Tax avoidance refers to any legal method of reducing your tax bill. It is not the same as tax evasion, which is illegal. The legality of tax avoidance is founded in a legal ruling which strictly speaking applies only in Scotland.
The ruling of Lord Clyde in the case of Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue [1929] included the following quote:
No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or
other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as
to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his
stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every
advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the
purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like
manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the
depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue.
This ruling is known as Lord Clyde's shovel.
We often hear people assert that tax avoidance is immoral, but the law - as enshrined in Lord Clyde's ruling - clearly states otherwise. Also, morality is largely subjective, and one man's immoral may well be another man's perfectly acceptable.
It is fair to point out however that there have been numerous examples of tax avoidance being practised by people who have condemned it in other people, which could be seen as hypocritical.
There have also been numerous cases over the years of tax avoidance being practised by celebrities who publicly support high levels of public spending. I feel entitled to wonder why anyone would call for higher public spending when they themselves are unwilling to contribute what might be seen as their fair share.
It is also reasonable to ask why tax avoidance measures even exist. There are three forms of tax avoidance. The first kind is those which the government deliberately creates, and the Individual
Savings Account (ISA for short) is an example of the this.
The second kind of avoidance is the kind which arises by accident, when the government makes a mistake when writing its tax laws. The tax avoidance which was practised by the Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services company in 1929 was presumably an example of this.
The third kind involves foreign tax havens - which the British government can do little about.
The ISA exists presumably as a way of encouraging ordinary people
to save money. It is of no use to people who cannot afford to save,
but at the same time it is also of little use to the super-rich.
By contrast, other forms of tax avoidance tend to favour the rich. Rich people can afford to employ the services of accountants who can maybe detect loopholes in tax legislation. They also have access to offshore tax havens.
As a final point, it is currently being reported that the government is planning to award a peerage to a company director who has previously engaged in tax avoidance on a large scale. I merely observe the fact.
Tuesday, 18 August 2015
Sunday, 9 August 2015
The politics of The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is the title of a 2008 novel by Suzanne Collins, and also the name of the 2012 film adaptation starring Jennifer Lawrence. Both the novel and the film have been commercially successful, but both have also proved contentious.
Both are set in a country called Panem, which is the Latin word for bread. It is often used in the phrase panem et circenses, which translates into English as bread and circuses. The phrase reflects a belief in ancient times that the common people would be easy to control provided that they had bread to eat and circuses for entertainment.
Panem is a dictatorial republic ruled from the affluent futuristic city of Capitol, whose citizens commonly dress in flamboyant outfits. The remainder of the country is divided into twelve districts, where people live in enforced poverty. There are gradations of prosperity, however, with some districts better off than others.
Although Panem might seem very different from the United Kingdom, we too have people living in opulence while other people queue for food banks. Our governments are elected, but the British people make such poor voting choices that I sometimes think we might not be much worse off if we were unable to vote.
The hunger games are an annual event which combine entertainment with fear. Each of the twelve districts provides two contestants, known as tributes, to take part in a fight to the death in a large outdoor arena. The tributes are aged from twelve up to eighteen, and each district provides a male and female tribute.
Districts are expected to choose tributes by a process of random selection, although it is acceptable to choose a volunteer if there is one. It is illegal for any youngsters to prepare for tribute status. Nevertheless in the more prosperous districts some youngsters train in secret and in some cases volunteer for tribute status.
As a result, some districts submit tributes who are not only trained in the use of weapons, but who display clear homicidal tendencies. These tributes are known as careers. Once in the arena they happily murder other tributes. In the film, both tributes from Districts 1 and 2 are careers, and in the novel so is the female tribute from District 4. It appears normal for most of the tributes either to kill only in self defence or not to kill at all.
It appears that the citizens of Capitol enjoy the barbarity of the games in much the same way that many people in Spain enjoy bull fights. It appears also that the inhabitants of the districts are expected to view the games as sign of their inferiority, but the fact that at least some districts provide tributes who are eager to take part suggests that at least some of them derive pleasure from the games.
