‘Plutocracy’ is viewed generally as a dirty word. The idea (if not the practice) of government by the wealthy is anathema to those who treasure democracy. At first whiff the OECD Secretariat’s proposal for a unified worldwide approach to the taxation of the digital economy, issued for consultation earlier this month, failed the plutocratic…
Que?
The English language often lags scientific progress. We still 'turn on the radio', even if none of us have seen a dial in years. When my kids were growing up, I always reminded them to 'pull the chain' even though toilet flush mechanisms had long been more user-friendly. And today, our computers offer us the…
Doing it the people’s way
‘You’re not drunk, if you can lie on the floor without holding on.’ Dean Martin’s witticism has haunted me over the last couple of years as I have watched the impending self-destruction of the country of my birth (Brexit, the inevitability of a future Corbyn government), the temporary set-back to the United States (The Donald, the quack…
Taking axes to taxes
En route to a tax conference in Malta earlier this month, circumstances led me to muse about the renewed race to the bottom of international corporate tax rates. Donald Trump had not yet surprised the world with his election win, so his promises of madly reduced US corporate tax rates were the stuff of fantasy.…
Don’t Mention The War
1/1/14. Typing the date, I am paralysed with fear as I imagine myself, pencil in fingerless-gloved hand, writing home from a rat-infested trench in the fields of Northern France (rats are one thing - but France?). Even the quality press has added to my waking nightmare. Both the New York Times and The Economist got in…
Starbucks gets roasted
It is a tribute to the emotional power of poetry that, when I think of "Four Weddings and a Funeral", I remember the single funeral rather than the multiple weddings. "He was my North, my South, my East and West" - Matthew's rendition of WH Auden's Funeral Blues as he eulogized Gareth, lent pathos to one of…
Territorial expansion
M.A.D. has to be the best acronym ever. "Mutual Assured Destruction" is what the world looked like it was heading for 50 years ago this week when the young John F Kennedy faced down Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis. October 16, 1962 has gone down in history as the morning National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy…
World without borders
Blitzing Mannheim last Tuesday in advance of a meeting the following morning, I soon tired of the centre of town with its Water Tower, Paradeplatz and street names like P3 and Q5. Settling into my hotel room, I turned on the TV. Confronted by Mary Poppins dubbed into German - at least in British war movies they made the Germans speak…
Raising the energy bar
In my salad days, apart from holding down a regular job as an elementary school student, I had some house jobs. Returning home in the freezing dark each winter's eve, my chafed thighs burning from the cold, I would make straight for the soot encrusted scuttle standing guard outside the kitchen door. Carrying it across the yard to the squat bunker opposite I would scoop coal into…
L’entente cordiale?
De Gaulle once told Churchill's wife Clementine, "France has no friends, only interests". This could have been the motto for his great creation, the Fifth Republic or - for that matter - the Fourth, Third, Second or First. Nicolas Sarkozy is at it again. Spurred on by the threat of his presidency being guillotined at the French elections…
Tax Break 