More revelations!
The Queen invested in an offshore company - who would have guessed given she is ruler over most of the Caribbean - how dare she invest (not that she ever has, its all the work of the Privy Purse in any event.
Worse still, there is news that the majority owner of Belize, Michael Ashcroft, may have kept businesses in the country where he has over £1 billion in interests.
So much, so meh.
However, all this breathless news is broken once again, in a shallow echo of the Panama papers, by the Guardian and BBC etc al.
This I suppose is a sort of step up from MP's alleging each other have been up to the gropies for their own career enhancement.
I thought I was tired of talking about Brexit, but people who become international celebs and businessmen using international ways of lowering their taxes really does nothing for me at all. It is a classic leftist "look, rich people - the bastards - lets rob them and feel good about it." The only solace is that plenty of right-on lefties get caught too, as would anyone who has made some money who wants to find a way of keeping more than 45% of it, legally (these accountants and lawyers don't tell you the things are dodgy, they ask you for money and make sure you sign and indemnity for them).
Anyhow, onwards with what we will call RIGHTEOUS WEEK - the not stop exposing (ummm) of HRH and dodgy men and their very dodgy offshore shenanigans.
I wonder if in the long-term though the wealthy elites will tire of democracy if the whole thing is going to be geared against them. I wonder what country will be chosen for the "Benevolent Dictator" experiment.
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BBC Radio Scotland did their phone in about groping and 'inappropriate behaviour'. Some expert woman they had on was almost in tears of joy, exclaiming she had been waiting for this moment for 35 years, decades she had spent being ridiculed as a 'humourless prude'.
One of the male callers managed to pin her down to saying what she actually wants. Apparently everyone (and men especially) needs to be 'educated' about what consent really means and to view sex not as a hormonal instinctive behaviour, but as something we should only do on where there is a rational and logical basis.
I was left wondering whether there is a rational basis for sex aside from hormonal 'satisfaction' these days. Perhaps with sperm banks, genetic screening and IVF the only rational reason is cost. But then again not having sex decreases a womans chances of getting various STD's and cervical cancer.
I reckon that's what these people really want. There is in fact research that suggests as many as 15-19% of unmarried, and 5-8% of previously married females are asexual. I suspect there's an awful lot more that are disgusted by any notion of promiscuity. Personally I've always simply assumed that people who find sex 'a big deal' have probably just had very few sexual partners. Whereas at the other end of the scale, Charlie Sheen probably has a more casual outlook.
So we're probably going to wind up with a situation where sex education is organised by virgins (and prudes who put up with it once a week from their husband).
4 more years of limpy May.
By then we will all be voting gratefully to have Corbyn-McDonnell.
CU
Au contraire
The rise of trump/brexit indicates that the proles think that capitalism/the economy/democracy is geared against _them_
Looking at their experience over the last decade, they are right to feel that way.
However, I am not so sure that the actual causative process is something actually aimed at them.
The issues go much deeper than expensive housing - which will not be solved by building more houses.
To me it feels like we are no longer willing to share the same country / reality / legal system with people we do not agree with.
Case in point: the current economist says US republicans have a higher level of trust in V Putin than H Clinton.
This will not end well.
Following on from Weinstien last week and Righteous week this week...
obligatory youtube clip.
Doesn't the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument not apply here.
Yes Her Maj (who is under remunerated for the job) and anyone should be able to invest where they want at whatever tax rate they want. What is at issue is their hiding it while at the same time shoving the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument down people's throat when they want to pry into your circumstances.
The transparency afforded to Norwegians since 1800 hasn't made the Norwegians poorer or communists - so publish and be damned.
Anon, it depends on your level of confidence that you understand the tax code. Given that there are over 2000 pages of it, how confident are you that everything you do is legal? Do you have a holiday flat in the Algarve and let your relatives stay there rent-free from time to time? Are you confident that you are not avoiding tax somewhere?
No Labour supporting celeb should be on this list.
Every single U.K. citizen who has ever worked as an ex-pat has had these so-called offshore investments, me included. This entire splash on the anti-BBC amounts to a sack of cack. Nota bene: not a word about the EU-enabled tax haven of Luxembourg, is there?
And since when can the Queen not have investments in a place where she is the Head of State?
The BBC has become a dubious Marxist propaganda outfit. They need abolishing. I resent paying for these bastards under pain of imprisonment. The utility companies can’t jail me for non-payment. Why should these treasonous Haw-Haws be able to? Let them move to a subscription model. If they’re as good as they say they are they won’t be short of funds. (But deep down I suspect they know they’re shit & a sizeable portion of the public have rumbled them.)
The BBC has been lashing itself into a frenzy all week. Today they claim that "the UK's reputation has been damaged around the world."
No evidence is given for this assertion.
As a tax-eater organization, the BBC is is appalled that other people might want to minimize the amount of their own money that they hand over to the State. After all, if that kind of thing goes on, who knows what might happen to the Licence Fee, a tax extracted from everyone who owns a television set, whether or not they watch the BBC, or detest everything that the BBC stands for ?
Have you ever wanted to land someone right in the smelly? You don't know anything compromising about them, but they're fairly rich so there's a pretty good chance their investments are tax-efficient in some manner.
Then you get a wonderful opportunity: you can leak a load of genuine financial details of rich people, and sneak your fabricated nonsense in with all this true data!
So you do, and guess what, all the moron press believes you!
The response to this leak ought to be not "Oh look at this treasure trove of completely true and 100% kosher factual information" but "I wonder what lies are hidden in this mass of stolen information?"
The owners of this information will absolutely not confirm authenticity. The leaker will be a marked man for life and never be trusted with such info again, ever. The tax authorities will run round like headless chickens and try their level best to get this load of tosh past a court. It is to be hoped that a court will see reasonable doubt at every turn and throw out such cases.
I can't see what the BBC's bee in bonnet is here, apart from the usual anti-monarchy animus. Charles has been banging on about the green agenda since almost before there was a Green Party, and so its not terribly surprising that the Duchy invests in 'green schemes'.
I see some Welsh Labour AM has committed suicide, and all because a Hollywood producer was a major sleazebag. You don't find the Weinsteins or the Clintons of this world topping themselves (but you have to admire the execution of the 'look - a squirrel!' technique which has redirected the spotlight so effectively).
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