More Dreadful Tax Antics By Foreigners - The Government Acts

We've seen the dodgy deeds of various swarthy chaps documented in HMRCs Most Wanted.

But one should remember that if you want a decent job done, call a professional. All bar the top two or three of HMRC's bad-boys were six-figure tax dodgers or less.

If you want to keep nine, ten, eleven or even twelve figure sums out of the Revenue's sticky grasp and also get a Guardian column to argue how the other guy's tax money should be spent, or be appointed to a Government business task force, it's best to forgo concepts like "carousel fraud" and the "long firm", and think about ordering a Dutch Sandwich with a Double Irish to go.

You'll note the absence from HMRC's list of Starbucks, Google (whose execs have the brass neck to pontificate in the Guardian about how more kids should be taught programming in UK schools), Amazon (whose Luxembourgeois variant involves some interesting VAT shenanigans with the publishers),  Apple and a whole host of famous names. They avoid paying the corporation tax that unimportant sectors like manufacturing stump up - because their UK businesses make hardly any profit. Yet strangely, they don't want to close these loss-making enterprises - far from it. They're very profitable - but the profits are elsewhere.

Now most of these techniques involve vesting the company's "intellectual property" (IP) in some tax haven then levying a hefty transaction fee for use thereof, one which renders the business activity taking pace in a taxable jurisdiction (as it might be the UK) only marginally profitable or even loss-making. You'd see how it might be possible with software, where IP is all (how much does it cost to copy a disk?), but apparently a there's more intellectual property than coffee in Starbucks, for example :

"accounts filed for its UK, German and French units, which make up 90pc of European sales, showed an apparent loss of $60m, but Starbucks told investors its European business was profit-making...

Starbucks said that although it had paid no corporation tax in three of its “largest and most important markets” last year, it had paid value-added tax, social security costs and business rates...The coffee giant uses a range of measures to mitigate the impact of tax. For example, the European unit is required to pay a royalty rate of 6pc of sales to Starbucks for using its intellectual property. Starbucks, which has a complex financial structure..."

A paragraph back I mooted that IP was valuable stuff compared with the price of producing a CD. Well, yes and no - not if you're the biggest software company in the world.

 Steve Sailer on Microsoft :

"Microsoft has over 40,000 employees in the state of Washington in the United States. But they don't actually physically burn on to disks the software they develop. Instead, Microsoft, has a manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico employing 185 people that gets credited in Microsoft's books with a lion's share of Microsoft's Western hemisphere revenue and profits. It's making disks that's the really important thing that Microsoft does.

Despite all you've heard about Microsoft being a software company, they are actually a manufacturing company, at least for tax accounting purposes. To the IRS, Microsoft is basically a Puerto Rican, Irish and Singaporean industrial goliath with a money-losing R&D outpost in Redmond, WA."

Now call me naive, but I'm not sure how you can reasonably one day discover that all your intellectual property lives in an offshore haven. I thought Bill Gates set up shop in Washington State, and Steve Jobs worked out of a California garage. It's not as if they set up their firms in the Dutch Antilles or Caymans. I may be wrong, but I could have sworn that Facebook guy started at Harvard, not in Northern Cyprus.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs take a dim view of this sort of thing when done in the UK. I'm no tax lawyer (alas), but I understand the general rule is that if they consider a business arrangement to have been set up wholly or mainly as a tax avoidance measure, then they can knock it on the head, and Lord help you if you didn't put aside some of that money in case of an HMRC challenge.

Yet these rules don't seem to apply to multinationals. They seem able to extract the urine with impunity.

But wait ! What's this in the Telegraph ?

"New push on foreign firms’ tax"

"Political pressure to change the way foreign firms are taxed in Britain increased this weekend"

Lord Myners, the former City minister, and Margaret Hodge, the chairman of the PAC – which is carrying out its own inquiry into the issue – said the Government should look into a sales tax as a way of raising extra tax revenue from global companies.
Tomorrow the issue will again be in the public spotlight when Starbucks, Google and Amazon all give evidence on the issue to the PAC. The comments come in the wake of a string of disclosures surrounding the small amount of tax paid by large international companies.

