OK, I accept it's fairly obvious Seamus Milne of the Guardian and I have been talking when reading his column this morning but what the heck? It's good to see this story hitting the media again: Cameron and Osborne wring their hands at the “moral repugnance” of “aggressive avoidance”, but are doing nothing serious about
Read the Rest…

As Channel 4 reports this morning: The House of Commons public accounts committee has accused the Department of Health of “inventing rules and processes on the hoof” to deal with hospital trusts in financial difficulty Ministers were unable to provide the committee with reassurance that financial problems will not impact on the quality of or access to
Read the Rest…

It’s often said that tax havens are a part of life and there’s nothing we can do about them. That’s not true, as a new series on the Tax Justice Network’s Tackle Tax Havens web site shows. Take for example the current problem the UK is having with multinational corporations shifting profits out of this country so that little
Read the Rest…

I’m speaking on this subject this afternoon at 5pm at Athens Concert Hall in a meeting organised by the Socialist and Democratic group in the EU parliament. As usual, I will not be speaking to a script. That’s not my style. But I have thought about what I might say: that’s also my style. My
Read the Rest…

I guess it’s not too late to mention I had a piece in Comment is Free yesterday under the above title. Written in haste in Terminal 5, the piece addressed a current Greek tax crisis that we in the UK share: It’s been an open secret for some time that the Greek tax authorities have
Read the Rest…

I'm not the world's most enthusiastic traveller. I travel, more than I want. It's part of my job. It's why I am in Athens this morning. I do it because I think it useful: not because I enjoy it. Candidly, the UK has more than enough to keep me amused when it comes to leisure
Read the Rest…

It’s often said that tax havens are a part of life and there’s nothing we can do about them. That’s not true, as a new series on the Tax Justice Network’s Tackle Tax Havens web site shows. Take as an example, one of my favourite topics, which is the fact we simply can’t find out what multinational corporations do
Read the Rest…

The BBC put out the following tweet this morning: 1 in 5 UK workers is not paid enough to provide a basic standard of living, research for KPMG suggests http://t.co/0hvF9y1j #livingwage Yes, that’s KPMG, the accountants. As the report suggests: It claimed that nearly five million people failed to command the Living Wage – a
Read the Rest…