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October 2007

Richard Murphy Gets One Right!

I know, it\’s a bit of a shocker but this is simply quite wonderful. You see, Non-Doms don\’t not pay tax at all:

George Osborne has begun to talk tax. On domicile Bloombreg report that he is proposing a flat levy of £25,000 pounds ($51,000) on non- domiciled residents who currently avoid tax.

I’ve got news for George Osborne. The average tax paid by a non-domiciled person now is £26,800, based on Treasury data.

Bravo Mr. Murphy, Bravo!

The Council House as Slavery

Very provocative this and with more than just a grain of truth to it:

But this also casts an odd light on the labour movement and on trades unions. Through their adherence to the ideas of jobs for life, and their demands that working class people be able to depend on benevolent and paternalistic forces, be they employers or the state, or both, and take the consequent lack of freedom that results from this they not only stand in direct line of descent from Roman slaves, but they also demand that they be able to remain as slaves. The dignity of labour is no more than the degrading comfort of the steel slave collar on the neck.

And for all their Pooterish, John Major, Little Chef aspects, the lower middle classes have this in their favour: they came from there. They would not accept the collar. They aspired to independence and freedom.

Until the psychology of the working class disappears, Britons will always include some slaves among their number.

One View, Certainly

As he says:

And what’s wrong with sleaze on TV, if that’s what people want to watch? BBC stands for British Broadcasting Corporation, and if a particular program gets high ratings, it’s because that’s what British people like to watch. If Beyer doesn’t approve of the tastes of British people, he’s welcome to fuck off out of our country. Personally I think it’s absolutely disgusting the amount of filth, depravity and lesbian sex on TV; there’s nowhere near enough.

 

How is This Possible?

A really rather wonderful scientific result:

Bar staff have seen huge health benefits from the ban on smoking in public places, a study by the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre in Warwick – funded by Cancer Research UK – has found. Researchers tested the air quality in 40 pubs, bars and restaurants across the country and measured the level of cotinine – the metabolic byproduct of nicotine – in the blood of those who worked there.

Quite amazing how you can measure the effect of smoking in public places by measuring something on private property really, isn\’t it?

Rape Conviction Rates

I\’m reasonably certain that Daphna Baram didn\’t mean this to be taken this way but:

There is no indication of more judicial mistakes in rape convictions than in any other field of crime.

So, the low conviction rate is not a result of judicial mistakes, it\’s simply part and parcel of the nature of the crime and the difficulty of proving it. So can we have an end to the talk of the way in which the low conviction rates show that it\’s a uniquely badly dealth with crime?

The Myth of Mars and Venus

I love this. Deborah Cameron sets out to show that men and women are not as different as many claim. Things like the use of language, empathic versus systemizing behaviour etc. She even quotes Simon Baron Cohen:

The difference between the two lists reflects what Baron-Cohen takes to be the "essential difference" between male and female brains. The female-brain jobs make use of a capacity for empathy and communication, whereas the male ones exploit the ability to analyse complex systems. Baron-Cohen is careful to talk about -"people with the female/male brain" rather than "men and women". He stresses that there are men with female brains, women with male brains, and individuals of both sexes with "balanced" brains. He refers to the major brain types as "male" and "female", however, because the tendency is for males to have male brains and females to have female brains. And at many points it becomes clear that in spite of his caveats about not confusing gender with brain sex, he himself is doing exactly that.

Baron Cohen is very clear in his academic papers that he\’s talking about brain type, not XY or XX. Anyway, what amuses me is that having accused him of confusing gender with brain sex she then goes on to talk about the averages of men and women: that is, not making the distinction between brain type and gender.

Who Trains These People?

Who is actually training journalists about the subjects they write upon? Anyone?

He is expected to make an audacious raid into Labour\’s natural territory by promising a clampdown on so-called "non-doms" – non-domiciled workers who live in the UK but are not registered to pay tax…

That\’s not what a non-dom is. We make two distinctions in UK tax law, between residents and those who are domiciled. Roughly speaking where you are resident is a year by year thing, domicile is a life-long thing (although it is possible to change it). I\’m reasonably sure that we\’ve got this distinction (which I\’m not sure that anyone else really has, at least not in quite the same form) because until the last decade or so it brought more tax money in that it lost. Because you could run off to Monaco or wherever and lose your residency, meaning that you didn\’t pay income tax in the UK, but your domicile was much more difficult to shake off and that left (I think I\’ve got this right) your estate still to be taxed by the UK.

Still, that quote isn\’t what non-doms are. Non-doms are registered to pay tax. They pay income tax on their UK earnings, just like everyone else. However, they do not pay income tax on their non-UK earnings. That\’s the difference: if you\’re UK domiciled you pay income tax on worldwide earnings. If non-dom, only on UK.

Perhaps this system needs to be changed, perhaps not, I don\’t think it really matters all that much either way. But reporting on it and not understanding what it is is really pretty sad.

AN Wilson and VS Naipaul

A very negative review of VS Naipaul here by AN Wilson.

Fans of Naughtie got a double delight last week when, just before the eight o\’clock news, he was interviewing Sir Vidia Naipaul. Since being awarded the Nobel Prize, Naipaul seems to have slipped from being a great writer who is occasionally idiotic into being an old bore who does not know when he is making a fool of himself.

Writing and reading are very different arts, and relationships between writers themselves are always fraught. Envy distorts his discussion of his fellow-Caribbean Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott. "I had looked at a few of the later poems. They did not stir me."

He does not so much as name Omeros or Tiepolo Hound, two of the most remarkable works of literature in our time. Any dispassionate reader can see that Naipaul is incapable of reading a great poet because his own ego is getting in the way.

OK, bad review, nothing unusual….but I don\’t think we should expect anything else from this reviewer on this writer. I\’ve forgotten (if I ever understood them) the details but there\’s been a decades long spat between the two anyway. This is just the latest installment and it\’s a bit like academic arguments. They\’re so vicious because there\’s nothing really at stake.

Interesting Number

This:

The European Central Bank found that if public spending were as efficient as that of the US, or Japan, the Government could spend 16 per cent less, while still producing the same level of public services.

The ECB isn\’t known as one of those anti-statist organisations now so this isn\’t a railing against the level of spending at all, just its efficiency. 16% is something like £ 80 billion. That\’s the entire VAT take, or the entire National Insurance take. All that money collected, all that deadweight cost to the economy, simply because the people who rule us are inefficient at what they do.

We could, for example, abolish both fuel duty and corporation tax if only they were in fact competent. Not perfectly competent even, just as much so as the Americans (not, to be honest, a very high standard being demanded either).

World Cup Quarter Finals

So.

England Australia: Oz to win I think?

Scotland Argentina. The Pumas.

France New Zealand: the Kiwis.

Fiji South Africa: the Boks.

Unless England do something remarkable (or Chris Patterson dials in a direct line from God) then it\’s going to be all Southern Hemisphere semis. Might not be what we want but it probably does reflect the relative strengths, don\’t you think?

Zimbabwe Land Grabs

You can really rather sum up the entirety of the Zimbabwe disaster in this one paragraph:

But Gen Mujaji insists that he will stay on the farm regardless of the law. "I will only leave Karori if the minister of lands orders me. He is senior to the courts," he told The Daily Telegraph.

When the politicians are above the law disaster will inevitably follow. It\’s one of the scary things about both the UK and the EU at present. Ministers seem to think their decisions are more important than the law and the Commission is happily doing things it has no legal power to do. Of course, neither will lead to the complete impoverishment of us the citizenry, but it\’s the top of the same slippery slope.