Aside from the careers, just one girl in the film volunteers as a tribute, becoming the first ever volunteer tribute from District 12. She is not however a willing volunteer, as she volunteers only after her younger sister is chosen by lottery. Self-sacrifice has long been viewed as a noble characteristic.
The reader might think that Britain today does not have anything resembling either bull fights or the hunger games, but Britain happily sends troops into illegal foreign wars in which British service personnel are often killed - along with large numbers of foreign nationals, many of whom are not in any way combatant. In no way are we morally superior to the fictitious organisers of the hunger games.
People who take part in wars are either volunteers or conscripts, but even conscripts are volunteers of a sort. They have the option of refusing to be conscripted. At times the alternative might be imprisonment or social exclusion, but surely these things are in most cases preferable to the brutality of war.
I have previously written about a British army veteran called Douglas Mitchell who according to his daughter was given to bad behaviour. I am now aware of the case of another British forces veteran called William Woods whose daughter recalls him as cold and distant. I repeat what I said in that earlier post:
... the British POWs who allegedly suffered terrible abuse at the hands of their Japanese captors were all volunteers.
Men who served in the Second World War were in some cases veterans of the Great War. Many would have been the sons or grandsons of people who fought in that war, and they would presumably have had some awareness of the grim reality of that war. For those men then to take part voluntarily in another war is surely akin to volunteering to take part in the hunger games - except that I'm not sure if any British serviceman has ever volunteered for belligerent activity as a substitute for a 12yo girl.
The death of another 12yo girl in the hunger games triggers a spate of riots in her home district. While I do not condone riots in this country, I cannot help but wonder why the British people do not protest at the deaths of children in foreign lands as a result of British military action.
Related previous posts include:
Cadets debate the war
Hunger in Greece, hunger in the UK
Both are set in a country called Panem, which is the Latin word for bread. It is often used in the phrase panem et circenses, which translates into English as bread and circuses. The phrase reflects a belief in ancient times that the common people would be easy to control provided that they had bread to eat and circuses for entertainment.
Panem is a dictatorial republic ruled from the affluent futuristic city of Capitol, whose citizens commonly dress in flamboyant outfits. The remainder of the country is divided into twelve districts, where people live in enforced poverty. There are gradations of prosperity, however, with some districts better off than others.
Although Panem might seem very different from the United Kingdom, we too have people living in opulence while other people queue for food banks. Our governments are elected, but the British people make such poor voting choices that I sometimes think we might not be much worse off if we were unable to vote.
The hunger games are an annual event which combine entertainment with fear. Each of the twelve districts provides two contestants, known as tributes, to take part in a fight to the death in a large outdoor arena. The tributes are aged from twelve up to eighteen, and each district provides a male and female tribute.
Districts are expected to choose tributes by a process of random selection, although it is acceptable to choose a volunteer if there is one. It is illegal for any youngsters to prepare for tribute status. Nevertheless in the more prosperous districts some youngsters train in secret and in some cases volunteer for tribute status.
As a result, some districts submit tributes who are not only trained in the use of weapons, but who display clear homicidal tendencies. These tributes are known as careers. Once in the arena they happily murder other tributes. In the film, both tributes from Districts 1 and 2 are careers, and in the novel so is the female tribute from District 4. It appears normal for most of the tributes either to kill only in self defence or not to kill at all.
It appears that the citizens of Capitol enjoy the barbarity of the games in much the same way that many people in Spain enjoy bull fights. It appears also that the inhabitants of the districts are expected to view the games as sign of their inferiority, but the fact that at least some districts provide tributes who are eager to take part suggests that at least some of them derive pleasure from the games.
Aside from the careers, just one girl in the film volunteers as a tribute, becoming the first ever volunteer tribute from District 12. She is not however a willing volunteer, as she volunteers only after her younger sister is chosen by lottery. Self-sacrifice has long been viewed as a noble characteristic.
