Ethics » Tax Research UK

An Occupy reading of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’

Dec 262011

Friday 30 December at 6pm – St. Paul’s Cathedral steps

Adapted by: Timberlake Wertenbaker
Directed by: Josh Appignanesi
Readers will include: Allan Corduner, Alan Cox, Sara Kestleman, Pam Miles, Tim Pigott-Smith, Ian Redford
Produced by: Occupy London

With the increase in public discontent and protest, and as Dickens’ bicentennial approaches, it seems only fitting to stage a public reading of ‘A Christmas Carol’ at St. Paul’s Cathedral and OccupyLSX. Dickens was compelled to write ‘A Christmas Carol’ out of a strong desire to comment on the enormous gap between the rich and poor in Victorian Britain. It is a similar strength of conviction that has motivated the growth of the Occupy movement to respond to the worsening conditions and state of emergency we live within, and to work to transform the growing social, economic and political injustices of our time.

As Giles Fraser, the former canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral says: ‘Christmas is the most political of the Church’s festivals…all politics is about people, and that without a fundamental sympathy for the plight of other human beings, and in particular for the dispossessed, no political movement for social change is ever going to capture the heart. For Dickens, Christmas was the emotional centre of the big society. Peace on earth and goodwill to all.’ In the preface to his book, Dickens’ conveys his intentions for writing it: ‘I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly…’

We at Occupy London invite everyone to join in the playfulness and seriousness of the Christmas spirit, and to ‘haunt pleasantly’ in a way that calls attention to the reality that our status quo is unsustainable and unjust. We are here, like Dickens, to creatively disrupt, and to make Christmas mean something this year beyond a consumerist spending frenzy. This Christmas, and in the year ahead, we invite you to combine irreverent fun with spiritual contemplation, to continue of the fight against social and economic injustice, and to partake in the creation of real, direct democracy. Please join us.

NB: Posted because I believe that this looks important – and the message even more so. I regret I won’t be there.

A Christmas meditation

Ethics 10 Responses »

Dec 232011

Christmas is a time of joy. Well, it is for some, and I hope that incudes you. But that’s not true of everyone. For many Christmas is a time that simply confirms the problems that they face in their everyday lives.

When people ask me why I write this blog and what motivates my work it is easy to answer: I am acutely aware of the many advantages I have enjoyed in my life and am equally aware that many do not enjoy the same opportunities. That is in far too many cases needless. I want to address the needlessness of so much of that suffering.

I am not talking when I refer to opportunities of the chance to live life to excess. I hope I don’t do that and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I’m talking about things much more fundamental, and important than that. So this Christmas I offer a short reflection (or meditation or even intercessionary prayer if you like, and that is your inclination) on those who are deserving of our thoughts, in my opinion, this Christmas and on the actions we might take in the year to come.

Let’s remember the unemployed this Christmas. Theirs is a plight of despair within the power of government to solve. And solve it they should.

Let’s remember the young this Christmas. Too many have had their opportunity taken away from them. It is our duty to restore it to them.

Let’s remember the old this Christmas. Too many live in fear that the resources made available for them to live on and to provide for their care will leave them in poverty, or even pain. And cold is for too many a reality of the winter months. We can, and should, take this fear away.

Let’s remember the homeless, and those who face the fear of homelessness this Christmas. Without the sense of belonging that a home, a community and a sense of place can provide, let alone the basic shelter it can afford, life is always blighted. There are hundreds of thousands of homes empty in this country and we could and should build those needed to ensure everyone has the security people need.

Let’s remember those who live with despair this Christmas. Our society tells people they have and should embrace choice and yet the reality is that many have little or no choice, and for so many reasons have no way they can exercise that choice even if it is available. It is our duty to present a view of life to the world that accords with the reality that people really face and not a myth of a world that makes so many feel inadequate. And we have then to deliver the support those who despair need so that they can live in the world as it really is.

Let’s remember the sick. It’s so easy when well to ignore the demands that sickness makes on those who suffer, and their families. We have a duty to deliver the care the sick need, and the risk is that we will not do so in future. We can make sure we do so.

