'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,…
Let slip the dogs of war
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…
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…
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…
Greecing the wrong palms
Sneak, snitch, grass - those one syllable words do not convey an aura of approval. In school, where we imbibe the morality that plagues us for the rest of our lives, a telltale can expect a bigger punishment than the class-mate he is squealing on. The sheer number of synonyms (I have just used five)…
A drop of golden sun
From Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Adolf Hitler to Conchita Wurst, little Austria has always punched above its weight. It is ironic that the country that gave the world half its great classical music and, so far, all its World Wars, should be almost exclusively associated today with one kitch movie.Fifty years ago this week,…
The spotlight beside the golden door
Fifty years ago today, the New York Times announced that Elizabeth Taylor had failed in her attempt to renounce US citizenship. Required to disavow 'all allegiance and fidelity' to the United States, she found herself unable to do so. Now, allegiance and fidelity are terms Ms Taylor had a lot of experience disavowing - eight lots…
Tax Break 