For a long now I have been deeply uncomfortable with the level of news reporting that we are subjected to these days. On a fundamental level I disagree with the concept of 24 hour news channels because they constantly regurgitate news events and repeat what was said only a short time previously. When something news worthy does break, there is such a rush and scramble to be the first there with the news and accuracy of often the first casualty.
I am old enough to remember a time when TV news was restricted to scheduled news bulletins and if a story is still breaking at the time the reporting on it would simply be that ‘we are getting reports of …’ and then there would be a promise of facts when they arrived. On rare occasions there would be an interruption of a broadcast programme for some really big news. In all cases, there was a confidence that the news organisation in question had put effort into facts first.
These days, there is such a scramble for being first with something new and almost any old thing will do and this past week we have seen news in the UK that has made me feel sick and angry. It’s the story of a soldier, killed by extremists in broad daylight. It was a disgusting act, committed in front of people by a pair of radicalised individuals.
Early reports were confused, who was wearing what, who was shouting what, was it a soldier, was he dead, was he run over by a car first, were the perpetrators on the loose or in the area, were they Muslim, were they British. Gone are the days when important information is gathered first and then reported, the attitude now is that being first with the report is all that matters, facts can be corrected later. Mobile phone footage, no matter how disturbing, is show in the absence of a news crew and members of the public are interviewed in absence of a reporter with facts. That’s not to say that there aren’t times when the public have something valuable to contribute.
There will always be something intelligent and considered opinions of value from members of the public, what is important is that what is shown on the news is worthy of being shown on the news and all too often this is not the case. This takes me back to my original point of why 24 hour news channels are a bad thing, quality comment and reporting is sacrificed in the name of something different. Personally I’d rather the news channels just stopped reporting for an hour or two because that is far preferable to repeating old news items and incorrectly reporting on breaking news.
Wall to wall stories.
The issues I have with 24 hours news reporting become even more apparent when there is a significant story, like that which happened in Woolwich this week. The news programmes will constantly show the same clips, the more dramatic the better and you don’t get much more dramatic that a man standing in the street with bloodied hands, brandishing a knife and shouting threats about never being safe. It is sickening and, despite my mature years, it really is not something I wish to see on my TV screen and certainly not repeated several time in a half hour period.
Because of the connected world we now live in, news of this sort of thing very quickly travels through social media and this is where news organisations really do have a responsibility to the public. Incorrectly reported facts very quickly get repeated around the world and later corrections don’t follow with the same enthusiasm. When challenged on this, the typical response from a news organisation will be along the lines of “this is a very fluid situation and a breaking story of high public interest so it is important that we let the public know what is happening and sometimes we will get it wrong and will always put a correction later”. Frankly, this is a lazy cop out and news organisations should put extra effort into accuracy when it is such a big story. More than that, they have a responsibility to consider public response.
In this specific case there was footage of a man, having recently murdered, spouting a message of hate and in the background can be seen the body of a dead human, while members of the public mill about. It was not pleasant and certainly does not belong on general broadcast. The facts will suffice, the pictures are not required. This isn’t a case of me being prudish; it is much bigger than that.
In this age of almost constant terror reports, this sort of event simply adds to the tension and hatred of those who would seek reprisals. In this country there is a growing feeling of resentment towards immigrants and religious extremists. Often there is little distinction drawn between the two groups. Events like the killing of Lee Rigby only serve to fuel those feelings and when a news organisation blanket reports on the horrific nature of the crime and shows deeply insensitive images and video those feelings get magnified. It is hardly a surprise that social media sites were flooded with highly charged rhetoric.
My criticism of news reporting is not just of this event, it is a problem that has existed for a long time and each time I see how the events are reported and see how people respond to the events I wonder if maybe this time the reporters will see that they are actually contributing to the problem. Each time I wish that they would tone down the nature of their reports and give more attention to other stories.
Each time I am disappointed and I am left convinced that the reporting of terrible news is actively contributing to the problem of extremism in the world today.
Report on it less and fewer people will know about it and fewer people will wish to take revenge or even replicate and maybe, just maybe, there will be a little less hate and a little more hope.
Related articles
- Does Breaking News & Crime Coverage on local news channels make you sick? (erumsuchistan.wordpress.com)
- Before You Break Into Breaking News (inkhouse.net)
- Woolwich images divide newspaper readers (themediablog.co.uk)
- Top News: Woolwich terror attack – reaction and latest developments (guardian.co.uk)
Sometime last year, following the death of my wife’s laptop (https://vteclimey.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/samsung-r700/) we purchased the then latest iPad hoping that for half the price of a high spec laptop it would provide most of the functions we were used to.