The reader might think that Britain today does not have anything resembling either bull fights or the hunger games, but Britain happily sends troops into illegal foreign wars in which British service personnel are often killed - along with large numbers of foreign nationals, many of whom are not in any way combatant. In no way are we morally superior to the fictitious organisers of the hunger games.
People who take part in wars are either volunteers or conscripts, but even conscripts are volunteers of a sort. They have the option of refusing to be conscripted. At times the alternative might be imprisonment or social exclusion, but surely these things are in most cases preferable to the brutality of war.
I have previously written about a British army veteran called Douglas Mitchell who according to his daughter was given to bad behaviour. I am now aware of the case of another British forces veteran called William Woods whose daughter recalls him as cold and distant. I repeat what I said in that earlier post:
... the British POWs who allegedly suffered terrible abuse at the hands of their Japanese captors were all volunteers.
Men who served in the Second World War were in some cases veterans of the Great War. Many would have been the sons or grandsons of people who fought in that war, and they would presumably have had some awareness of the grim reality of that war. For those men then to take part voluntarily in another war is surely akin to volunteering to take part in the hunger games - except that I'm not sure if any British serviceman has ever volunteered for belligerent activity as a substitute for a 12yo girl.
The death of another 12yo girl in the hunger games triggers a spate of riots in her home district. While I do not condone riots in this country, I cannot help but wonder why the British people do not protest at the deaths of children in foreign lands as a result of British military action.
Related previous posts include:
Cadets debate the war
Hunger in Greece, hunger in the UK
Friday, 31 July 2015
What exactly is denialism?
While doing some research last year, I came across the word denialism. The author - an Australian academic - did not explain what the word meant, but he was clearly using it in respect of defending his own point of view.
In a previous post on this blog, I presented the reader with a word which I had just invented: mortocracy. Nevertheless, I was careful in that post to specify what the word means.
By contrast, communists often resort to using words which they have not taken the time to define properly. My starting point when writing this blog post was to decide whether or not the word denialism is a useful word in academic debate or just another example of communist weasel speak.
In some of my previous posts I have used the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as a source, but at the time of writing it carries no definition for the word denialism. I merely observe that fact.
I am unwilling to refer to Wikipedia as a source because I believe that the content of Wikipedia pages can be altered by almost anyone at any time. At the time of writing, the lengthy Wikipedia entry on denialism can perhaps be summed up as defining denialism as the refutation of the consensus view in a given academic debate, whether in the field of science or history. It appears also that denialism is invariably a negative thing. There is no hint that challenging the consensus is ever a good thing.
The Skeptical Science website lists five characteristics of denialism: conspiracy theories, fake experts, cherry picking, impossible expectations, and misrepresentation and the use of logical fallacies. So far as I can make out, the site does not offer any instances of where it is accepable to question the consensus point of view.
With regard to the first characteristic, I am apparently a denialist if I believe that people hold to a consensus point of view because they are part of a conspiracy. But why should I not assume that?
One of the most famous hoaxes of all time was the discovery in 1912 of skull fragments which supposedly provided evidence for an early human being known as Piltdown Man. It has been convincingly argued that at least some people in the early twentieth century knew it was a hoax, but were unwilling to say so. In other words they were part of a conspiracy.
With regard to fake experts, no definition of a fake expert is offered. Am I expected to believe that an expert who defies the consensus is a fake expert merely on the grounds of his defiance?
With regard to cherry picking, am I expected to believe that people who hold to a consensus point of view never indulge in the selective use of evidence?
With regard to impossible expectations, let me repeat what I said in an earlier post: it is debateable whether or not there is such a thing as proof in science. Likewise, I remember the headmaster at my school - a historian - asserting that you cannot prove what happened on the way to school this morning.
With regard to misrepresentation and the use of logical fallacies, are we to assume that the consensus point of view is never founded on misrepresentation or the use of logical fallacies? Also, even if I resort to deception in a bid to discredit the consensus point of view, then that in itself does not prove that the consensus view is robust.
Academic history is full of beliefs which were once well received but which have since been discredited. The pseudoscience of phrenology is an example.