The UK business of Starbucks, the coffee chain, reported sales of £398m and paid nothing in tax because it made a £32.9m loss. The online retailer Amazon paid no tax in the UK in 2010 despite generating sales of more than £3.3bn.

Lord Myners told The Sunday Telegraph that the current system for collecting corporation tax from multi-national companies (MNCs) is flawed. “Corporation tax for an MNC operating in the UK is close to being a voluntary payment,” he said. “The problem is that the tax environment many MNCs are interested in is a zero tax environment.”

Two points. First, is that this Margaret Hodge ?

"The Labour MP has been one of the fiercest critics of tax avoidance by companies such as Starbucks, Google and Amazon. However, she is likely to face questions over the limited tax paid by Stemcor, the steel trading company in which she owns shares and which was founded by her father and is run by her brother. Analysis of Stemcor’s latest accounts show that the business paid tax of just £163,000 on revenues of more than £2.1bn in 2011. However. it is not known whether the company – which made profits of £65m – used similar controversial tax avoidance measures criticised in the past by Mrs Hodge. Stemcor’s tax bill to the exchequer equates to just 0.01pc of the revenues it booked through its UK-based business. In accounts filed with Companies House, Stemcor revealed that despite generating about one third of its revenues in Britain, its UK tax contribution made up only 2.7pc of the tax the company paid globally. "

Now before Tim Worstall gets all cross, I know that taxes are levied on profits, not turnover, and that, for example, some capital investment or previous losses can be used to offset tax. But it doesn't look good. Be interesting to know how they do it.

The second point - if it's a sales/revenue tax they're proposing, how do they think they'll be able to impose it on Company A (notionally loss-making but remits vast sums to tax haven IP owner) but not on Company B (profitable although squeezed by Company A, pays its taxes) ?  Remember that Company A can probably hire brighter lawyers than HMRC.


I'd have thought the only long term solution was to stop the IP nonsense in its tracks i.e. for the law to adjust to todays business practices, treating IP more like a physical asset. If Microsoft made car parts at Redmond, then smuggled them out to a low-tax jurisdiction (as it might be Puerto Rico) to sell, senior guys would soon be doing eight-to-twenty-four stretches and everyone else doing the same would clean up their act.

The alternative is public and governmental pressure - a lot of it. Treat Amazon, Starbucks as if they were the late Jimmy Savile or the Medellin Cartel - or alternatively, the way the Obama administration treated BP and is about to treat HSBC and Barclays. Point out the Kobo as the ethical alternative to the Kindle, or that Amazon vouchers should be what South African sherry was in 1968. No cosy relationship with ministers, no invites to even a local Tory wine and cheese, let alone Chequers. Constant public reminders of what they're doing. No need to do a China (vis a vis Japan) and invite people to smash up their branches, just reiterate that they are not good corporate citizens - that, in short, they are Bad People. Most people want to be liked.

I'm not sure either party is capable of doing this, but you never know. Government has a lot of clout - if it wants to use it.

Last - I know it was originally published in 2010, but this was the strip on a colleagues Dilbert calendar on Wednesday.



        

"I'm not in favour of tax avoidance ..."

Labour leader Ed Miliband said: "I'm not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don't think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality.
"I think what the politicians need to do is - if the wrong thing is happening - change the law to prevent that tax avoidance happening."

Er ... could that be this Ed Miliband?

"David Miliband, the schools minister, and his brother Ed, the chancellor’s economic adviser, are set to avoid paying thousands of pounds in tax through an Inland Revenue loophole which the Labour party pledged to close. "


The Sunday Times has learnt that after Ralph Miliband, the Marxist father of David and Ed, died in 1994, he transferred almost all his assets, including homes in London and Oxfordshire, to his wife.


However, after taking professional advice, the family is understood to have posthumously rewritten his will to give 20% of the London home to both David and Ed.