First look
Initial ownership of the iPad was rewarding. It is easy to handle and the touch screen is responsive and accurate. There are a whole host of apps available, mostly entertainment related. Sitting on sofa casually browsing the web or emailing friends while watching TV is panacea that marketing departments and iPad fans will no doubt like to promote, however that didn’t translate in reality.
Typing on the iPad is not a casual experience and if you want to avoid having your arm in an awkward position and a twisted back, you will need to sit properly. Reading The Times app or a news website is one thing, but composing emails and blog posts is not as easy or as comfortable as using a real computer.
Being Used
My daughter was very keen to play games on it and was initially absorbed in games on it, both apps and websites. The latter being where serious problems started. Many kid friendly websites utilise Adobe Flash and my daughter, having been used to them on the laptop naturally wanted to continue to enjoy them. Game apps also became very boring too. Handing the iPad as a movement controller was too awkward for her because she is young and the iPad soon gets heavy. Also touching the screen for game control requires having it on a surface and so the locations she can play on it are limited.
It wasn’t long before the iPad would never leave the kitchen and would be used mainly for email, reading The Times and updating Facebook. There would be occasional times where creating document content, such as presentations or displaying images. These would not be without their frustrations though as the iPad will not view remote content on a PC and nor can it view digital RAW photos from a dSLR. Transferring photos to the iPad for display required multiple steps and was therefore only done when there was no other option. Creating presentations on a touch screen device is possible but not intuitive and not easy, so tend to take three times longer than on a PC.
Simple tasks also became a frustration, like saving and opening PDF files for the purpose of using them as a script for a presenter. This was one area where it was hoped the iPad would excel over a PC and frankly the frustrations that would often result meant that printouts are far simpler and the iPad just isn’t worth the hassle.
Conclusion
Nice though the iPad is, it’s useful functions are limited and as a device to create and consume content it simply can’t match the flexibility and a real computer. As a casual browsing device for reading and playing it works, but not at a price that exceeds £400! It simply is not worth it at that price.
So, its gone on ebay this week and good riddance I say.
Related articles
- Tablets buying guide (reviews.cnet.com)
Not long ago America suffered yet another tragedy in the form of a shooting at a school. I’ve not checked, but it seems like this sort of event now happens every couple of years in this land of the free.
This latest tragedy, at Sandy Hook, seems to be the worst ever because of the ages of the children involved and the numbers killed. The other highly publicised school shootings, the relatively young and troubled perpetrator seems to be a common theme among this form of shooting.
Personally, I am glad to see that at last America seems to be taking a more serious look at its gun control measures. Of course the issues behind this kind of event are far more complex than a simple gun control law. However, I struggle to see how there is any justification at all for Americans (or any other nationality for that matter) to have automatic weapons in their homes. I can’t conceive of any situation where an automatic weapon in a domestic residence can be seen as a good thing. This kind of gun is a military assault weapon; it does not belong in a home and should never be there.
I really do hope that this time the powers that be in the American government have the guts to see something through that limits what weapons are available to the general public. A domestic equivalent of an automatic assault weapon is an obscene invention and the sooner it is withdrawn from market the better. Sadly, I have also seen the rhetoric offensive by the gun lobby and this is a fight they don’t wish to loose, clearly there is a lot of money to be made from selling military arms to a gullible American public.
I struggle with the need that so many Americans appear to have for guns. It’s not just automatic weapons, its rifles and pistols too. Some of these are very powerful and when you consider uses such as hunting and protection, a lot are overkill for the purposes required.
I get why weapons are wanted; shooting them is thrilling. Aiming at targets and getting better and competing with your buddies is highly entertaining. Hunting is thrilling too and there is a valid argument for protection.
However, when I read what the gun lobby are saying I do not see considered and intelligent dialog, I see protectionist defence and a desire to resist any change because it will be the start of a slippery slope to totals bans. It is clear that they intend to build as much fear from control as they can so that they can drive as many sales as they are able, both before any change in law and also to create public opposition to any change. After all it is in the best interests of their profit margins for there to be no change.