There are also many current beliefs which could be discredited at any point, and one obvious example is the belief that certain species are extinct. I will give two examples.
A freshwater dolphin known as the baiji was declared functionally extinct in 2006. The zoologists who reached this conclusion were not implying that no baiji were left alive, but that there were either no baiji left or at best not enough to provide an effective breeding population. A baiji was sighted the following year, but this merely proved that the baiji was not extinct. One baiji on its own does not provide a breeding population.
The Tasmanian Tiger is widely believed to have become extinct in the 1930s, but some people maintain that it still exists. The difference between the Tasmanian Tiger and the baiji is that any confirmed sighting of a Tasmanian Tiger would allow us to conclude not only that it is not extinct, but also that it is also probably not functionally extinct either. It is safe to say that any Tasmanian Tiger which was alive in the 1930s is now dead, and so the only way even one Tasmanian Tiger could be alive today would be if a breeding population remained active long after the 1930s.
I will add that a film clip from 1973 shows a creature which I firmly believe to be a Tasmanian Tiger.
In conclusion, the concept of denialism appears to be seriously flawed. Unless someone can provide evidence to the contrary, I will continue to regard it as yet another example of how communists seek to distort or even suppress academic debate.
Related previous posts include:
What is mortocracy?
Fundamental issues in science
In a previous post on this blog, I presented the reader with a word which I had just invented: mortocracy. Nevertheless, I was careful in that post to specify what the word means.
By contrast, communists often resort to using words which they have not taken the time to define properly. My starting point when writing this blog post was to decide whether or not the word denialism is a useful word in academic debate or just another example of communist weasel speak.
In some of my previous posts I have used the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as a source, but at the time of writing it carries no definition for the word denialism. I merely observe that fact.
I am unwilling to refer to Wikipedia as a source because I believe that the content of Wikipedia pages can be altered by almost anyone at any time. At the time of writing, the lengthy Wikipedia entry on denialism can perhaps be summed up as defining denialism as the refutation of the consensus view in a given academic debate, whether in the field of science or history. It appears also that denialism is invariably a negative thing. There is no hint that challenging the consensus is ever a good thing.
The Skeptical Science website lists five characteristics of denialism: conspiracy theories, fake experts, cherry picking, impossible expectations, and misrepresentation and the use of logical fallacies. So far as I can make out, the site does not offer any instances of where it is accepable to question the consensus point of view.
With regard to the first characteristic, I am apparently a denialist if I believe that people hold to a consensus point of view because they are part of a conspiracy. But why should I not assume that?
One of the most famous hoaxes of all time was the discovery in 1912 of skull fragments which supposedly provided evidence for an early human being known as Piltdown Man. It has been convincingly argued that at least some people in the early twentieth century knew it was a hoax, but were unwilling to say so. In other words they were part of a conspiracy.
With regard to fake experts, no definition of a fake expert is offered. Am I expected to believe that an expert who defies the consensus is a fake expert merely on the grounds of his defiance?
With regard to cherry picking, am I expected to believe that people who hold to a consensus point of view never indulge in the selective use of evidence?
With regard to impossible expectations, let me repeat what I said in an earlier post: it is debateable whether or not there is such a thing as proof in science. Likewise, I remember the headmaster at my school - a historian - asserting that you cannot prove what happened on the way to school this morning.
With regard to misrepresentation and the use of logical fallacies, are we to assume that the consensus point of view is never founded on misrepresentation or the use of logical fallacies? Also, even if I resort to deception in a bid to discredit the consensus point of view, then that in itself does not prove that the consensus view is robust.
Academic history is full of beliefs which were once well received but which have since been discredited. The pseudoscience of phrenology is an example.
There are also many current beliefs which could be discredited at any point, and one obvious example is the belief that certain species are extinct. I will give two examples.
A freshwater dolphin known as the baiji was declared functionally extinct in 2006. The zoologists who reached this conclusion were not implying that no baiji were left alive, but that there were either no baiji left or at best not enough to provide an effective breeding population. A baiji was sighted the following year, but this merely proved that the baiji was not extinct. One baiji on its own does not provide a breeding population.
