State of decay?

[matgb]

This pretty much sums up the reactions of large swathes of talking head commentators over the last week:



When I look back to what I've read about previous riots in London over the centuries, when I look at corruption scandals or financial collapses, it really does put into perspective how lucky we are and have been.

I mean, seriously, riots across all of London, no one very few killed^[1] and the London murder rate actually goes down?. Total deaths nationally five, including three men run down by a car.

The bankers are finally brought down, not by deliberate deceit, not by active fraud or theft, but by incompetence and optimism.

Parliament is brought into disrepute in a corruption scandal. What over? A few grand on a duck house, a few grand over claimed on a mortgage, etc. Compare that to many other countries today? Compare that to corruption scandals in the past in the UK?

Moral decay? We've never had it so good.

Scary, isn't it?

ETA: Apparently there's been a death in Ealing that I had overlooked, the post is amended to reflect that.

Comments

[almostwitty]

You're forgetting the huge amounts stashed away by the banks and tax evaders like Vodafone, the Arcadia Group etc. - all perfectly legal, but morally dubious, some would say.

And of course, if you're going to send someone to jail for six months for stealing a £3 bottle of water - because of the moral decay - then you should also send someone to jail for stealing £2k from the taxpayer to buy a duck house. If the latter had been deemed illegal. It's not breaking the law, but it's certainly breaking the spirit of the law.

[matgb]

On the latter point, I'd rather not jail someone for that long for a tiny theft, but I'd also have clamped down a bit harder on the MPs-having said that, the main problem was the way the rules were written and enforced, they'd been deliberately designed so that the 2nd home allowance was effectively extra salary, which was part of the problem in the first place.

On the former point, some would say, but they would also be wrong. Vodaphone didn't avoid any tax whatsoever-it was profits made in Germany, on which they paid tax in Germany, then assigned the profit to their EU operation, in Lux, and paid tax, on the same profit, in Lux. The remaining profit came back to the UK, and tax was due again, but the tax paid elsewhere could be discounted according to the poorly written rules. Everything else about it, everything, is hyperbole.

Arcadia also is fully compliant with UK tax rules (I've get a tax lawyer friend to check). Arcadia's owner is based overseas and pays tax in her place of residence. If Vodaphone are apparantly dodging tax for paying it in Germany instead of here for a German operation, you cannot also claim that a company owner based overseas should be paying tax here rather than where they live.

Sorry, rant over-I put a huge amount of work into getting my facts straight on that one-tax avoidance and tax evasion is something I think should be stopped. Which is why getting the facts straight is important. It's also why I votd strongly for the LD policy that the Govt is now implementing.

[almostwitty]

Not that I've particularly looked into the issue - but I think the problem stems from the fact that people "feel" that Vodafone/Arcadia Group are UK-based brands, when in fact they adopt a flag of convenience, like ships.

As for taxing no matter where you are - that's coincidentally pretty much what the US Government does to its citizens, regardless of location. My son - who had to have a US passport because they won't let him see his grandparents otherwise - is liable for US taxes for the rest of his life, regardless of location. (Unless he chooses to renounce his US citizenship, but even then he's liable for three years after the fact)

So which LD policy is the Govt. implementing? I've not heard about that... and I'm at least a vaguely interested citizen.

[matgb]

Arcadia is a UK brand for the most part, but people like UKuncut say that the best solution is country-by-country reporting for profits. Arcadia does pay full tax on profits. Same for Vodaphone, Vodaphone Germany pays taxes in Germany.

I'd rather you were taxed where you live and work only, if you live in one place and work in another it becomes more complex, the US thing of claiming taxes from people that don't live there is just iffy to me, but it's their country.

So which LD policy is the Govt. implementing

Well, 75% of the manifesto according tot he BBC, but specifically Osborne closed a large number of corp tax loopholes in the budget and plans to close more, they've also set up a tax simplification commission which has already identified a huge number of different tax breaks that can be closed (the Treasury actually didn't know how many different tax breaks there were, how useless is that?).

Plus, there's been a massive injection of funds into the tax avoidance/corporate tax compliance department at HMRC, with the stated objective of trying to reduce avoidance by at least a quarter, preferably more.

It's one of those Govt policy announcements that gets reannounced every so often because no one noticed the first time, but no one notices again, it got the most publicity when Danny Alexander announced it in his speech at conference, but that wasn't as much as we'd like, etc.

[watervole]

I think I agree. This is a damn good country to live in.
Would comment more, but the comment box vanishes behind the tags.
I can't read what I'm posting if it's any longer than this line...

[matgb]

That's very, very weird, and shouldn't be happening-can I ask what browser you're using, as I can hopefully fix it if I find what's causing it (the appearance of the layout is entirely self coded, but I taught myself how to do it, so I've probably missed something).

[watervole]

I use Chrome.
All the boxes at the right hand side overlap the comment box. Some are transparant (like the 'expand cut tags' box) some are not.

[matgb]

OK, I shall do some intense testing with Chrome, both columns are supposed to have their own space and never overlap at all, I suspect I need to declare a width for the comment box specifically but that's just a guess.

time to download and install the latest Chrome then. Thanks for letting me know.