This scheme is called a “deed of variation” and was highlighted by the chancellor in opposition as an unacceptable way in which the wealthy avoid paying death duties."

On Murdering People Whose Politics You Disagree With

Listening to radio news coverage of the Breivik trial a few weeks back, I was reminded of a couple of comment threads that struck me more than a year ago, as I idly browsed lefty London blog Bob From Brockley.


The first was on the subject of comment threads, moderation thereof, and how much is too much.

"I've been searching my soul about the point of blogging, anonymous blogging, comments policies and such things."

Now that's something any blogger can relate to. I won't go into details, but no one likes offensive stuff in the comments. Of course, it may be that one man's truth is another man's offence, and on some occasions the truth can be offensive...

Anyway, a reasoned set of comments. I note that nice American lecturer Sarah AB (of "If People Wouldn't Notice Things We Wouldn't Have To Hide Them" fame) popping up.


Then I read this post - the tale, how authentic I know not, of a concentration camp survivor who on release as a teenager not only stabbed the son of the camp guard who'd killed his family, but made it his business to hunt down the guard, deserting from the Israeli Navy in the early 50s to join the Foreign Legion, where the villain had enlisted - and where he met his just deserts.

I was pleased to see that the general feeling in the comments was against stabbing children because of what their fathers did (as I occasionally point out, "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children" is a description of what happens, and a warning to fathers of the consequences of their sin, not a prescription for action).

But also in the comments, from one "Waterloo Sunset"* :

"**** the "rule of law". Fascists deserve killing, the only questions surrounding that are tactical ones, hence the lack of dead fascists in the UK."

With one bound we moved from the morality of killing someone who has slaughtered your entire family, to a general principle that "fascists" should be killed.  I hadn't noticed that the UK had a fascist or Nazi party, so you have to assume he's talking about members of the BNP.

Does Bob, who searches his soul about comment policies, recoil in horror at this homicidal commenter and reach for the delete key ? The strange thing is, two comments posted after the homicidal one have been deleted, so it's not as if he's not reading his threads.

Another commenter tries to tease out the nuances in the approach to killing "fascists".

So Waterloo, does it make a difference to you if the fascists have/had power, or is simply holding fascist beliefs enough for you to condone their execution? 

Our potential mass killer (I've no idea what current membership is, but the BNP used to have ten thousand-odd members IIRC) responds :

It depends on whether you're talking about morals or tactics. (Although I'd see this as more about fascist activists, as opposed to those who merely hold fascist views without acting on them).

Morally, no, I don't have an issue with it either way. The violence we see from fascists now pales in comparison compared to how they'd be in power. So I don't think the argument that any direct action against fascists needs to be either a) strict self-defense or b) in retaliation for a specific act by an individual fascist holds any water. In fact, that strikes me as a really bad idea. Why wait until after fascists are in power to stop them? Fascism doesn't start with concentration camps. That's where it ends.

Tactically I think a policy of targeted assassinations would be very unwise, certainly in the context of Western Europe. I'd shed no tears if Griffin got killed, but I don't think it would do any real good overall. There's several reasons for that. To 'step it up' in that way would obviously lead to massive ramifications from the state and I don't think there's enough benefit to justify that. The political climate isn't right for this kind of 'propaganda by the deed' and is unlikely to be unless we do actually have a fascist movement on the verge of gaining power. It's a distraction from the more serious issue about taking back the streets (EDL) and the war for hearts and minds (BNP)....

On physical force anti-fascism generally, I think the old 43 group slogan of "maim, don't kill" is broadly still correct tactically. 
  
Bob removes a follow-up comment, presumably negative. That nice Sarah AB gamely sticks to the subject, trying to ignore the rapidly spreading pool of virtual blood. The guy who wasn't too sure about such tactics still isn't convinced, and our killer gives chapter and verse on why he's hopelessly naive and exactly why we must kill the "fascists" before they do anything bad. After all, by the time they're actually doing bad things, it'll be too late, won't it ?