And let us remember the poor. It is all too easy for many to think we can’t make ends meet. But for some this is an impossibility without going without that which divides them from the world around them, and which imposes real physical and emotional hardship. In a world as wealthy as ours this is unnecessary: there is enough for all.

In 2012 we have a choice. We can choose to help the unemployed, the young, the old, the homeless, those in despair, the sick and the poor. Or we can ignore them and their needs. But let’s never doubt that this is a choice all of us make, wittingly or unwittingly.

It’s my wish that this Christmas more choose to take the action that is possible to relieve distress in our society and those of the societies of this world.

I wish you a happy Christmas whatever the issues you face now and in 2012.

Recreating norms

Ethics 8 Responses »

Dec 222011

This is by Zoe Williams in the Guardian today:

We end this year looking at a lot of wrong crowds – a corporate crowd that avoids tax like crazy, a criminal crowd with new impunity, a banking crowd that thinks of itself as a Calvinist elect, without the self-denial. It’s a huge task of regulating and prosecuting and working to remake the norms, but the alternative – to choose a villain and simply hate them with a passion (mine is Philip Green, thank you for asking) – is just a pantomime: enjoyable, but not very enlightening.

Quite so. We need the new thinking that remakes the norms. My contribution was The Courageous State. And this blog. There will be more next year.

On secrecy and its dangers

Ethics 14 Responses »

Dec 212011

This is extraordinary:

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

It was J F Kennedy in 1961.

He also said:

It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions–by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.

He wasn’t talking of neoliberalism, of course. But he might as well have been for this is the threat we face: the threat the 1% create through the use of tax havens, the media and the instruments of power to oppress.

And yes, we do need that change in outlook, very badly.

Hat tip: Larry Levin

Time for corporation tax returns to go on line

Ethics, HMRC, Tax justice Comments Off

Dec 212011

There’s a fascinating editorial in the FT today. It says:

The need for austerity has forced the government to increase the burden on British taxpayers. At such times, the public must have confidence in the fairness of the tax system. Not only should tax justice be done; it should be seen to be done.

Some of us have said that for some time. Good to see they’ve signed up.

They continue, having reviewed the Parliamentary Accounts Committee report:

While HMRC accepts that it could tighten governance – for instance, dividing the negotiation and separation of settlements, and bringing in an independent assessor to look at deals – there is a case for going further. There are good reasons why everyone should not be able to pick through every individual’s tax returns, but it is weaker in the case of companies (where there is also a greater case for scrutiny given the heftier clout such corporations wield).

Given the complexity of tax, public disclosure of returns may be an ineffective tool. A better way forward might be to require all settlements over a certain threshold to be blessed by a judge before becoming effective. This would preserve flexibility for the taxman, while making sure that the public interest is not left outside the room when deals are cut.

Note they only say that public disclosure of tax returns ‘may be’ an ineffective tool. The possibility that it may also be an effective tool has by default been admitted by the FT as a consequence.

I tweeted that suggestion last night. My friend and colleague Prem Sikka has long argued for it. I think such disclosure a corollary of the right to limited liability – which demands transparency in exchange for the privileges granted.

Without diminishing the suggestion made by the FT of a judge led reviews, I think tax returns on line should happen.

More than that, I think companies should also, as I suggest in the Code of Conduct I have republished today, be required to disclose their tax planning explicitly and all their accounting entries for tax. That would really change the scene, and much for the better. Why so? Because most tax planning is not in the interest of shareholder’s as it misallocates resources within corporations to their detriment. It’s actually designed to trigger executive share bonus schemes – and those are now severely discredited. So the tax planning that drives them should be exposed.

What’s the right word for whistle blowing?

Ethics 25 Responses »

Dec 172011

I retweeted a comment from an associate of mine from many years ago – chartered accountant Richard Morgan @richardDmorgan – yesterday. He said:

@RichardJMurphy. #OsitaMba. Whistleblower – on a par with snitch. New word needed for an honest person with moral compass & conscience.

He’s right. Osita Mba – the HMRC ‘whistleblower’ clearly does not deserve that title. As Osita’s wife said in response:

@RichardJMurphy hear hear! ‘leak’, ‘mole’ also negative words. Make it seem like underhand actions. shouldn’t apply to#whistleblowers

She’s right too.

