YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!

Did you read my post of 24 August, A Letter to David Cameron? Well, you should have. You might like to move your cursor to the column on the left, locate the post of that date and click to read what I said to our Prime Minister.

If you are too idle to do that – and most of you are quite clearly – I will summarise; I said that the Government should make it absolutely clear to all that from now on no-one gets any kind of Honour unless they have an unblemished record with the tax man. We do appear to have a pretty desperate financial situation in this country and if people paid the tax they oughter pay then it would help. People who find clever dodges to avoid paying tax should go on a covert ‘black list’ maintained by HMRC (tax people to you). If you are on this list then no bloody Knighthood, or MBE or OBE or any other kind of pat on the head for you.

Now I was far too kind to mention the name of Sir Philip Green who, with his domestic arrangements abroad apparently enabling him to avoid paying very much tax, was actually very much in my mind as I wrote. I did suggest that Honours could be removed from people who held them if it is believed by HMRC that their tax affairs are, how shall I put it? Dodgy is how I shall put it. Sir Phillip has been appointed a government advisor and I suppose I was thinking, at the back of my mind, that the scales of justice might well carry all the money he hasn’t paid when he jolly well should have, in one pan, and the Knighthood and the appointment as a government advisor in the other. Look, Phil, you’re a clever old bugger and you could do us all a lot of good if you just did the honourable thing and cough up. And you’d feel much better about it. You know you would. A weight off your shoulders. I didn’t mention his name because I thought it might embarrass him and it was better for him to read what I’d said and for the ‘if the cap fits wear it’ notion to make him do something about it off his own bat.

Why do I mention all this now, today. Well, in today’s Times there is an article telling us that Mr Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat, The Energy and Climate Change Secretary, believes that it is “not appropriate” for the Queen to give awards to wealthy businessmen who avoid paying tax in this country. “It is just as morally wrong to avoid tax as it is to claim benefits fraudulently” he said in an interview, published today. Unlike me Mr Huhne doesn’t favour the subtle approach and goes on to name a name, “Philip Green could clearly, if he were to arrange his tax affairs in a different manner and spend rather more time in the country be paying rather a lot more tax.”

Be very careful Sir Phillip. D’you see that Huhne has already knocked the Sir off your title? I’d give in if I were you.

And Mr Huhne. The very least you could do is sign up as a Follower of my blog and give me a bit of credit.

And you, dear readers, mouse your way over to the left and read that post of August 24. My thoughts, expressed there, run deeper and broader than Mr Huhne’s. Sorry Chris but them’s the facts.