In defence of Jimmy Carr...

I know I'm behind the times but I've only just watched last week's 8 out of 10 Cats...

If you go to someone for advice and they look at your situation and ask you if you want to pay less tax, what would you do?  Okay, yeah, that's all the defence I have as it is a massive error in judgement - particularly as he has spent the last few years really laying in to bankers and Government austerity.  


At the start of my accountancy career I worked in tax for over 2 years and I'd see it all the time, people just wouldn't have a clue about their own situation.  In those days most of my companies clients came through referrals from a company who had promised to reduce the tax bill of contractors by effectively making them self employed, the problem was they had just heard the bottom line figure they had been promised by a sales person and not taken in what they had signed up to.  


These people weren't exactly the same as Jimmy, they were taking advantage of government incentives for the self employed (or were supposed to) to save a little bit on their tax bill as opposed to just paying 1%, so I doubt he was as naive as some of the people that I came across.  At the same time his situation is apparently legal, so I defy anyone reading this to say that they intentionally pay more tax than they legally have to.


I personally don't blame Jimmy, or any of the other celebrities/people who have been operating in this way, from taking advantage of the "loophole", I blame the people who allow this sort of arrangement to be in place to begin with.  You can't just blame the Tories for this, even if many of them have benefited (I believe George Osborne is due to pay a lot less in inheritance tax in the future because of his trust fund's 15% stake in Osborne & Little), you have to also blame Labour, who in 13 years didn't close down all of these schemes, and the Tories that came before them, and Labour before that...  People will always find a way to minimise tax, it's the Government's job to make sure that everyone pays their fair share and to not allow these schemes to exist.  

Unison calling for a summarily sacking? #Clarkson

I really worry about people at times.  Unions do some great things protecting their workers and ensuring their rights are upheld, yet here they are coming out and demanding that a man is sacked for making a joke.  This isn't just a man making an inappropriate joke in the work place, this is someone who's paid to make jokes.  He was introduced as someone who makes controversial statements so surely if that is what the BBC are employing him for then if Jeremy Clarkson makes a controversial statement then they can't complain.  


I'd like to put the whole thing into context.  When asked his opinion on the strikes he initially said it was "fantastic" as it made getting around so much easier.  

"Everybody's stayed at home, you could wiz about, restaurants are empty..airports, people streaming through."

Then to follow this up he indicated that as this is the BBC he needed to be balanced and give the counter view (mocking the BBC's editorial guidelines here was probably his aim) and that is when he said: 

"I'd have them all shot.  I'd take them outside and execute them in front of their families."

The clip can be seen here:

Now I don't think anyone can say that these were sensible comments, personally I didn't find them particularly funny, but at the end of the day this was a joke that you can tell he was saying for effect.  In my mind there is a clear pause where he is sensing how the first part of the joke ("I'd have them all shot") went down with the studio audience (there was some laughter) before he decided it was good enough to expand on.


You can't go around summarily sacking people for doing exactly what you pay them to do just because one of their attempts to fulfil their job description isn't well received - even if it warranted it there is due process to be followed, something that Unions have spent years campaigning for.


David Allen Green has written an excellent post on his blog analysing the press release by Unison.  The key question he raises for me is that is it a good use of Unison's finite resources to be trying to get someone sacked - is this really in the best interests of their members?  


The other excellent post I've read on this issue was by Dave Gorman - "Jeremy Clarkson should be lined up and shot*" (Not really).  He is highlighting the hypocrisy of people, who would possibly have been defending the twitter joke trial where Paul Chambers was arrested for the following tweet:

 "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Getting the police involved (as has been suggested as a possibility by Unison) would be as ridiculous as the twitter joke case.  I don't think it should be a universal right to not be offended.  If it were then we'd still be living in a Puritan society as almost everything is going to cause offence to someone.  He was not encouraging people to go out and shoot any striker he was just trying to make a controversial joke, and oh look it worked - As David Allen Green said, he's turned the whole story (and Unison have facilitated it) to be about him rather than the aims of those who went on strike.  It would have served them better to treat him  as an irrelevance and perhaps made a complaint to the PCC.  