The Tasmanian Tiger is widely believed to have become extinct in the 1930s, but some people maintain that it still exists. The difference between the Tasmanian Tiger and the baiji is that any confirmed sighting of a Tasmanian Tiger would allow us to conclude not only that it is not extinct, but also that it is also probably not functionally extinct either. It is safe to say that any Tasmanian Tiger which was alive in the 1930s is now dead, and so the only way even one Tasmanian Tiger could be alive today would be if a breeding population remained active long after the 1930s.
I will add that a film clip from 1973 shows a creature which I firmly believe to be a Tasmanian Tiger.
In conclusion, the concept of denialism appears to be seriously flawed. Unless someone can provide evidence to the contrary, I will continue to regard it as yet another example of how communists seek to distort or even suppress academic debate.
Related previous posts include:
What is mortocracy?
Fundamental issues in science
Friday, 24 July 2015
Fellow blogger is wrong about the minimum wage
For the first time ever I am replying to another blog on this site. The blogger is someone whose output I tend to admire.
She has recently posted a comment in which she argues that the government is wrong to increase the minimum wage. The government announced in March this year (2015) that the minimum wage is to rise by 20p to £6.70, and Enza Ferreri links to a report on the BBC website which includes the following comment:
It ... would allow the recipient of that wage to rent a one-bedroom place in a dowdier part of London, so long as he or she didn't eat, use power, pay council tax, or wear clothes.
Before I continue, anyone who is new to my blog might like to know that I have written extensively on the subject of salaries, covering both low pay and the fat cat salaries often enjoyed by managers. I link to some of those previous posts below.
Ferreri claims that: If a worker A's skills don't have enough value for an employer B to pay A the minimum wage ... B will not hire A. What I would like to know is how employer B - or anyone else - is expected to place a monetary value on someone else's work. There is no simple formula that I know of which can determine the value of work.
Furthermore, many companies in Britain are led by company directors earning salaries way in excess of what most people can hope to earn. Nevertheless many companies still manage to go out of business, and I have never come across a single case of a company director agreeing to repay his salary in the event of his company failing. Surely the first duty of any company director should be to ensure that your company stays solvent. If you cannot do that, then maybe you do not deserve to earn much more than the minimum wage.
Ferreri also claims that a higher minimum wage would make it harder for the unemployed to find work, but that might not be the case. It is easy to envisage a higher minimum wage leading to workers having more money to spend, and this in turn leading to companies recruiting more staff because workers are spending more.
Another claim is that a higher minimum wage will drive up prices, but I have already tackled that misconception in a previous post which is linked to below.
Ferreri concludes that workers should seek to earn more by making themselves more valuable, but fails to explain the logic of this. Suppose I spend my evenings studying things which are relevant to the job I do, and as a result make myself more useful to my employer. It does not follow that my employer will pay me more as a result.
Consider pilots. Pilots in the UK tend to be very well paid, but anyone who has seen the 2009 film Capitalism: a love story will know that it was common at that time for pilots in the USA to be poorly paid. A search on the internet suggests that this might still be the case. Does anyone know for certain?
If workers are paid according to their value, then surely a pilot in the USA would earn about as much as a pilot in the UK - or am I missing something?
I could write a lot more on the subject of wages, but instead I will invite the reader to look at some of my other essays on this subject.
Related previous posts include:
She has recently posted a comment in which she argues that the government is wrong to increase the minimum wage. The government announced in March this year (2015) that the minimum wage is to rise by 20p to £6.70, and Enza Ferreri links to a report on the BBC website which includes the following comment:
It ... would allow the recipient of that wage to rent a one-bedroom place in a dowdier part of London, so long as he or she didn't eat, use power, pay council tax, or wear clothes.
Before I continue, anyone who is new to my blog might like to know that I have written extensively on the subject of salaries, covering both low pay and the fat cat salaries often enjoyed by managers. I link to some of those previous posts below.