One of the more idiotic arguments is that to protect children from this sort of thing, there should be armed adults in schools. Basically, the claim is that to solve the problems associated with crime more guns are needed. Are the people making these arguments really THAT stupid? Sadly I think they are. Let’s examine the school shootings issue a bit further. To stop unstable people taking guns into school and shooting people it is proposed that guns are put into the hands of adults in schools. These guns will have to be permanently on hand because locking them away in a cupboard is useless and having then loose in a drawer is even more stupid. Having a gun fight in area crowded with kids sounds scary, but could be argued is safer that having someone shooting without obstruction. Until there is a double tragedy and the armed protector hits innocents in the shootout, or even worse, goes postal. Wouldn’t this person be the first person to die in these cases anyway, having been taken by surprise by the shooter? So really, too many problems with that idea to satisfy the argument that it is a better option than taking the guns away in the first place. The gun lobby should go the whole hog and suggest that all school children are given their own guns so they can protect themselves. That is about the level of intelligence shown by them in this argument.
Conspiracy Nonsense
Like many around the world I have seen some of the videos on the subject. The ones featuring Piers Morgan have been immensely humorous, but not in a good way. It is depressing that the flimsy justification and illogical ramblings by Alex Jones and his disciples are taken seriously by such a huge swath of the population.
Worse than the silly ramblings and shouty nonsense, there is now, predictably, a fully developed Sandy Hook conspiracy train with the classic mind control taking centre stage. Never mind that it is simply not possible to control people to that level. Of course the claimed purpose here is to create a public that is anti-guns and so make gun control easier to implement. If there was an underhand section of government that had this sort of power, they would just implement the gun control they wished to have, why go through the insane and stupid charade of creating this sort of event? Such clear thinking escapes the conspiracy nut, sadly. If there really was a conspiracy to take away guns, there are better ways to do it.
The trouble with thinking than Sandy Hook was a conspiracy is that it creates a trap where all other shootings need to be classed similarly; otherwise there is no logical reason for it to be a sole nefarious conspiracy on a list of sad tragedies. Over how many years have these tragedies been happening and still no progress on taking away the guns? In fact there are more guns than ever. Either the conspiracy is not working very well, or there is no conspiracy at all.
Britain’s Guns
Among the comments on the web about this latest school shooting has been comparison between gun laws in America and Britain. Defensive Americans point to Britain’s own tragic school shooting in Scotland in the 1990s. That was an horrific event and one I remember happening. The subtlety that the American commentators forget is that this shooting was almost 20 years ago and is a single school shooting event in Britain over a very long period of time, compared to how many in America in the same period? Britain has a society with far fewer guns, and guess what, we have far, far fewer mass shooting events.
America; it is time to stop pissing about and take away the guns. It won’t stop gun crime dead, but it will reduce it immensely and it will save more lives than increasing the number of guns ever could.
Related articles
- Why Sandy Hook Massacre Spawned Conspiracy Theories (livescience.com)
- Rebuttal to the Sandy Hook Fully Exposed Conspiracy Video (wafflesatnoon.com)
- Gun control: Obama’s PR can machine crush the NRA (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- The US Gun Control Debate in Funny Pictures (worldnewscurator.com)
- Gun Appreciation Day: Americans up in ‘arms’ and fired up (examiner.com)
- Local gun supporters view president’s gun control proposal as threat to freedom (chronicle.augusta.com)
- Now We Talk Gun Control Because Of The Suburbs? (whocaresinthebigcity.wordpress.com)
I’m long overdue an update on the progress of Tout, the guide dog puppy that we’re caring for, or ‘Puppy Walking’ in preparation for his training as a Guide Dog.
One of the major early frustrations we had to deal with was his constant desire to chew. The skirting boards around the house took the most damage from his growing teeth, but other items did also suffer, basically anything with wooden legs. For a brand new house with many brand new furnishings, this was indeed a major annoyance.
We were advised that spreading Vicks vapour rub on high risk areas worked because he would not like the smell. This did in fact work, but it also meant that if he felt the need for a chew he’d go to another place that had not been attacked before and was free of the Vicks. The result is several spots around the house that will require putting right sometime next year.
This constant chewing was the biggest single thing we wanted to see in a behaviour change following the Puppy’s castration, an operation he had several months ago. Thankfully this was the case; recovery from the operation was a couple of weeks and he did seem very sorry for himself for some days. There was a small amount of chewing afterwards but it rapidly declined and has not happened again.
Other than that, there is no other obvious affect in his behaviour. He is still very keen on walking, very distractible when out, very excitable when people show him attention and very submissive towards other dogs.
It’s the going crazy round other people that has become the current challenge. It doesn’t matter if its visitors to home or people out and about, he just craves the attention of other people and loses all ability to concentrate while they are in his line of sight. At home its relatively easy to manage by moving to another room. However, he will make his disappointment known by constantly whining. Its clear that this is a dog bread that craves human contact, probably a result of breeding selection.