At the end of the day, Clarkson has the right to say what he likes, that's the great thing about freedom of speech.  I for one would hate to see that right watered down further.

The cuts...

Okay I'm lacking imagination, I probably shouldn't write when this tired, but I feel like I haven't been writing enough lately!

I was disappointed watching tonight's 10'O'Clock Live with their discussion on the cuts.  This should be something that can be debated well, yet their choice of guests left a lot to be desired.  Firstly someone from the Times who was there to defend the speed of government cuts backs, an activist who (although had perfectly good intentions) didn't fully grasp the economics of her argument and as a result said perfectly plausible statements that were just plain wrong and an economist who was also anti cuts - but also seemed to be a bit on the anti debt side of the fence (i.e. that it doesn't really exist).  The latter had an annoying method of speaking ridiculously slowly as if to make her points sound profound rather than stupid.  My apologies for not providing the names, I didn't have any way to make notes during the programme and Google is being very unhelpful!

The main criticisms I had with the points raised were mainly with the activist.  At one stage she said that the economy contracted in the last quarter in 2010 (true) but then went on to blame the raise in VAT for that.  This is completely bogus as the VAT rise came into effect on 4 January, if anything this should have stimulated demand in December as people wanted to buy when it was marginally cheaper.  The contraction was probably due to the previous Government's stimulus package wearing off, a rise in international food prices, weak export markets, the downturn in the housing market and general rising inflation - to name but a few.  

I shouldn't be too critical as economics isn't her field, though she did come across quite a bit like the classic protester who thinks things are mutually exclusive, just because cuts are being made those supporting them don't care about people who rely on social care.  Nobody gets in to politics to make people worse off, but for every decision there will be winners and losers.  The whole tax system works by robbing Peter to pay Paul - the only difference is that the main alternative being suggested is to rob Peter & Paul's children so that they don't have to suffer now.

I read an excellent post in The Spector Blog which highlights how even at the end of this Parliament, having eliminated the structural deficit in the countries budget, we will still be in a financial mess.  I don't want to be in a country where we are spending more on financing our debt than on education - I shall borrow a few graphs from the previously mentioned blog:

That will just be our interest payments, that's roughly £1,000 per person per year the Government has to pay just to keep our debt at the same level.  

 The mountain of debt we will be sitting on (not including the debt from the banks) will, in real terms, be 3 times higher than it was in 2001 (when the Labour Government deviated from the Tories previous spending plans).  As you can see after that date Labour did borrow more, despite the fact we were experiencing an economic boom - hence creating a structural deficit.

There was one question I think that was asked, or at least a point made, that we don't really need to ever pay it back.  This is simply not true as letting it spiral out of control would undermine our whole currency system.  A detailed explanation of our "Fiat" money system can be found on The Very Fluffy Millennium Dome Elephant's blog - it's a bit long winded and, like me, often goes off on tangents but does give a very understandable overview of the subject, which the author is great at doing in general.  The most crucial point though is that our system is based on the perception that our money can be traded - money is effectively debt and represents the value of goods or services that we are owed for our own production of goods or services, a barter process.  Those to whom the Government is indebted need to believe that they can exchange their indebtedness for something of tangible value (in actual fact they settle for interest payments) but should they believe they can't get it back they will want something more, they want something in return for their input.  

There has been a lot of talk that the Government is pedalling a myth with regards the deficit, it is not.  In 2010 we had a larger deficit to GDP ratio than any other OECD country, that includes Ireland, Iceland, Greece, Portugal and Spain.  Saying that - even if everyone else was digging themselves into a ditch of debt does that mean we should continue to too?  My preference is no!