Ferreri claims that: If a worker A's skills don't have enough value for an employer B to pay A the minimum wage ... B will not hire A. What I would like to know is how employer B - or anyone else - is expected to place a monetary value on someone else's work. There is no simple formula that I know of which can determine the value of work.
Furthermore, many companies in Britain are led by company directors earning salaries way in excess of what most people can hope to earn. Nevertheless many companies still manage to go out of business, and I have never come across a single case of a company director agreeing to repay his salary in the event of his company failing. Surely the first duty of any company director should be to ensure that your company stays solvent. If you cannot do that, then maybe you do not deserve to earn much more than the minimum wage.
Ferreri also claims that a higher minimum wage would make it harder for the unemployed to find work, but that might not be the case. It is easy to envisage a higher minimum wage leading to workers having more money to spend, and this in turn leading to companies recruiting more staff because workers are spending more.
Another claim is that a higher minimum wage will drive up prices, but I have already tackled that misconception in a previous post which is linked to below.
Ferreri concludes that workers should seek to earn more by making themselves more valuable, but fails to explain the logic of this. Suppose I spend my evenings studying things which are relevant to the job I do, and as a result make myself more useful to my employer. It does not follow that my employer will pay me more as a result.
Consider pilots. Pilots in the UK tend to be very well paid, but anyone who has seen the 2009 film Capitalism: a love story will know that it was common at that time for pilots in the USA to be poorly paid. A search on the internet suggests that this might still be the case. Does anyone know for certain?
If workers are paid according to their value, then surely a pilot in the USA would earn about as much as a pilot in the UK - or am I missing something?
I could write a lot more on the subject of wages, but instead I will invite the reader to look at some of my other essays on this subject.
Related previous posts include:
Sunday, 19 July 2015
The Labour Party dish it out, but don't want it back
A senior Labour MP ... is gathering support for a move to stop the
[leadership] contest, on the grounds that Labour’s political enemies were warping the
process by signing up members to vote for Mr Corbyn in September.
So reports The Mail on Sunday. It continues:
... the Daily Telegraph urged readers to pay the £3 fee to join Labour to try to destroy it from within by voting for Mr Corbyn.
My first comment is that I do not care much who wins the Labour leadership, because all four candidates are communists. My second comment is that the Labour Party has never been keen on democracy. For example, the first ever Labour government in 1924 planned to lend money to the government of Stalin, even though they knew that Stalin was unelected.
Another relevant comment is that any political party which allows people to vote in a leadership election after paying just one very small membership fee is asking for trouble.
My final comment is that the Labour Party is happy to use infiltration as a method of attacking its enemies. In the 1970s, a Labour government recruited people to infiltrate the National Front. (The evidence for this is, for example, a World In Action (Granada Television) documentary screened on 3 July 1978.)
In 1996, West Yorkshire Police recruited a man called Gary Shopland to infiltrate the British National Party. He worked undercover for seven years, and six of those years were under a Labour government. It was also under a Labour government that a police officer called Mark Kennedy worked undercover for many years as a climate change campaigner, while another undercover officer tried to obtain information about the family and friends of the murdered Stephen Lawrence.
It may be the case that undercover officers occasionally obtain useful information, but consider the following. Mark Kennedy was hugely well paid to go undercover, and yet a criminal trial collapsed when the defendants demanded answers to questions about his involvement in the alleged crime. The Guardian has reported that many undercover officers were allowed to take part in criminal activities and also commit adultery while on duty. Channel 4 has reported similar facts about an undercover officer called Bob Lambert.
The BBC also joined in the fun when it employed a lying scumbag called Jason Gwynne to infiltrate the British National Party. This too happened under a Labour government. He worked with another undercover scumbag called Andy Sykes, although it is not clear who exactly was pulling this other man's strings.
In short, the Labour Party is utterly immoral, and I hope that whoever is elected its leader will lead it into the oblivion that it deserves. Ideally the Conservative Party would follow it there.
