Posted by Ivan Rendall on 5 April 2016 in Blogging
Can we stop blowing smoke and tilting mirrors at ourselves by endlessly explaining the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion – it’s got precious little to with what has been going on in Panama and The BRITISH Virgin Islands.
This scandal (not a big enough word, I accept) only starts to be relevant once we focus our ire on those thousands of the rich and powerful, who have been doing what is criminal under any jurisdiction in which they are liable, for decades. The problem is there is no organisation with remotely enough teeth to hunt them down, they’ve seen to that!
This is not about finely balance arguments between lawyers and accountants about what is legal, even if in the view of many people, including me, laws should be changed to bag more of the miscreants who spend their sad lives avoiding tax.
It’s about criminals – the kind of nasty people who run Pakistan and Russia, who help North Korea not only with nuclear weapons, but with its survival, and yes Mr Ping of China, I’m talking about you: you are oppressing the North Koreans as much as Kim Jong-Un by supporting him and his disgusting regime.
The problem is that we are not outraged enough, not by a country mile. The Prime Minister is the easiest coconut in the shy, but it’s not his family finances (though they need to have been looked at before he became leader of the Tory Party), he needs to be investigated for what he is NOT doing now, that’s what is most important at the moment, and that starts in The City, that is the capital of tax avoidance and what follows from it, not the Caribbean.
Cameron is almost comatose and if the answer is Corbyn then I’d rather have Kirsty from the Archers!
Hits: 4773