He is best remembered through the prism of the witticisms of his arch-rival, Winston Churchill: ‘A modest man, who has much to be modest about’; ‘A sheep, in sheep’s clothing’; ‘Up drew an empty taxi, and out stepped…’, but Clement Attlee, the fiftieth anniversary of whose death is being marked this year, had many arrows to…
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
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…
Did you hear the one about..?
This year’s Booker International prizewinner, ‘A horse walks into a bar’, follows the routine of an over-the-hill stand-up comic as he coaxes and manipulates his audience, painfully aware that one failed joke could send the entire act crashing through the stage floor. I often wonder why modern politicians don’t take their cue from stand-up comedians.…
The Unsatanic Taxes
Nobody who has read Salman Rushdie’s classic ‘Midnight’s Children’ can be indifferent to the juxtaposition of India and Midnight in a phrase or sentence. So, the recent announcement that India’s new GST law (VAT by any other name would smell as sweet) would come into effect, amidst much fanfare, at midnight on July 1 was…
There is an i in America
In a sweltering, politically incorrect scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones - tired of the boastful swordsmanship of an Arab adversary – nonchalantly draws his pistol and shoots him dead. This could be a metaphor for the last hundred years: with a few exceptions, when the Americans have put their minds to…
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.…
Was the Battle of Europe lost on the playing fields of Eton?
'History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.' That aphorism, attributed to Mark Twain, has been much on my mind lately. Anybody wanting to get inside the minds of the wrong-headed majority that tragically voted the UK out of the EU (and probably lit a fuse to both those abbreviations) could do worse than read one…
Going it alone?
Ever since Marilyn Monroe’s less famous namesake, James, came up with his Doctrine almost two centuries ago, America has toyed with isolationism. They tried it in the First World War, and it didn’t work. They tried it in the Second World War, and it didn’t work. And Barack Obama has spent his presidency unsuccessfully trying…
Putting a Price on Morality
'If you prick us, do we not bleed?' Well, not if we are a company. This was the point on which I was reduced to a state of heckling at the Lisbon conference described in my previous post. A Breakout 'Conversation' - Breakout 'Sessions' are SO last decade - on 'Tax and Morality' was irresistible. (Look,…
Tax Break 