Related previous posts include:
Musings on the general election
The great paedo cover-up continues
The story of Peter Francis
So reports The Mail on Sunday. It continues:
... the Daily Telegraph urged readers to pay the £3 fee to join Labour to try to destroy it from within by voting for Mr Corbyn.
My first comment is that I do not care much who wins the Labour leadership, because all four candidates are communists. My second comment is that the Labour Party has never been keen on democracy. For example, the first ever Labour government in 1924 planned to lend money to the government of Stalin, even though they knew that Stalin was unelected.
Another relevant comment is that any political party which allows people to vote in a leadership election after paying just one very small membership fee is asking for trouble.
My final comment is that the Labour Party is happy to use infiltration as a method of attacking its enemies. In the 1970s, a Labour government recruited people to infiltrate the National Front. (The evidence for this is, for example, a World In Action (Granada Television) documentary screened on 3 July 1978.)
In 1996, West Yorkshire Police recruited a man called Gary Shopland to infiltrate the British National Party. He worked undercover for seven years, and six of those years were under a Labour government. It was also under a Labour government that a police officer called Mark Kennedy worked undercover for many years as a climate change campaigner, while another undercover officer tried to obtain information about the family and friends of the murdered Stephen Lawrence.
It may be the case that undercover officers occasionally obtain useful information, but consider the following. Mark Kennedy was hugely well paid to go undercover, and yet a criminal trial collapsed when the defendants demanded answers to questions about his involvement in the alleged crime. The Guardian has reported that many undercover officers were allowed to take part in criminal activities and also commit adultery while on duty. Channel 4 has reported similar facts about an undercover officer called Bob Lambert.
The BBC also joined in the fun when it employed a lying scumbag called Jason Gwynne to infiltrate the British National Party. This too happened under a Labour government. He worked with another undercover scumbag called Andy Sykes, although it is not clear who exactly was pulling this other man's strings.
In short, the Labour Party is utterly immoral, and I hope that whoever is elected its leader will lead it into the oblivion that it deserves. Ideally the Conservative Party would follow it there.
Related previous posts include:
Musings on the general election
The great paedo cover-up continues
The story of Peter Francis
Monday, 13 July 2015
MPs don't make the Z list
You might think that as a keen political blogger I would know the names of lots of MPs. I recently looked through a list of the 652 current MPs in this country, and I can safely say that I know something about at least ten percent of them – maybe fifteen percent at most. In other words, I know nothing whatever about nearly all of the current MPs.
I studied
this list in reponse to reading a comment by Dominic Lawson about the wives of Simon
Danczuk MP and Commons Speaker John Bercow.
(For those who do not know, Dominic Lawson is the son of the evil former government minister Nigel
Lawson, and the brother of the television celebrity and former dopehead Nigella
Lawson.)
I then
looked down the home page of the Daily Mail website, and made a list of every
current MP whose name or photograph appeared in a headline. The answer was just seven, which included three
members of the government and three Labour leadership contenders. I did not count the number of headlines which
mentioned celebrities I know nothing about.
The first I
ever knew of Karen Danczuk was a press report about the selfie-loving younger
wife of a Labour MP I knew nothing about.
As it happens, Simon Danczuk is one of the seven MPs mentioned in today’s
Daily Mail headlines, but he is mentioned only in the context of his estranged
wife.
Lawson
accuses Karen Danczuk of feeding off her husband’s name, but this is grossly
misleading. On the one hand, we would
never have heard of her if she had not married an MP, but equally most of us
would never have heard of her husband were it not for his glamorous wife.
Lawson also
claims that:
... the
full-length pictures supplied by Mrs Danczuk of herself wearing only a bikini,
I am obliged to report that if they had been sent in to a glamour modelling
agency, they would have ended up in the bin without so much as a second glance.
Perhaps
Lawson does not know that supermodels often do not look like supermodels on their
days off work. If you don’t believe me,
then feel free to watch this video. (If no video is visible below, then try searching on YT for Cameron Russell TED).