And at last Bob descends to the fray. Whatever soul searching he's done, I'm not sure I like what he's found therein  :

On the substantive issues, I kind of think that we need to approach this question on something like 4 different levels: moral, political, strategic, tactical. Morally, I respect pure pacifists, but I can't go along with them, and it is certainly the case that certain forms of fascism straightforwardly pass any sensible moral test in terms of deserving stopping physically.

On a political level ...

and so on. And on. And on. Back and forth between the two, with the occasional interjection from that nice Sarah, gamely hanging on in there, not liking at all this talk of killing and maiming people - but then they are fascists, aren't they ?

I find some of the comments here a bit startling (though I'm not completely unsympathetic).

And on, and on, back and forth. While I think we can say that Bob isn't actually, at this moment, in favour of murdering BNP members and activists, his disinclination to grab a Kalashnikov and start shooting is hedged around with so many qualifications and reservations that, were he a hideous rightie, you'd decide that perhaps you'd rather not be linking or commenting there. Talk about "terms and conditions apply" !

Two points - nay, a third springs to mind

a) you can see where a UK Breivik could get ideas from, were Brits to go in for that kind of thing, which thankfully they don't. Once you kick into play the idea that the other side, whoever they be, are going to kill you if they can, so you'd better kill them first ...it's self-defence, innit ? Which is exactly what Breivik is pleading IIRC.

b) the idea that the BNP, English Democrats, UKIP or any other of the anti-immigration, anti-EU parties can in any sense be compared with the Nazi Party, amounts to a disgusting libel on the British people. The kind of vileness in that comment thread is an affront to the peaceful tradition of British, and especially English, political history since the Civil War. I won't go into all the history now, but the various unpleasantnesses and crimes of the Nazis, from anti-semitism to genocide and aggressive war, were all present in German history and politics before Corporal Hitler ever stepped into a Munich beer-hall. (And of course the "left" in the form of the Soviet Union, didn't manage too badly on the anti-semitism and genocide front itself). For good historical and geographical reasons, we have long been the only virgin in a continent of rape victims. Brits don't do fascism - that's a European political tradition - and we do well always and everywhere to avoid European political traditions.


c) Sarah's comments are instructive - in that they show in microcosm how an essentially decent person can, despite their (good) instincts, draw toward accommodation with evil - when the evil comes from those you've come to think of as good, and they tell you that bad things have to be done to other, worse people, in order to protect you. I think there's a lesson there for all of us - and thankfully, this time it's not a history lesson.    




* defiling Ray Davies' classic as well as being a potential mass murderer. I'm not sure which is worse.

(comments are off, alas for the usual reasons)

Guardian Cognitive Dissonance Alert

Why it is wrong to make these people leave their illegally-occupied homes.

Why it is right to make these people leave their legally-occupied homes.

Class hatred

It's odd. For the last 50 years the middle-class Left has bemoaned the absence of spontaneous working-class political self-organisation.

But when it happens, they suddenly discover how much they hate the working class. The people who get all hot and bothered about people being called "chavs" are the same people who in online debate will mock the grammar, spelling and logic of EDL contributors or interviewees. Say what you like about the publicans who put together this (IMHO amusing) video, they don't pretend to be defenders of working people.

But on the "left" ... from Harpy's "ugly and vile" faces, to the bright boys in the video below, they all seem to be piling in. Can't understand it ... can you ?





(hat-tip - Brendan O'Neill in the Telegraph)

BBC Presenters Against The Toffs

Kaye Adams, the BBC broadcaster, has been accused of being unfit to present a top current affairs programme after she tweeted in response to Boris Johnson's suggestion that rioters should face tough punishments, "P*** off back to boarding school, Boris".

Hmm. Obviously a toilet-mouthed working class girl supporting her fellow workers/rioters against the assaults of the fascist state.

The former presenter of Loose Women, the ITV talk show, who presents a popular Radio Scotland show, was on holiday in Tuscany when she made a series of expletive-filled Tweets about London's mayor.

UPDATE - Adams attended St. George's School for Girls in Edinburgh - boarding £5,800 a term! Oh, the hypocrisy!

