Crash Bang Wallace
Libertarian political blog from Mark Wallace; political opinion, breaking news and exclusivesGuardian runs adverts from tax avoidance experts
Posted on September 06, 2011The Guardian’s view on tax avoidance by others is well known – they regularly and deliberately conflate tax evasion (a crime) and tax avoidance (not a crime), and take the position that everyone should go out of their way to pay as much tax as possible. Regardless of how whether you pay what the law demands, the Guardian will be the final and ultimate arbiters of whether you pay your “fair share”.
However, their own affairs are less than consistent with the high standards they demand of others – as Guido has documented in the case of Polly “you should pay more tax, but why should I?” Toynbee, and their own record of careful tax avoidance through offshoring and other mechanisms.
Not content with hectoring others whilst practicing tax avoidance themselves, the Guardian has now taken things a step further – profiting by running advertising for firms of specialists who offer advice to tax avoiders and even how to deal with an HMRC tax investigation. This is a screengrab of their “Reading the Riots” web page – take a look at the ad circled in red at the bottom right:
Appleton Richardson, the advertisers in question, describe their service as “tipping the scales of justice in your favour”, will help you learn “how to play the game” and offer help to “survive a tax investigation by HMRC”. They absolutely rightly say that tax avoidance is perfectly legal, but in Guardian land it is unacceptable – how do the champions of high taxes square taking advertising from a firm like this with their crusading morals? Or is it just yet another case of Guardian double standards?
PS you’ll note that with further delicious irony the other two adverts are for Personal Injury Lawyers and, yes, a Scientology magazine. The Guardian: where Comment Is Free, but principles can be bought.
The Guardian and the negative Left
Posted on October 20, 2010The Guardian is on fine form today showing the schizophrenic and overwhelmingly negative worldview of the Left.
Only a couple of months ago they were sneering at the idea of consulting the plebs public about the best ways to cut spending. At best, they suggested, such sites were full of silly ideas (without mentioning that these were weak Mark-Thomas-esque jokes submitted by their own pro-spending readers, desperate to sabotage the idea). At worst, it just brings out the racist BNP clone who as all good Islington Lefties know lurks below the flat cap of most ordinary folk.
Crowdsourcing ideas for spending cuts was and is a good idea – particularly because it opened the Treasury’s door to creative thinking and helped to identify cuts that would hurt ordinary people least. Having enthusiastically slagged public participation off, the Guardian has now embraced crowdsourcing itself - to gather complaints that the cuts are poorly targeted and hurting ordinary people.
Perhaps if they had encouraged people to take part in the spending challenge and contributed to the generation of ideas, rather than sneering at it, then the spending cuts on the way could be better targeted away from the front line.
Sadly, this is typical of the elitist Left. The people are handy if you can whip them in behind your own negative complaints, but allow them to make positive and constructive suggestions? Don’t be ridiculous – they might come up with something you don’t like.
Breaking: John Prescott joins the TaxPayers’ Alliance
Posted on July 29, 2010It’s all very well for an Opposition to oppose, but doing so in direct contravention of things you yourself actually did in Government has a remarkable capacity to make you look stupid. I was going to write about this in hypothetical terms, but happily John Prescott has kindly stepped in to provide a perfect case study.
You’d have been forgiven for thinking when he was sworn in as Lord Prescott that it was the pinnacle of political hypocrisy. Well, it seems that was actually just a dry run for the things he intended to say once he was snugly in the ermine.
Yesterday, his Lordship posted a withering attack on Twitter:
“Con Dems slash housing benefit for poor but happy to pay £30,000 a year private school fees for diplomats – £15m a year”
This got up my nose a bit. After all, he seemed to have no problem paying these fees when he was in Government – and whilst they are excessive their existence doesn’t magically invalidate any other spending cuts.
Furthermore, when he was in power I vividly remember them scrapping Assisted Places, removing the only opportunity for bright kids who couldn’t afford the fees to get into private schools. Didn’t he do that, I pointed out, whilst at the same time paying the exact same fees for diplomats’ kids that he is now criticising?
Cue awkward silence. Eventually, the best Lord Prescott could muster was a complaint that the TaxPayers’ Alliance had given “no quote” on the topic.
Unfortunately for him, the Daily Telegraph, Sky News, the Metro, and even his favourite The Mirror record in black and white that the TPA has criticised this spending for years. I should know – I wrote the quotes and gave the TV interviews!
The question for John Prescott is this: he didn’t lose a minute’s sleep about these school fees when he was in power, so why is he suddenly howling about them in Opposition? What changed?
It couldn’t be that his Party lost the election, could it? No, a man of principle like Lord P would never bend in the political wind of base tribalism. The more charitable answer is surely that he was persuaded by the arguments of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and changed his mind. Nice to see you joining the programme, John.
PS To be absolutely clear, I do understand why the children of diplomats (and members of the Forces) may need to be sent to boarding school when their parents are abroad. I just think we could save money by sending them to one of the many excellent state boarding schools, rather than Eton.