As Inquisitions go, the Spanish one went quite recently. The last garroting took place in 1826, with abandonment of the 350 year-old program in 1834. Portugal had, by then, put that sad part of its history behind her, while the Papal States, and their offshoot The Vatican, finally got round to announcing their Inquisition's requiem in 1908, and…
Bend it for Messi
Having reached my majority in an era that nowadays pops up in my kids' History exams, I am today at a stage in life where names and faces are prone to be mixed-and-matched. Every time I hear mention of Lionel Messi I invariably see Lionel Richie's mustachioed head protruding from an FC Barcelona shirt. It was, therefore, no surprise that when the world was…
Tax Wars: The Authorities Strike Back
Suicide is not a laughing matter. Last week marked fifty years since American poet, Sylvia Plath, took her own life, and the benefit-of-hindsight news stories on the subject were uniformly depressing. It is interesting, therefore, that one of the most successful comedy series in television history opened each week with a song about suicide. Thirty years ago…
Mas or Messi?
Barcelona. There was a time, not so long ago, when the capital of Catalonia was not yet known for Freddy Mercury's super-hit of the same name, when the 1992 Summer Olympics had not yet produced gold, when Carlos Ruiz Zafon had not yet got round to romanticizing La Rambla and the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books, when Gaudi's…
It’s peace and democracy, stupid
We accountants do not care much for the front section of the newspaper. If a story cannot be reduced to prime numbers, it is not for us. After a cursory glance at the headlines we skip to Section B to be hypnotized by the latest business and finance news followed by yesterday's football, baseball and cricket…
Tax Break 