Peter King - "Contemptible"

No one's less of a Rupert Murdoch fan than I, but believe it or not, there are actually worse people in the world - and when they slither out to join in the kick-fest the harsh light of publicity should be shone on them. When it comes to casting truckloads of stone on the Dirty Digger, let he who has the fewest sins chuck the first barrowful - and let he who is weighed down by sin keep his ugly, bloodstained mouth shut.

"Republican Congressman Peter King - who is chairman of the House homeland security committee and represents a constituency in New York that lost more then 150 people in the 9/11 attacks - called on Wednesday for an FBI inquiry.

"The thought that anyone would have hacked into the phones of either those who were killed, those who were missing, the family members, during that tragic time... is contemptible," he told the BBC on Thursday."

He thinks hacking into phones is bad, but blowing up Brits is cool :

"We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry," Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, "If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it."

There's loads more on Wiki - he seems to have been in up to his neck :

King did not meet Gerry Adams until 1984, four years after his dalliance with the IRA began. At this time he was friendly with Michael McKevitt, the common law partner of Bernadette Sands, sister of the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. McKevitt was at the time a senior leader of the IRA and was its Quartermaster-General, in charge of arms acquisition. McKevitt planned a massive series of arms smuggling operations of weapons provided to the IRA by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi during the mid-1980s. During this time, King would stay in their home in Co. Louth while visiting Ireland and was also very close to the IRA's former Operations Officer in Belfast, Anto Murray, who was convicted in 1990 of kidnapping a suspected British spy. As Belfast Operations Officer, Murray planned or authorised every IRA bombing, shooting and killing in the city. King would stay with Murray and his wife Lucy during visits to Belfast and after Anto Murray was imprisoned, he hosted Lucy Murray on a tour of the Capitol when she visited the United States.

Nice ...

"He stopped supporting the IRA after being offended by Irish public opposition to the invasion of Iraq"

And I'm not sure why that makes him look like an idiot, but it does.

(He's all over the BBC. They'll use any stick to beat Murdoch - even one with blood all over it.)

Yes campaign denies it kept white actor off leaflets

(As seen in all papers.)

By Kunal Dutta

Monday, 4 April 2011

Tony Robinson: The actor's endorsement of the Yes campaign was printed on leaflets for the Home Counties, but not for London, where Benjamin Zephaniah was used instead.

Campaigners supporting the alternative vote have denied accusations that they "airbrushed" the white actor Tony Robinson out of leaflets distributed in London.

The campaign used Robinson's picture as an endorsement on literature in the Home Counties, Hampshire and Cornwall, but in London the leaflets featured the black poet Benjamin Zephaniah, prompting accusations from rivals that the Yes campaign was "ashamed" of the actor's backing.

Compare And Contrast

Yazza on Cameron's evil (delivered at Munich!) rejection of multiculturalism:

"in both nations, millions of their own natives rigidly hold on to their languages and cultures"

The swine ! How dare they !

The BBC on the perfectly reasonable desires of young refugees in England:

The children of the first wave of refugees fleeing conflict in Sri Lanka, Somalia, Turkey and Iraq are coming of age now and are confronted with the expectations of their parents and their peers.

The first imperative is to preserve their cultural and ethnic identity, to engage with their homeland.

On Sheridan and Scabs

I don’t understand, so talk me through this one.

a) Tommy Sheridan visits clubs and fesses up to the SSP when the press find out

b) SSP advise him to ‘lay low and say nuthin’

c) TS decides to brazen it out in the libel court

d) SSP comrades know they’ll be called as witnesses, and as I understand they have no choice about turning up. Their only choice is whether to lie and commit perjury or tell the truth. They (mostly) tell the truth.

e) but TS rhetoric wins the day, and he brilliantly persuades the jury. Result!

f) and immediately afterwards he publicly calls the truthful SSP members ’scabs’ and announces that he intends to ‘destroy them’

Now at this point our SSP comrades, like Colin Fox, are socialists in good standing, who gave TS sensible advice that he ignored. TS, hitherto a socialist in good standing, asserts that their unwillingness to risk jail for his family-man reputation renders them ’scabs’ to be ‘destroyed’ by unspecified means.

