I have just emerged from a fascinating two-day conference in rain-soaked Lisbon. Despite the headline title, the real theme was inevitably the prospects for the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project of the OECD, the rump of which is due to be approved by the G20 shortly. The public proclamations on BEPS have displayed populist triumphalism…
Send in the clowns
One of the highlights of my week is reading The Economist from cover to cover (normally starting with the Obituary at the wrong end). Several hours of sanity and good syntax. Come August and the Silly Season each year, I know I can take my foot off the pedal and glide through the depleted pages…
Cogito ergo sum
Arguably, the greatest contribution to society of a liberal education is perspective. 'Dah da dah da dah. DISCUSS' was the way it went when I was at school, as opposed to the 'A, B, C, D, E. Tick one' of the modern era. Today, July 14, is only significant to the vast majority of the…
Unfrozen Assets
I think the main reason I have been cautious and conservative all my life is a particular madness I observed in the 1970s as I was on the threshold of adulthood. There was a property boom in the UK and people were making a packet buying and selling anything with a front door. One fine day,…
Virgin Alpine
Hamlet's outburst at Ophelia to 'get thee to a nunnery' was intentionally ambiguous. In Elizabethan times a nunnery was either a convent or a brothel. Were the Danish Prince alive today, he could merrily get away with the same line aimed at Switzerland. What happened to the once VIP Escort Agency that, on its way to…
The Party’s Over?
The most poignant scene in the aftermath of the British General Election was defeated Labour leader Ed Milliband's 'victory' speech at the declaration for his Doncaster constituency. True to custom, he used the opportunity to recognize the enormity of Labour's defeat, and effectively conceded the election. But it was not the words of this left-wing, intellectual misfit's eulogy…
Who said tax is boring?
I was at dinner with friends late last year when one of the female guests announced that her husband was taking her skiing 'for her special birthday'. My in-built accountant's abacus went into immediate action calculating the lady's possible age. This took into account the ages of her children, her looks, and the milestones of her…
Spaghetti Westerners
The word around the Roman Forum is that Italy is on the verge of a Renaissance. After three years of recession, modest growth is expected this year. Regular readers may recall Giovanni and Guiseppe, two Italian plumbers who tried their luck in England about three years back. Thanks to improved employment prospects, they have returned…
Brazil gone nuts
The Circumlocution Office in 'Little Dorrit', where everything became bogged down in bureaucracy, represented Dickens's visceral satire on Government. A century and a half later, it might be time for novelist José Sarney to pick up, in his own country Brazil, where Dickens left off. Brazil is a bureaucratic blast, nowhere more so than in the field…
His Kingdom For A Hearse
With England burying one of its monarchs today, 530 years late, I thought it appropriate to re-post this item from March 25, 2012. Greatest Britain What makes Britain great? There is, of course, no single answer (and the French would suggest there is no question), but the nation that gave the world its principal parliamentary…
Tax Break 