Distraction by people when out and about is more interesting. The biggest frustration is when he’s working well on a walk and he’ll be good and focussed when approaching someone and then that someone will ruin it all by clicking at him and putting out their hand. This simple act will utterly kill his focus and can take some time to get him back on track again because he is now looking for this response from all other people we’ll meet.
It is not all bad, the above is just the worst bits and are but a small part of the experiences we have with him. He’s made great progress in his time with us so far and as the time for him to move on to his real training approaches, the family to pondering what it will be like to be without him again. He is mostly a very obedient dog and seems to really enjoy being out and working. He is fit and healthy and out Guide Dogs rep is happy with his progress. The training that we’ve done with him works and he does appear to learn quickly when its repeated often and he’s encouraged well. Training problems typically stem from us humans getting frustrated and impatient. Patience is something that we have definitely had to learn during this year of puppy walking, which is not a bad thing.
Related articles
- Blog: How to stop your dog chewing your furniture (confused.com)
- Aspiring guide dogs report for training in Modesto (modbee.com)
- Puppy raisers applauded for fostering guide dogs (insidehalton.com)
- Assistance Dogs: Learning New Tricks for Centuries (history.com)
The final part of my review of London Hotels…
Lord Jim
There must be a competition that I don’t know about that offers prizes for the Hotels whose name makes the biggest impossible promise. This hotel certainly is in the running.
It all started when the Hotel took the money out of my account a full 10 days before my first night. Until this point, the worst I had to suffer was a couple of Hotels that requested full payment on check-in. This is bad enough and something I consider out of order, so having the full amount for 3 nights taken 10 days in advance was disappointing and guarantees I’ll not be considering this place again.
The room was acceptable; nothing special, but at least it was clean and tidy.
Breakfast was all too familiar; a basic continental with no cooked option, disappointing.
Grange Strathmore
Initially this hotel promised much; a very large and spacious room with a comfortable bed, decent sofa and coffee table.
However, on close inspection the room had pealing wallpaper and dust in corners that had obviously not been cleaned for a very long time.
The biggest shock came when cooked breakfast came in at a hefty £24! At least there was Tomato Juice on offer, and the breakfast was pretty decent, just not £24 decent. I’ve paid £10 for a lot better.
Barkston Gardens
Another hotel going under renovation; this time some very serious work was going on and each of the rooms was gradually undergoing a major redesign.
As a result of the works going on, the kitchen and restaurant were out of action, so there would be no chance to critique the breakfast.
The newly refurbished room however, was very good. The room had a wonderfully large walk in shower. The desk had a set of technology ports for plugging a laptop in and getting the display on the large TV in the seating area. Other touches included a light in the wardrobe which came on when the door was opened, and a speaker in the bathroom so that you could still hear the TV whole cleansing your dentures. Small touches and arguably not very important, but at the price bracket my expenses allowed, they stood out as being unique.
* This is the end of my extended stay in London and so until a new project gets me there again, there will be no more reviews on London hotels.
My review of London Hotels continues ….
Umi Hotel
This is another hotel with a fancy name that doesn’t quite live up to the implied expectations.
The biggest disappointment was seeing the sink in the room rather than the en-suite. Granted, the en-suit was only big enough to fit the toilet and shower. A spend on re-design would have solved that issue and it needs doing.
Heading to the dining room for an evening meal I found the chairs uncomfortable and the food average. I would choose to eat out in the evenings the next nights. Breakfast was better, the chairs were still uncomfortable but the food was better. Nearly £10 for an English breakfast is what I class as steep, but it is within the normal bounds to be expected from London hotels and not the most I have paid. What I did think was the ultimate piss-take was to charge me a further £2 to have a second cup of coffee with my breakfast.
Venture Hotel
Don’t bother. You really don’t want to hear about the mold and the filth.
Edward Hotel
This hotel was undergoing renovation at the time I stayed, so while the entrance looked clean and new and airy and welcoming, upstairs showed sign of many builder passes and there was a lot of dust sitting about. I understand that building work means that there will be much dust so this isn’t necessarily a negative. I assume that on completion the stairs and corridors will be updated to look as good as the entrance and the renovated rooms.
I stayed in a recently renovated room and it was very comfortable. New fittings everywhere were modern and of excellent quality. LED lighting showed a commitment to energy efficiency while still producing quality light. The only negative was that my room was not visited and clean and the bed made while I was out during the day.
Due to the renovations, the hotel kitchen was out of action.
Somerset Hotel
Overpriced and grotty is the best I can say about this. I have stayed in much better for a lot less.
The room was poorly equipped with not even a wardrobe, let alone a kettle with tea and coffee supplies. Coffee was available from a machine in the dining area; it’s a good job it was free because the coffee produced was utterly foul.