OK. At this point, who are the good guys and who the bad guys? The people with the correct analysis or the guy who wants to destroy them because they wouldn’t put their testes in a vice for him? Not for socialism, not for a principle, but to perpetuate a false image of a Great Leader?

Now I’m not too sure about going to the police with affidavits and secret tape recordings. But one socialist has insulted and threatened to destroy other socialists - on completely insufficient and self-interested grounds. Don’t they have a right to self-defence - in the last resort, to destroy the man who’s trying to destroy them?

(this piece of course assumes that d) is correct. My whole analysis rests on the assumption that the SSP exec had no choice about testifying in court.

Is this correct ? I don’t know Scots law. Martin ?

If it’s not correct and they were under no obligation to testify, then my analysis falls to bits - because the exec should then, from an SSP perspective, have lain low and said nuthin - leaving TS in his own juice rather than adding their own.)

Eton Rifles

Missed this 2004 Times interview with Paul Weller - another Labour luvvie / working class hero. He was living in West London at the time. I doubt he'd have had to worry about crack and guns in London schools before the Fall :

I ask if his children are in private or state schools. (He has four, two by his ex-wife and former Style Council singer Dee C. Lee, one following a short-lived relationship, and a four-year-old daughter with his girlfriend, Sammi, 34, "very sweet gel, puts up with quite a lot from me".) "They’re all in private school. No, one’s in state school," he corrects himself. "If you’ve got the money, I don’t see how you’ve got a choice, really. I don’t want my kids mixing with crack and guns. I’m not saying it’s all like that, but there’s an element of that."

From The Moral High Ground ...

Sunny Hundal at Lib Con asks :

“Why do media orgs report ethnicity of terrorist suspects?”

Not a clue, Sunny, not a clue.

Tell you what.

Why don’t you ask the guy who wrote “Another White Terrorist Against ‘Non-British’ Caught”?

UPDATE - I did point out his inconsistencies a fair while back :

I'll pass over the fact that he seems to be pre-empting the verdict. You could just imagine how Sunny would react if the Mail and Sun started producing 'Another Asian terrorist' headlines every time a wannabe jihadi got banged up - which a year or so back was about every other week. He'd have a fit.

For what it's worth I imagine the occasional 'of Somali/Algerian/whatever origin' that I hear on the news is a little Community Cohesion comfort blanket - a quiet way of pointing out that whoever-it-is is not a second generation Brit who captains the local cricket XI and helps out at the primary school.

Quote of the Day

Peter Briffa :

"One of the main reasons I like living in East London is because there is absolutely no prospect of accidentally bumping into Billy Bragg."

Where's Blair's Dosh ?

Presumably triggered by these two FT stories from a month back, the Guardian attempts to navigate the tortuous stream of Tony Blair's finances.

Blair has a complex web of structures involving 12 different legal entities handling the unprecedented millions he is receiving since he stepped down from office in 2007.

So mystifying are the former prime minister's financial structures – which involve highly specialised limited partnerships and parallel companies – that the Guardian today launches an open invitation to tax specialists and accountants to attempt to explain the motivation behind such structures. We have published the Companies House documents and other legal papers regarding the structure of the partnerships at guardian.co.uk and invite expert comment via our site at guardian.co.uk/politics/series/blair-mystery.

There is no suggestion Blair is doing anything illegal. But he refuses to explain the purpose of the secretive partnerships.

Cry havoc and let slip the accountants of war ! Tally-ho !

UPDATE - Tax Research Blog thinks there's a loophole which means detailed accounts don't have to be publically filed, if I understand correctly.

The limited liability partnership is tax transparent. If it had Tony Blair as a member he would pay tax at the UK highest income tax rate. So two companies are put in his place as members, and because of the loophole in the limited partnership accounting regulations this is acceptable: it does not change the fact that the limited partnership will not have to file accounts.

