a taxing issue
You did it! No, you did it. It’s your fault. No, it’s your fault! No, you made me do it.
We see and hear this exchange every Wednesday lunchtime during Prime Minister’s questions where the only element that appears to change is the subject. The spectacle of Dodgy Dave and Dead Ed attempting to make this week’s subject, tax avoidance & evasion, the other one’s fault is so sensationally petty and misguided that it has all the reality of a ‘Real House-Husbands of Westminster’ catfight. Two naughty career politicians managing to trivialise a vital and absolutely fundamental social issue, turning it into a juvenile, high school slanging match.
I’m sure I speak for a portion of the electorate, perhaps even a majority, when I say it was both their faults, and their predecessors before them. As was always. The collusion of this generation’s political elite with the financial ‘masters of the universe’ is obscene and corrupt but whilst we continue to allow the revolving door between ‘public service’ and corporate life, nothing, and I repeat nothing, will change. And if you need further evidence, we only need to listen to former Tory treasurer, Lord Fink who explained of his recent spat with Mr Millibean “I didn’t object to his use of the word ‘tax avoidance’, because you are right: tax avoidance, everybody does it.”
