I have been called many things in my time, but this one was new, in Ouest-France yesterday:
l'économiste britannique Richard Murphy, combattant historique de l'évasion fiscale
How do I feel about being 'a historical fighter against tax evasion'? I didn't know I was that old.
But in a campaigning world where it seems that very few know how to do almost anything without asking the consent of a focus group then I am happy to be described as such.
The idea that a focus group might have good ideas when no one has had the courage to put them out there first of all is absurd.
The world is not changed by asking for consent. It is always changed by those who refuse to give their consent to what the consensus might be.
I do not give my consent to tax abuse.
Nor do I accept the inequality that the world now witnesses.
And the apparent poverty of thinking in the face of the challenges the world faces profoundly worries me.
If that makes me a combattant, historique or otherwise, so be it.
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“O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!“
Historic perhaps. Not quite historical yet I hope.
🙂
.’.combattant historique et actuel’
🙂
I think the correct translation of “historique” is “famous” (at least in this context).
OK….
A note of caution about directly translating “évasion fiscale” as “tax evasion”. There are similar definitional arguments in French about how to describe different sorts of behaviour that is legal or illegal, and the boundaries between “fraude fiscale”, “évasion fiscale”, “évitement fiscal” and “optimisation fiscale” are not necessarily the same as in English. For example, “évasion” is flexible enough to cover any behaviour that reduces the tax a person pays in a much broader manner than “evasion” in the UK,
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vasion_fiscale quotes your work in a similar manner to the English language equivalent, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_noncompliance
The term “paradis fiscal” is a bit more evocative than “tax haven”.
I like to see you get recognition for your hard work, intellectual rigor, campaigning stamina, humanism etc.
However, I’m not sure I can visualise you in a Breton top, a beret and chain smoking Gauloises just yet!!
Yet….
Don’t forget histoire also means a ‘story’ in French (both words are clearly the same root).
So I would translate historique as ‘long standing’.
IE you started the ‘histoire’ and are still there.
Suggests Ouest France did their research….
And this shows my limited French….