And then the two companies are owned by nominees to hide the Blair involvement – it’s just a pity one set of accounts had to give it away that he was the beneficial owner or we might still be unaware of all this.

So what did Tony want? Just a bit of secrecy and his profits sheltered at corporate tax rates seems the superficial answer.

But hang on – this structure came at some price, and has some cost to run – five figures a year with a first digit of more than one I suspect. So why do that? Because the entity at the top of the pile – Windrush Ventures No 3 Limited Partnership now has what most people want from a secrecy jurisdiction – complete secrecy and lower tax than might otherwise be expected, and all onshore.

So there is an obvious question outstanding still. Just what is it that Tony is so keen to hide that he’ll go to this length and this cost to do so?

Me No Understand

Indie, reporting on yet another asylum route - the "Saudi adulteress gambit".

Last year, the House of Lords ruled that the SFO's decision to drop the corruption investigation into the £43bn Saudi arms deal with BAE Systems was unlawful.

In a hard-hitting ruling, two High Court judges described the SFO's decision as "an outrage".

One of them, Lord Justice Moses, said the SFO and the Government had given into "blatant threats" that Saudi intelligence co-operation would end unless the probe into corruption was halted.

"No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice," he said. "It is the failure of government and the defendant to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies the intervention of this court."

How come all those Irish terrorists were let out after the Good Friday Agreement then ? Isn't that interference with justice ?

I see, they passed another law to let them out.

So all we need is the Serious Fraud Office (Saudi Arabia) Bill 2009 and we're laughing. Is that OK?

(my views on the BAe/Saudi bribery brouhaha are here.

I'd recommend anyone commenting on this issue to take a look at Anthony Sampson's book The Arms Bazaar. Bribery and large arms contracts have been together for a very long time. If we don't bribe others will. Even senior people in Western democracies can be bribed.

Now it's not unreasonable to say - no. We shouldn't bribe. Let others do it - we won't. Fine. If you don't want to bribe, get out of the arms trade. Which means closing a large chunk of what remains of Britain's technically advanced manufacturing industry. And in this case it also means a rupture with a powerful (we've sold them all that kit) oil-rich nation bordering Iraq. You can see why HMG might blink at this.

)

UPDATE - Jeremy Warner on doing business 'out there' :

Anyone with any experience of trading in the Middle East knows that the moment you tread further south than Marseilles, the law of contract becomes – how shall we put it? – somewhat pliable. For instance, it is relatively common place for clients in the Gulf to freeze payments to contractors. For us that may be breach of contract, but for them it is merely part of the hard ball of negotiation...

What's going on at Saad Group in Saudi Arabia is in some respects a great deal worse. Much of the money seems to have gone walk about, with local creditors being given preferential treatment over international lenders.

White Cities ?

New Geography on the progressive towns of America - the Portlands, Austins and Seattles.

Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans? Can you have a progressive city properly so-called with only a disproportionate handful of African Americans in it? In addition, why has no one called these cities on it?

As the college educated flock to these progressive El Dorados, many factors are cited as reasons: transit systems, density, bike lanes, walkable communities, robust art and cultural scenes. But another way to look at it is simply as White Flight writ large. Why move to the suburbs of your stodgy Midwest city to escape African Americans and get criticized for it when you can move to Portland and actually be praised as progressive, urban and hip? Many of the policies of Portland are not that dissimilar from those of upscale suburbs in their effects. Urban growth boundaries and other mechanisms raise land prices and render housing less affordable exactly the same as large lot zoning and building codes that mandate brick and other expensive materials do. They both contribute to reducing housing affordability for historically disadvantaged communities. Just like the most exclusive suburbs.

I guess it's just Ben and Chloe in an American context.

The People Have Spoken

Harrow Times

A Harrow MP who claimed public money for a house his parents live in has fallen victim to a graffiti vandal.

The door of Tony McNulty's office, in Byron Road, was daubed with the words “that's £60,000 you owe me Tony” last week.

The vandal is apparently angry at the conduct of the Harrow East MP, who claimed £60,000 from the public purse in allowances for a second home in Harrow, which turned out to be his parents' home.

