Some may have noticed the blog has been a little quiet this week. Well, even we bloggers have to take holiday's sometimes. The world has gone on turning whilst I've been away though.

Amongst the issues of note has been the charging of four Ernst & Young partners in the USA with tax fraud conspiracy. I know some will argue that this is history. I don't. So far I see no evidence that any large firm has backed off from offshore as a result of what happened in the late 90's and early years of this century. And no professional institute has yet said 'don't do shelters because they're unethical'.

The result? The amount of cash offshore is steadily rising. This is a live, ongoing issue. And the Big 4 are still leading the way. They are still the biggest offshore players, as our survey shows. As such I think they're probably the biggest threat to democracy from within the western world right now because deliberately subverting the revenue of an elected government by diverting income to another territory is denying the life blood that allows the democratic mandate to be fulfilled. But that's what these firms do, as far as I can see more than any other single group does. Why else are they in the offshore finance centres and not in the Isle of Wight?