condition or inherited genes, and they deserve our sympathy, support and respect. The others not so.

The icing on the cake (burger more like) was a report earlier this week that some NHS hospitals are concerned that some of their patients are so grossly overweight that they are unable to pass through hospital CT scanners. The scanners were not designed for such large beings and so some hospitals are considering asking their local zoos if they can use their animal CT scanners which are evidently able to scan patients of 30 stones and over! Apparently, this is a fairly common occurrence in the USA where they have had a problem with obesity for many years. Still, good to see that we are catching up.

Win An All Expenses Paid Trip For Two To The Seychelles!

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Not really, but it got your attention didn’t it? It’s funny how many competitions there are on television these days and how simple the questions are. For example, on Channel 4 last night there was a multiple choice question, as they always seem to be, which if answered correctly would give the winner some incredible prize such as that trip for two to the Seychelles. I can’t actually remember what the prize was so amazed was I by the question “What is the capital of the USA?” Is it a) Berlin, b) Paris or c) Washington DC? Mmmm, tricky but only if you are, or have the IQ of someone, aged 2 years!

Of course, the advertisers make their money by requiring you to text your answer to a number where you will be charged £1 per minute. I’ve never taken part but I can imagine that the welcome message including a description of the prize probably takes 5 minutes, followed by another 5 minutes taking your full details including name, address, marital status, date of birth, weight, hair colour, shoe size, favourite meal etc etc and finally another 5 minutes for you to answer the question! That amounts to £15 at £1 per minute and if, say 100,000 people (not that great a number out of possibly 5 million viewers) enter the competition as a result of that single advert then the return is £1.5 million. Some return.

Very clever advertising, of course, and more fool us for thinking we can win the competition, though presumably somebody does. As I puzzled over the answer I thought to myself what a crazy world we live in! Then another thought occurred to me, what if the competition is meant to be taken seriously and there really are people out there who will struggle to get the correct  answer? After all, we all know how bad our education system is and how many illiterate ill-educated 16 year old dullards are spewed out into the work place once that system has finished with them. What if there really are people out there who don’t know that Paris is the capital of the USA?! It doesn’t bear thinking about does it!

Only 100 Days To Go!

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Yes, it’s that time of year again where, with just over two thirds of the year gone, we are urged to forget about the remaining third and plan instead for – and I can barely bring myself to write the word – Christmas. You know what I mean, with our bodies barely free of suntan lotion, restaurants, pubs and clubs are urging us to “Book now for Christmas”, “Book your Christmas Party Here!” and “Book now for Christmas, we still have some places left” (Well, you’d bloody well hope so at the start of September, wouldn’t you!).
How sad, depressing and irritating, in equal measure, is all of that? Talk about wishing your life away. It’s as if September, October and November don’t exist. Let’s just skip Autumn and go straight from Summer to Christmas, shall we?

I think it’s about time we showed some resistance and made a determined effort not to even mention the C word until the beginning of December. We should certainly not allow any C advertising or booking of C functions until December 1st. We could even urge our government (or better still the European Parliament, since they don’t appear to have much of a connection with the real world) to pass an Act banning all reference to C until December.

Yes, that might do the trick although once the C season has passed and we reach January 1st we will all be urged to book our summer holidays and forget about the intervening months from January to June! Oh dear, I suppose it’s the price we have to pay for living in this consumer age.