Perhaps he can claim compensation as a victim of crime ?

Airheads

When whoever-it-is says "To give up plastic" I presume she's talking about surgery.



Have they no sense of shame - or at least of irony ? But these people apparently take themselves seriously. I hope they don't expect us to ...




(I don't see much 'cult-like service' here, though. I see a lot of posers. If I knew who any of them were I'd boycott their films that I don't watch anyway. I'll make a start by deleting the kids Chilli Peppers mp3s. Or maybe I should put them on a file-sharing website)



Andrew Breitbart wields the scalpel :

This video illustrates that the current celebrity class are not citizens but serfs. They need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around ...

They never spoke up against the movies that demonized our military.

They never made movies to counter the libel.

They took the easy route. And blamed Bush for everything.

Moore’s nauseating video — which, like Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” franchise, grants a pristine look into the modern celebrity’s sense of self-importance — is not a sign of desire to serve the country under Obama. Watch, by March this pledge like New Year’s resolutions will fall by the wayside. It is a sign that the Democrat is in the White House now. It is a sign that they get to sleep again in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Twenty years ago AIDS was the number one cause for the Hollywood left. Remember the trendy red ribbons at all the self-aggrandizing awards shows? Hollywood has moved on (dot org) to better blame-your-fellow-American causes. But President Bush didn’t. And aside from Bob Geldof and Bono, they ignore this president’s demonstrable goodness ...

Remember this video: It is a instructive relic of the era of celebrity decadence and boutique anti-Republican activism under President Bush. It is a sickening display that they want fast and easy absolution for having comported themselves like ill-behaved children for eight difficult and war-torn years.

Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.

And Iowahawk (who else ?) the rapier :

Totally-wasted-on-heroin guy from the Red Hot Chili Peppers: I... uhhh.... ihhh... ahhhh... monkey funky like da junky...

Jason Bateman: I plehhhhdge... to fondle this microphone in a whimsically provocative manner.

Mr. Haney from Green Acres: To never give anyone the finger when I'm driving again. I will instead moon them, with my frightening elderly haunches.

'Greg and Darma' chick with scary feral baby: To save water, by never bathing my child.

Underwear model: I pledge.

I think it's that Spunky Winkerbean chick, the one who had a boob reduction: I pledge.

Brain-fried Chili Peppers guy: To caaaare? For? America's elderly?

Pockmarked guy in Urban Outfitters T-shirt: To make sure America's senior citizens have access to free healthcare and iPods and ringtone downloads.

Spunky Winkerbean: So that our next generation's USB memories will not be forgotten.

Eva Longoria: Now I'm pledging here on the other side of the frame!

Absolutely no clue who this is, whatsoever: To bring awareness to mental disease, like I am doing right now.

Weirdly bloated lips chick: To advance research into stem cells, collagen, and Botox.

Huh? Maybe I'm just getting too old but this is another guy who simply isn't ringing a bell: To spread the awareness of autism -- by becoming autistic.

Public Servants

According to the Times, Leee Jasper was paid £120,000 pa - and paid £90 pw rent for his four-bedroomed 'social housing' in Clapham.

Don't Do as I Do, Do As I Say

Snafu points out a certain cognitive dissonance in Trevor Phillips' pronouncements on "sharing schools and hospitals". He won't find many poor Somalis or Romanians at his kids' private school.

Funny. When he was an aspiring NuLab politician I don't remember him coming out with stuff like this.

Asked two years ago about what needed to be done to rescue communities from the 'moral vacuum' many young black people lived in, he said: 'The old-fashioned discipline of Caribbean teachers - uniforms, detentions, tough lessons, and, yes, even even the possibility of corporal punishment - could stop many a criminal career before it begins.'

Trev probably thinks that it's just a function of their skin colour, but there are a fair few white kids living in a "moral vacuum", too. By strange chance, there used to be "old-fashioned discipline" in British schools as well - on which many Caribbean schools were modelled. How we have progressed.