Why David Cameron is no better than Jimmy Carr when it comes to tax avoidance

By Dark Politricks

This week David Cameron ripped shreds out of one of the UK's premier comedians, Jimmy Carr.

He did so for his use of a tax avoidance scheme in which in a convoluted and obviously offshore manner, Jimmy Carr's wages were given back to him as a "loan" that supposedly could be called in for repayment at anytime and therefore he ended up paying 1% tax on his multi million pound salary.

Now I don't like tax avoidance schemes but they are currently legal and Jimmy took it on the chin when he appeared on 8 out of 10 cats and he admitted being in the wrong, took the heckling on the chin, closed the scheme down instantly and apologised like a man.

If only some of our politicians could act so swiftly and graciously when caught with their trousers down or in an expenses scandal.

I like Jimmy Carr, I have seen him live at the Hammersmith Apollo as well as owning some of his DVD's. This means that my money spent on tickets and films has gone through this offshore scheme without tax being paid to the UK exchequer. It is wrong.

However what is even worse is the fact that David Cameron could close these tax avoidance schemes down in a minute if he really wanted to and the only reason he doesn't it that it would affect many of his rich Tory donors and fund raisers.

For a millionaire PM, sitting on a millionaires front bench, many of which who are linked to companies who engage in legal tax avoidance schemes is a bit rich.

When companies like Vodafone can get away without paying any UK tax at all and the reduction in corporation tax has seen a huge transfer of wealth as those with means choose to take their wages in other means that are taxed far less than income tax.

We still haven't dug ourselves out the hole that we were left in by Labour and the global downfall started in the US, spread to Europe and now hitting average earners in the pocket right now.

I have lost count recently of the number of petrol stations that have been shut for no apparent reason (just saw a big one a minute ago) and cash machines that don't have money in them (saw two this weekend) and for some reason I feel like something bad is just around the corner - maybe an unscheduled bank holiday?

Whilst tax avoidance schemes are currently legal they don't have to be and in these times of austerity we should be doing all of the following:

• Simplifying the tax code so lawyers have less room for manoeuvre in bypassing loopholes.
• Making sure any large company who wants to sell their good in one of the largest markets in the world has to set up a UK company in which all goods sold are taxed and given to the UK exchequer.
• Closing loopholes with a general law that states that any scheme designed to minimise the amount of tax paid by a company over a certain percentage is deemed as illegal tax evasion.

There is no difference in my mind between benefit cheats and tax avoiding millionaire Tory funders and big corporations. It's just that our mainly right wing UK press like to target the poor for some reason.

Jimmy took it on the chin and I will continue to find him funny but what I don't find funny is the hypocritical nature of people who attack greedy tax avoiders and then engage in the same acts themselves.

What is right and wrong and does it matter who is in the White House?

Does it even matter who is President of the USA anymore?

By Dark Politricks

This a pop quiz to see if you are a free thinker who chooses your morals and behaviour independently of whether "your guy" is in the White House or someone who sees right and wrong whichever side of the coin is in power.

1. Are you someone who is attacking Obama's expansion of the war on terror. His increase in drone strikes and failure to close Gitmo. The  killing by Presidential decree and implementation of civil liberty destroying measures such as increased Internet Spying and the implementation of the NDAA?

2. Were you doing the same when George Bush was implementing the PATRIOT ACT and using warrant-less phone hacking. Allowing his Vice President to have a personal execution team to take out enemies of the state and using extraordinary rendition and torture to gain information from prisoners who were mostly innocent people sold to the Americans by the Afghan warlords. 

Were you decrying  the implementation of drone attacks which de-link the close up smell and emotion of a killing from the deed turning it to nothing more than a real life video game? Did your protests stop when a Democrat "you could believe in" entered the White House and then carried on the Bush policies?

3. Are you someone supporting the Occupy Wall St's desire to have real banking reform, stop bailouts of casino banks that waste billions on bets or "hedges" like JP Morgans's recent London Whale and want to close the disparity between the top 1% and the rest of America. 

Do you mind that during the worst depression of our lifetime the wages of those in the top percent of the country have increased by staggering amounts whereas the lowering, devaluing dollar that means lower and middle class families are seeing real price increases, inflation and lowering living standards?

4. Were you supportive of the original Tea Party and Ron Paul when they were making some of the same claims. Did you change your support of economic policy when Bush left and Obama entered the White House. Do you think it matters who sleeps in the White House bed when the FED can print money, loan out billions to foreign and domestic banks on a whim and devalue the dollar in your pocket without any political oversight?

5. Is it moral or ethical to kill an American citizen without any judicial process even if they are not in America at the time of the killing?

6. What about if they were in America? Should the President be able to sign your death warrant like an English King without your knowledge and without any recourse to  court?

7. Is it okay to kill a Jihadist in Pakistan by drone attack because a CIA agent "thinks" they have the right person in Langley, Virginia?