I think my original point when I started this mamouth essay or rambling (if you made it to here you really need to question whether there are better things you could be looking at on the internet), was that I would much rather have had a panel in their debate that included a government spokes person, a well respected macro economist and someone from the opposition - to put their ideas forward on what could be done differently.

On a side note - Charlie Brooker did an excellent AV bit on tonight's show, pointing out just how ludicrously stupid the No2AV campaign is.

Anthony Glees - Terrorism Expert, Civil Liberties Apologist?

I am wondering if anything has ever made me as angry as I was watching Anthony Glees (AG - Terrorism expert, Buckingham University) on 10 O'Clock Live.  He was brought in for a debate chaired by David Mitchell (DM) relating to control orders (against Rizwaan Sabir (RS - who was wrongly accused of being a terrorist) and Afua Hursch (AH - a legal expert)) as the voice for stronger policy.  Really the whole conversation he infuriated me, it starts about 36 minutes in if you don't want to watch the rest.  I shall here just pick out snippets:

DM: In a free country how can it ever be right to hold people without charge?

AG:  Because it is only by holding people who want to destroy the values of this country that we can remain free.

Well, like David so rightly points out to him the people who aren't in prison remain free.

 

AG:  The people who are being imprisoned who would like the laws and rules of the Taliban to exist in this country, these are the people who stone young lovers to death we saw it on the TV yesterday, these are the people who amputate limbs.

I don't think anyone's arguing that these people do exist there are also people, like Rizwaan, who are falsely held under these measures.

DM: What happened to you?

RS: I was picked up whilst conducting academic research applying for a doctorate.

AG: Tell us what that academic research was?

RS: That was comparing the military tactics of Al Qaeda and Hamas (AG Laughter) and I downloaded a document from the most radical of websites: The United States Department of Justice.  This was the document that caused such a furore…

AG: No no, it was what you did with the document that caused the furore, you passed it on to somebody and you photocopied it.

I'm sorry, I must have missed the new legislation that made photocopying legal documents and passing them on to somebody an illegal act, of course he must be a terrorist, nobody ever photocopies something for innocent means in academia! What a ridiculous argument - when pushed on this point he just reverts back to talking about "the people who support Al Qaeda".  The only way you could make a worse point is if you tried to use another case of somebody being wrongly accused to back up your point, oh wait...

AG: That’s not true again you see, people applaud for that but in fact there is evidence.  Think of the people who came, pretending to be students, who came to the north east, operation pathway was…

RS: was nonsense

AG: He say’s that’s nonsense.

RS: It was, they were released without charge, that’s nonsense.

AG:  I’m not saying, you know, you’re a terrorist don’t get me wrong.

Another case of prejudice assuming they are guilty.  One final statement I want to highlight is:

AG:  You see I think one thing has to be stated very very clearly, we do not have civil rights in this country that allow the rights of terrorists and would be terrorists to be put above civil rights of people who want to go about their business in a peaceful and normal way.

Overall what I think Anthony Glees fails to see is that these people who have these measures put on them also have rights.  Just because the police/MI5 suspect something doesn't mean they are definitely right!  Therefore anyone subject to these measures has had their rights removed without a chance to defend themselves!

The gist of the problem is it doesn't solve anything.  If they are innocent then they have had their rights and freedoms taken away from them without a fair trial.  If they are guilty then they are still walking about in society.  The evidence against them should be used against them in a court of law and judged on its merrits. 

Overall I still say the coalitions policies are better but obviously they are a long way off the ideal.  As for 10 O'Clock Live.  Well I think it is a good show.  It fills a need that will hopefully get more people interested in politics however it definitely suffers from having too many presenters.  I don't think they've really figured out what it's supposed to be yet.  The pieces seem a little rushed in places and David Mitchell's (who has been excellent in every other segment he's done) interview with Alastair Campbell last night missed the mark in so many ways (not insightful or remotely funny).  It does however create a good platform for the sort of debate last night saw, in front of a very young crowd, which can only be a good thing.