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tomcasagranda
The thing is that what Jimmy Carr has done, is what any person with any nous would have done, acting on advice of his/her accountants. An accountant is paid to limit the tax liabilities that a person has, or may incur.
If Jimmy Carr, Mick Jagger, et al, turn over enough money that their accountant encourages them to place funds, or assets, in a tax avoidance scheme, which is what the accountant, should do, then it isn't morally repugnant. If Jimmy Carr, or any rich person, decided to evade, not avoid, tax, then that would be morally repugnant.
I wonder what would happen if the accountants that encouraged Jimmy Carr were, themselves, old Etonians, or members of the Bullingdon Club ? Would David Cameron feel them to be "morally repugnant" ?
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Ket
It is that the loopholes are legal that should outrage everybody not the people that use them. I am very sceptical that Cameron and co have the will to close them down as that would limit the amount of contributions to the conservative party.
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tomcasagranda
What is causing problems is that the UK tax system has become monumentally complex, monumentally unwieldy, and is no longer fit for purpose.

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tomcasagranda
Another thing: Cameron seems to have gotten a tad confused between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Out of the two, "evasion" is, to correctly state, "Morally repugnant", avoidance, however, isn't.
What is causing problems is that the UK tax system has become monumentally complex, monumentally unwieldy, and is no longer fit for purpose. The tax code book, in its entirety, spans nearly 700 pages, and would take longer to read than Ulysses and Underworld (Don DeLillo), and is far more complex than either.
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tomcasagranda
I don't know about that:
Consider the following:
A pointless war about oil reserves in the North Atlantic, i.e. The Falklands in 1982.
Black Wednesday
Sleaze and the Back To Basics campaign: hypocritical when you are making the beast with two backs with Edwina Curry.
I could go on.
The above scandals all happened under the Conservative Party.
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EddieByword
Probaly not..........treacherous waters for a PM slagging off the Queen's knights...............
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Gazza
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EddieByword
Probaly not..........treacherous waters for a PM slagging off the Queen's knights...............
how the hell is it - considering a 'knighthood' is granted by the government and (as you well know) a knight gets no special treatment compared to anyone else.
Ask (the former 'Sir' )Lester Piggott...
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tomcasagranda
EddieByword,
the guy that Kenneth Noye murdered happened to be a small scale drug-dealer. I think the police were looking to eventually find Noye guilty of something.
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tomcasagranda
EddieByword,
People labour under the misapprehension that freemasonry means that a nod and wink in the right direction would get your off a parking fine, or murder. Quite honestly, it doesn't work like that. Freemasonry is a charitable organisation, the second biggest after Oxfam, and exists to make good men even better: Noye just happened to be a rotten apple in the barrel.
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EddieByword
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Gazza
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EddieByword
Probaly not..........treacherous waters for a PM slagging off the Queen's knights...............
how the hell is it - considering a 'knighthood' is granted by the government and (as you well know) a knight gets no special treatment compared to anyone else.
Ask (the former 'Sir' )Lester Piggott...
I didn't know he was a Sir.....according to wikipedia he only had the OBE .... [en.wikipedia.org] ...which doesn't get you called 'Sir'..........and according to this site he only had a very high chance of becoming a Sir.........[www.buckinghamcovers.com] .....before his conviction.......
There's obviously a huge difference in advised etiquette between a PM shooting his mouth off about a Knight's morals (with no proven crime committed) and irritatingly embarrasing the monarchy in the process and some guy with an OBE being banged to rights on a serious tax fraud for which as you pointed out in addition he did also lose his award (serious embarrasment)(although it doesn't look like it was a 'Sir' award).
We've 'talked' before about this (preferential treatment stuff) Gazza - you don't accept the reality & relevence of the input of Freemasonry and the protection that comes with that so not much point in going through it again............
I know as you say the Goverment decide who gets chosen but in reality it is the reputation of the monarchy that suffers when things go wrong, so if he (PM) was so foolish as to attack any 'awarded' person's reputation willy-nilly I'd bet anything he'd soon get a phonecall.......
Just for clarity's sake though I am aware it is not by any means limitless, as that freemason guy Kenneth Noye who 'road rage' murdered that kid on the motorway roundabout bridge in Kent found out. (He went in the police station (according to a policeman at the trial) and did the secret handshake etc but was told he was "out of luck " with this one................