But maybe it’s just that I’m tired, but I can’t think of a better term as yet.

Any suggestion?

It’s time to do a little more repining

Ethics Comments Off

Dec 142011

This is a little off beat, but excellent, by poet Alice Oswald in the Guardian a couple of days ago on her reasons for withdrawing from the T S Elliott prize of the Poetry Book Society:

I think it’s often assumed that the role of poetry is to comfort, but for me, poetry is the great unsettler. It questions the established order of the mind. It is radical, by which I don’t mean that it is either leftwing or rightwing, but that it works at the roots of thinking. It goes lower than rhetoric, lower than conversation, lower than logic, right down to the very faint honest voice at the bottom of the skull. You can hear that voice in a letter written by the 16th‑century poet Thomas Wyatt to his son: “No doubt in any thing you do, if you ask yourself or examine the thing for yourself afore you do it, you shall find, if it be evil, a repining against it. My son, for our Lord’s love, keep well that repining …”

That is the best instruction you could ever give a poet: whether you’re examining a bad line in a poem or a bad motive for action, keep well your repining – meaning don’t ignore the honest muttering in your head.

We need a great deal more repining, I suggest, if we are to make progress as a society.

Disclosure (although not very relevant): I am a member of te Poetry Book Society and recommend it, even if I share Alice Oswald’s concerns.

Straightforwardly angry

Ethics, HMRC 31 Responses »

Dec 092011

Some things are simply designed to induce anger. The Guardian’s report this morning that H M Revenue & Customs are seeking to sack Osita Mba, the lawyer who whistle blew on the Goldman Sachs deal that has torn the credibility of Dave Hartnett and the senior management of our tax authority apart is one such thing.

Osita Mba has stood up for the rule of law, for accountability, for consistency, for competence and for the duty of the civil service.

Parliament has applauded his courage in doing so.

And HMRC want to sack him.

The wrong man’s under threat.

The Eva Joly Institute

Economics, Ethics 9 Responses »

Nov 302011

Eva Joly is an amazing woman who I am proud to call a friend.

As a result of her work in Iceland after its catastrophic crash in 2008 an institute has been established to develop the ideas of which she is such a powerful proponent. I am pleased to be on the Institute’s Advisory Board with Björk, Helena Kennedy, Edgar Morin, Yoko Ono and Ann Pettifor.

The Institute says of its work:

The world is in transition. The ongoing financial crisis has exposed how large-scale corruption has brought the world to the brink of collapse and threatens the social contract.

In her book, JUSTICE UNDER SIEGE, Eva Joly writes ;

“The nature and size of corruption facing us have no equal in the history of democracy. With the financial globalization of the last 20 years, we have shifted to a whole new dimension. The current large-scale corruption is a radically new phenomenon; it is no longer individual, but systemic and is profoundly undermining our political system.”

The challenges our societies are faced with are on an unprecedented scale. New ideas on how to respond to these challenges are being scrutinized and debated.

The aim of the Eva Joly institute is to help improve and strengthen this debate with an emphasis on:

a better understanding of how widespread and systemic corruption has eroded the social contract

raising awareness of the role of secrecy jurisdictions in facilitating corruption and tax evasion

ways to strengthen openness and transparency in government and in society in general

new ideas in economic thinking that support equality and sustainability

raising awareness of the importance of the role of the individual as an active citizen

According to the French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson, “great political mistakes almost always come from the fact that men forget that reality shifts, that it is in continual movement. Out of ten political mistakes, there are nine which consist of simply believing to be true that which has ceased to be”.

We are at a time where it is more important than ever that we all, as individuals and citizens face “that which has ceased to be” and actively seek new solutions. By her example Eva Joly has shown that we all have, each in our own way, the potential to render the world a little better.

The aim of the institute is to support efforts by individuals, organizations and learning institutions who want to promote these ideas and make them accessible to the general public.

I wish the Institute well. It’s a powerful beacon for good in a country that needs to recover its moral compass and in a world where the principles Eva embodies need to return to mainstream normality.