Also, with the exception of supermodels, most of the women who are paraded in the press as beautiful are famous for being actresses or singers or athletes - in other words whose fame is not necessarily dependant on their looks.
Where celebrity
is concerned, most MPs do not make the Z list, and very few MP’s spouses attain
any degree of celebrity, and so Karen Danczuk certainly punches above her weight where celebrity status is concerned.
Many people think that she is self-obsessed, but I wonder how many of those people were repeatedly raped as a child. Karen has alleged that she was sexually abused hundreds of times between the ages of six and twelve, and subsequently suffered body confidence issues. Her obsession with selfies is merely a reaction to her earlier insecurities.
Like her
husband, she is a member of the Labour Party, and her husband is known for his campaigning
work on paedophilia, which may seem a curious pastime for a member of the
paedophile-supporting Labour Party. He
is also known to be dismissive of the British National Party, presumably
because he objects to its relentless campaigning against paedophilia.
Sunday, 12 July 2015
The price of West End theatre tickets
There is an ongoing debate in British politics as to whether or not the government should subsidise the arts, and I hope to address this debate in a future post. My purpose in writing this post is to consider the impact of state subsidy on theatre prices.
It is reported in the national press that the famous
actress Juliet Stevenson has complained about the price of theatre tickets in
London’s West End, and these tickets are certainly not cheap. Tickets for
musicals can apparently cost up to £200.
Let us suppose that you establish your own theatre
company, and rehearse a show. You book a
theatre, and your play comes before the public.
You need to recover your production costs from the ticket sales, and so
you price the tickets accordingly.
It is probable that you will sell more tickets if you opt
for a low price than if you opt for a high price, but either way you need to
make a guess at the minimum number of tickets you will sell, and then ensure
that the tickets are priced so that you will at the very least break even. If your tickets are priced too high, and you
do not sell enough to break even, then your theatre production fails.
Now suppose that your production receives some government
subsidy. This can be offset against your
costs, and you can adjust the price of your tickets accordingly. Your tickets can be sold cheaply, and you
stand a good chance of covering your costs.
At the point at which your theatre production opens, the
ticket price is guided primarily – perhaps exclusively - by the need to cover
costs, but another factor could soon come into play.
Suppose now that your play is well received. The reviews in the press are glowing, and before
long you are selling out every performance.
Covering your costs is no longer an issue, as you are making a healthy
profit. The price of your tickets is now
driven firmly by supply and demand. A
high demand relative to supply allows you to charge a high price for your
tickets, and some people start complaining that your prices are beyond their
means.
In this situation a subsidy would make no sense at
all. You are making a profit, and you
are free to make use of this profit to reduce your ticket prices so that more
people can afford them. The drawback
here is that lowering the ticket price of a sell out show will merely cause it
to sell out the sooner.
Suppose you try to book tickets for a theatre play, but
are told that it is fully booked for weeks ahead. The logical conclusion is that the tickets
are not priced highly enough. Raising
the price will dampen demand, and allow people to book tickets at short notice. Any tickets for a given show which are unsold
on the day of the performance can be sold at a reduced price, but otherwise the
price remains high.
Some readers may note that charging a high price for
theatre tickets merely exchanges one unfairness for another, and this is
true. Nevertheless it tends to replace the said unfairness with one that is more efficient.
When tickets for a popular show are priced so as to be
affordable to as many people as possible, then it causes the afore-mentioned
problem of people having to buy tickets a long way in advance. It also creates a situation where revenue is
lower than it could be.
If your theatre play owes its success to the presence of
a famous actor, then that actor might leave if another theatre company offers
to pay him more money. In other words,
not pricing your tickets highly enough could be counter-productive to your show’s
ongoing success.
By contrast, if you price your tickets so as to exclude
those on modest salaries, then you can maximise your revenue and potentially
keep your show running for many weeks – or perhaps even years. The success of your show might also encourage
another theatre to stage the same play - albeit with a less impressive cast - and
charge a lower ticket price, and so the less well off might not be completely
excluded.
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