Jolyon Maugham, a tax barrister whose work I have given occasional mention to on this blog, is seeking to open up his blog for a wider debate of tax policy by bringing in a range of writers to add to the opinions he can offer.
As he has said on this decision in a blog he published today:
I started writing my Waiting for Godot blog with the objective of enhancing public understanding of, and improving the quality of public and political debate around, tax. Hence, the Blog's title. I try to write thoughtful pieces, typically touching upon some tax issue in the public eye.
Jolyon's spot on with regard to the need for such informed debate and I welcome it, a fact he acknowledges by saying:
The tax community as a whole has been very supportive. With its assistance, this blog is frequently able to break stories across the tax technical and legal press. I am particularly grateful for the support of Richard Murphy, whose public position in the field is without parallel, and who has frequently directed his considerable following to blog posts featured here. Richard knows — for his support comes despite the fact that much of the analysis here he would disagree with — the value of the project and of high quality debate.
Jolyon's right: he and I disagree on many things for whilst he is a member of the Labour Party we are very clearly in different places on the left. But, and this is the key point, if this gives rise to serious, policy based discussion rather than crass analysis in support of the status quo or based on myth and not fact (all seen far too often in comments from supposed professionals who should know better on this blog, including today) then I'm very willing to take part, be shot down, take the bruises and then come back for more. That's how issues are resolved and matters properly taken forward.
My own first contribution is, I think, out tomorrow and made me think during the course of its writing. That's no bad thing. So, I'd like this policy Jolyon is promoting to work - but it does rely very heavily on his ability to edit appropriately and to keep commentary to the straight and narrow, which by necessity means keeping the trolls at a distance.
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what’s your definition of a troll?
You and your friends on twitter are for this purpose my definition of a troll
Offering bland, repetitive, ad hominem comment without an argument to sustain it, always in pursuit of an ideology and never based on the reality of what happens on the ground, and throughout it all offering distain towards anyone who does not subscribe to your belief system for that reason alone
Hmm. So…you’re not driven by your own ideology?
I make it clear I have ethical beliefs
I also listen to others
As Jolyon Maugham makes very clear that I do
That listening bit is what you do not comprehend
You might start a conversation with Jolyon about the activities of a certain group of tax barristers who are responsible for a good deal of current aggressive tax avoidance.
No one is doing more to tackle that thanJolyon – who has had the courage to talk about it
Christian charity, as ever, is in short supply from the critics, Richard. It would be uncharitable of me to wish on them a single day of experiencing what it feels like to be a multiply disabled & chronically sick person reliant solely on State benefits for his or her income, and living in social housing – maybe wondering whether or not the DWP is going to stop those benefits, or whether one is going to be evicted from one’s home.
Hundreds of thousands of people in this country (the 6th richest in the world) now depend on Food Banks. That is obscene, when there are a handful of millionaires and billionaires living in the same country. Yet the plight of the poor, the sick, the disabled, the elderly, is treated almost as if it were a joke, and in many cases as if it were the fault of the people concerned, and not of our society, and of its unjust socio-economic systems and structures. One very important aspect of that is our taxation system, where the rich are not taxed as they should be, and where businesses, and the profits of those businesses, are not taxed as they should be. Redistribution from the wealthy to the poor is now treated as an evil, rather than a good, which is what it is. Such has been the triumph of the Thatcherite neoliberal philosophy, not only here, but throughout the entire Western world. The result has been untold misery and suffering for countless millions of people across the whole planet. That suffering will only end when neoliberalism is finally defeated – as it will be.
You are right
All things pass
It’s just when, at what cost
I wonder who it is that ‘disliked’ that comment, and why. Who are these dedicated neoliberals? Let them show their faces – let them justify their neoliberalism to the people queueing at the Food Banks, or the disabled people wondering how they are going to survive now that their benefits have been stopped. Recently, a man suffering from severe epilepsy (10 grand mal seizures a day) was found ‘fit for work’ by Atos. He appealed, but his benefits were stopped in the meantime. He became so depressed, he hanged himself. Yet more innocent blood on the hands of Iain Duncan Smith. So go on, neoliberals, justify that!
Some seem to place no value on others lives
I find that very sad
I see the ‘dislikers’ are out in force. We’ve obviously upset them, Richard. That is good! When they’re upset, we know we’ve hit them where it hurts (well it really hurts them when we hit them in the bank account!), but in the conscience is what I mean. Yes, I _do_ think that some of them, at least, actually have one, even though they’ve been keeping it repressed for years. Maybe there’s hope for them after all, and salvation is possible. ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.’
I tend to ignore them
By and large that button that’s all that’s left to those whose comments I delete
Does Jolyon agree to the current movement that barristers take personal
financial liability for tax schemes that are deemed not workable by HMRC ?
He proposed it