8. Is it still okay if 50 innocent Pakistani villagers, woman and children are also killed at the same time?

9. What about a thousand people? What number is a legitimate figure for "collateral damage" in these kinds of attacks?

10. What if you later find out that the Jihadist wasn't killed at all and it was a case of mistaken identity. Was the attack still justified? What recourse should the families of the dead victims have against the American government who is supposedly not at war with Pakistan?

11. If a gang of burglars broke into your house in the middle of the night, shot your dog dead, beat you with sticks and de-humanised you in front of your family. Should you have the right to fight back, to kill if necessary to protect your family and possessions?

12. What if the gang wore SWAT uniforms and were following a false tip phoned in by a jealous neighbour or they thought you were smoking marijuana. Should the fact that the state is the gang of thugs killing your pets and beating you make any difference to your right to defend your family and your property?

13. Do you think Obama is bankrupting the country by increasing national debt?

13. What about President Bush or President Reagan? Does your perspective of national debt change depending on whether you are a Republican or Democrat or is debt, debt no matter who is President? Both Bush and Reagan increased the national debt by huge amounts - what is the difference between  a Republican increasing debt and a Democrat?

14. Do you think Obama wants to turn your country into socialist Cuba by having a health policy that actually allows poor people or those with existing conditions to get affordable health care?

15. What would you do if you lost your job due to a bank bailout and a house repossession caused by policies enacted under George W Bush and you couldn't afford your health insurance?

16. What would you do if you broke your leg or had a serious disease. How would you treat your condition? Would you use the most expensive health care system in the world by turning up at your local Hospital Emergency department?

17. Do you think that a healthy work force is a productive one? Or should people born into poor families through no fault of their own be left to suffer and die due to lack of money?

18. Do you think war should be decided by Presidential decree alone or that Congress should vote on every decision that sends peoples children into harms way? Should Congress vote according to their conscience or their parties line on the matter?

19. Do you agree with the wars in Iraq and Libya. Were you against the war in Iraq when Bush was President and for the war in Libya when Obama was? Why was  that?

20. Do you want your country to turn into a modern day Police state where all communications are listened to, automatically filtered and then decisions about whether you can leave and enter the country or travel by plane decided by a text message or email?

21. Should the TSA be able to touch your wife's breasts and touch your children's bodies all in the name of protecting the homeland from terrorists disguised as 4 year old white boys and 80 year old grannies?

22. Should people be able to speak out about government abuses, criminal acts and actions that break international law if they feel that the people have a right to know? Does the law apply to everyone or just the serfs and not the landowners?

23. Should these whistle blowers be punished for breaking "secrets act" laws or praised for following their conscience?

24. Should the American government force private companies to stop trading with people and organisations that try to bring the truth to the people. Knowledge and misdeeds that your government would rather you didn't know about such as the illegal bugging of UN dignitaries or the massacre of innocent people in a war zone?

25. Do you want to live in a world where it is increasingly hard to tell the difference between your once free country and a banana dictatorship that kills opponents on a whim, uses torture and prison without trial, prints money to cause inflation and goes to war to distract the people from real problems at home?

26. Do you really think that by electing Mitt Romney as the next US President anything will really change?

27. If Mitt Romney is elected will he stop the companies he has spent his life "restructuring" from sending their jobs to cheaper market places like China or India or will he protect American jobs at all costs?

28. Will Romney stop the FED printing money and will the government never raise the national debt under his presidency?

29. Do you think that he will stop or expand the war on terror and increase it more to the homeland by naming US Citizens as domestic terrorists. Do you think you are on one of the government watch-lists right now?

30. What can you do about it?

By Dark Politricks

© 2012 Dark Politricks

The end of the new German Empire in Europe?

By Dark Politricks

It was amazing to see both UKIP leader Nigel Farage and ex Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone both agree about the EU this morning on Sky News.

Both agreed that the terrible state Euope is now in is due to the following reasons:

1. After World War II the idea was to create a United States of Europe. The people of Europe were never to be told of this plan.
2.  Southern States, Greece, Spain, Italy etc should never have been allowed to join the euro as their economies were too out of sync with each other.
3. Bail out after bail out for Spain, Greece, Ireland and Italy soon etc is only going to lead to decades of youth unemployment, riots on streets, and a lost decade of growth. It is better to have an orderly breakup of the Euro now than a disorderly one later. Pain is coming whatever happens therefore it is better to get it out the way now.
4. The UK was right to not join the Euro.
5. The UK should have a referendum and the one they were given on joining the "trading block" that the European Common Market was back then - was really a politicians blag to get us to sign up to a United States of Europe.
6. The EU should return to a common market and nothing more. People calling for more integration are still pushing for a United States of Europe have no care about the pain the people of Europe are suffering and will suffer if they continue with their dream.

It is interesting to see both right and left wing agree on this matter and it only confirms what many "conspiracy theorists" have been saying for decades.

The Euopean plan was to create a United States of Europe to prevent Germany becoming too strong and controlling Europe again.

It is laughable to see that the road to European statehood has in fact now led to Germnay basically calling the shots and some are joking that Germany won the war in the end anyway - just 60 years after the end of the shelling of Berlin.

