Simon's Blog

So we are at the end of a shocking week when we found out that some very dodgy characters did some very dodgy things to try and hide their possibly ill gotten gains.   And whilst this has made a lot of people feel very satisfied with themselves it hasn’t really stopped the world going around.  Here in the UK a number of papers have tried to be all high and mighty about the fact that the current Prime Minister has benefited from the providence of his rich father who took legal steps to ensure that the tax he paid was at a minimum.  The reality is that the only things that they have been able to prove is that we now know that the Prime Minister is a rich man, which few doubted in the first place.  All the hot air and froth has no substance to it because their is no evidence that Cameron’s father did anything illegal and their certainly isn’t any evidence that David Cameron has done anything illegal either.

Perhaps the good thing that has come out of this is that there is going to be more openness at the top levels of government as to just how rich Ministers and Prime Ministers are and this is information that we, the voters, should have so that we can properly judge just how important certain decisions may be to a potential Prime Minister.  Of course it doesn’t get away from the feeling a lot of people have that we are all being conned by the rich and I suspect there is a certain amount of truth to that.  But before we, who don’t have enough money to benefit from very expensive advice, get angry about things take a listen to the Bottom Line podcast about tax avoidance and then ask yourself if you agree with the Dutch tax lawyer right at the end?

None of us really like paying taxes and before we start shouting at the rich and famous we should ask ourselves how many times we may not have paid the full amount of tax on something or another.   As Jesus said… he who is without sin cast the first stone… John 8:7.   I am not saying that tax evasion is right, it is not and the people who do it should be punished, especially the professionals who come up with these schemes in the first place.  It is just that these things are now so complicated, usually due to some government attempt to distort something or another, probably for the right reasons but end up with the wrong result.  The road to hell apparently is not only plastered with cliches but is paved with good intentions.

Now as to the specific case of David Cameron we have all enjoyed seeing him be put under pressure but the real result of all this is that no matter what happens in the referendum in June he will be most likely gone by the end of the year.  Whether that is a good thing or not is another matter but whilst contemplating that  just ask yourself who will replace him? When you do that suddenly enjoying Cameron being under the cosh may not seem so much fun.  Boris Johnson certainly has a much more (how can one put it?) strained relationship with the truth than David Cameron ever has.  Still we’ll probably be suffering from a huge amount of buyers remorse by the end of the year to worry too much about who the hell the Prime Minister is anyway.

So there is a first, a blog entry sort of defending David Cameron…I never thought that day would arrive but as they say…events dear boy events.