Even George Soros said recently

"Europe is likely to become "a German empire ... it would be a German empire with the periphery as the hinterland,"

The Globalists are desperate to prop up the Euro and not let this political dream fail but they are ignoring the citizens of their countries who are demanding growth, jobs and help not tax, cuts to services and diktats from foreign parliaments.

The Germans are determined to do it their way through austerity and tight spending limits even though they were one of the first countries to break these tight guidelines in the first place.

The Greeks resent the Germans telling them what to spend their money on, asking to control their economy by seeing spending plans first and demanding auesterity and tax all the while refusing to let the European Bank become lender of last resort.

The Greeks are rioting, the Spannish are rioting how long until the Italians join them?

Some people have been seeing this coming for years and it is nice to finally realise that politicians from both sides of the political dividie in this country can now admit that the Euro has failed.

It needs to be dismantled as orderly as possible otherwise it could end up in rioting and even war if we leave it to rot and decay by pushing bailout and debt on top of more debt.

We should have stuck with a free trade and maybe free movement of people treaty instead of this push by politicians against their citizens wishes to something that would never work, would ultimatley fail and is doing so right at this very moment.

Hopefully the Germans can kick Angela Merkel out of power and then put this dream of a United States of Europe to bed once and for all.It is going to happen whether she wants it to or not - let us not have another war in Europe due to political hubris.

Why I'm not celebrating the Queens Diamond Jubilee

By Dark Politricks

Whilst seemingly everyone else in the UK is out in the pouring rain celebrating the Queens Diamond Jubilee today I thought to myself - "why is that there are no anti-royalist protests going on anywhere in London."

Believe it or not Americans, but not everyone in the UK is a royalist who loves nothing more than drinking tea out of a Union Jack mug and standing to attention to the words of "God Save the Queen".

In fact most of those that are not over the age of 40 and do support the Queen and Royalty in general probably do so for the reason of tourism money from overseas tourists eager to photograph Buckingham Palace and watch the pageantry of the Changing of the Guard and other historical anomalies.

Well if you love pageantry so much then you should watch more North Korean Soviet style marching and intricate coloured panel shuffling. That kind of split second timing, probably with the threat of no food for the year as punishment for a wrong move. Now that is pageantry worth watching.

I don't get tickled watching the Queen wave forever as boat after boat of every kind passes her on the Thames.

Every country in the commonwealth will have some kind of tribal dance, song, or gift of their culture to bring to their ex colonial rulers.

Why they choose to keep the Queen as head of their state is their decision but in my eyes a free country should be able to pick their "ultimate leader" not bestow it to a family who can trace their routes back to olden day Kings who robbed, stole and murdered their way to the top.

I suppose most republicans like myself just don't care enough to stand and shout in the rain at a line of militarised police thugs phasers set to stun as the Queen, the person who "is the law of the land" takes my taxes and lives in luxury. Not when I can watch TV, surf the net and happily succumb to monitoring by the establishment at every level.

Whilst tourism money is a good thing in these days of austerity, it is NOT a good enough reason to allow one particular family who through luck of birth alone can lord it above us - no matter how nice they are as people 0r how cute a bum the future Kings wive's sister might have.

I have even had the Queen walk past me (whilst snipers laid on the roof of Buckingham Palace) at one of the many garden parties she hosts every summer.

Obviously it wasn't me who was invited to the formal event but my mother who had won the "honour" of bringing her family due to her brilliance at turning a failing school around so that it won the top Ofsted awards 3 times in a row - a feat that not many other head teachers accomplish.

So whilst I don't believe the Queen is a baby killing reptillian who has to drink human blood to keep her shape like some do. I do on a rational and logical level feel that everyone in our country should be equal under the eyes of the law no matter who they are born to.

If anyone thinks we live in a meritocracy then think again quickly.

If the Queen was walking her pack of corgis around one of her many tax payer funded palaces one day and they turned and mauled the gardener to death do you really think you would read about it in the papers?

Would the Queen ever be arrested and face her day in court?

Of course not because she IS THE LAW.

When you stand in the dock you are facing charges laid out by the Crown and when you are in a Crown Court facing the possibility of spending years in jail at "her majesties pleasure" then you should realise that all that mention of the "Crown" is not for pageantry sake.

No the Queen IS the Crown and she IS the law.

Therefore it is a logical impossibility in this land of ours that she would ever put a crown case against herself.

Crown versus the Crown.

Nope never going to happen no matter how unlikely the scenario.

Until the day I know that the person who has the privilege of leading our land is no more or less important than everyone else., including a poor baby born in a Hackney council estate to a single parent. A child with the same life chances to be educated,  succeed and maybe one day replace the current leader then I will firmly be in the Republican camp.

Let the suckers stand in the rain and spend their day waving their rain soaked clothes at a woman who is only celebrating her Diamond jubilee because we as a people are too lethargic to form a proper Republican party that has true meritocracy at the heart of it.

The Queen is dead - Long Live the Queen