Breakfast was meagre and disappointing.
Related articles
- Full English breakfast costs up to £39 in London hotels (telegraph.co.uk)
- London’s hotels and restaurants empty ahead of Olympics (guardian.co.uk)
Last weekend saw a very tragic accident not very far from where I live. It made national news (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-19328786).
The story is utterly distressing, family at the seaside on a lovely day, they take a wander down the jetty to take a closer look at the incoming tide. Young boy slips off the edge and is as yet still missing. As a parent of a young child, it hurts just to type those words, let alone pause and consider how awful this event is.
I have the benefit of having visited the beach in question several times and have stood on the jetty, with my daughter, and watched the rapidity with which the water comes up and swirls next to the jetty. I consider myself a strong swimmer and while I too would have no hesitation is jumping in after a fallen kid, the currents there are very strong and I don’t think I’d find swimming in them easy or pleasant. A young child effectively has no chance.
Since this event is relatively local to me and I will continue to visit the location, I have followed the story more closely that I would normally. Stories of children dying tragically are not pleasant to read and so I generally actively avoid them.
In my internet travels following this story I have seen the understandable outpouring of sympathy to the family. Also predictably, there have been the idiotic comments about letting a child so young get so close to the sea and why someone wasn’t holding his hand. Even why didn’t someone jump in after him? The person who made that latter comment obviously didn’t read the story they were commenting on because both parents jumped in and had to be rescued themselves, such is the strength of those currents.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that there will be people who have dumb ideas or suggestions to make. Thankfully they are still a very significant minority, but sadly they lack the intelligence and common sense to keep their dumb ideas to themselves. How they think airing their wisdom after the event actually helps anyone is beyond me.
Another suggestion I saw posted was asking about health and safety at the beach and why it was possible for children under 16 to even go down that jetty. Does that person really think that is a reasonable action to take or consider? Do they mean just this beach or all beaches across the land? What I’d love to know is how they think this sort of idea would be implemented! I also wonder if said person ever crosses the road!
Life has danger, the act of living could be considered dangerous. Sadly, accidents like this will continue to happen. That’s not to say they are not tragic and should be avoided where possible. However, it life was made so safe that an accident like this was impossible, then life would have much less interest. I’m not saying that the danger creates the interest; I’m saying that removing the danger also removes the interest.
Protection from danger needs to be weighed up with the absolute need and with regards to this beach; I don’t think anything should be changed. Yes, this is a dangerous beach, there is a lot of mud and approaching the sea is hazardous. The incoming tide is astoundingly fast. Holiday makers are routinely rescued from the mud.
What happened to this family is deeply saddening. Wise-cracks about safety and what might have been done by perfect parents behind a keyboard help no one.
Related articles
- Sea slip tragedy of four-year-old of boy off coast of Burnham-on-Sea (independent.co.uk)
- Sea death family hail lovely child (standard.co.uk)
Over at his conspiracy blog Craig McKee makes the ludicrous claim that the BBC broke their own rules when reporting on conspiracies surrounding the New terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11th, (http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/media-and-the-911-cover-up-bbc-accused-of-breaking-its-own-fairness-rules/).
The key section that jumped out at me from the blog post is the following:
Peter Drew, Paul Warburton, and Adrian Mallett are using the publicly funded television network’s own rules to highlight its failure to fairly report the facts of 9/11. The three have launched their complaints with the BBC Trust claiming that the network failed to live up to its own Royal Charter and Agreement in two documentaries released last year – The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 Ten Years Onand 9/11 Conspiracy Road Trip. The complaints allege that the docs were not fair, not accurate, and that critical information was deliberately withheld from viewers to further an agenda supporting the official story.
The complaints have reached the highest levels of the BBC complaints process, and the complainants are now requesting a face-to-face meeting with BBC Trustees to discuss the situation. A possible result could be an apology or the screening of some documentaries with different points of view (such as films produced by AE) to balance out the record.
The BBC’s Royal Charter and Agreement states: “The Agreement accompanying the BBC Charterspecifies that we should do all we can “to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality” in our news and other output dealing with matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy.”
I have previously reviewed one of the programmes mentioned (https://vteclimey.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/ponderings-on-the-tenth-anniversary-of-9-11/).
Impartiality does not mean everything is equally valid
The thing that gets forgotten by people that argue that the BBC should give more and better air time to conspiracies is that they actually only want their particular brand of conspiracy promoted. They don’t want conflicting or opposing conspiracies given any time at all. After all, the person who believes that the airliners that flew into the World Trade Centre had external pods attached holding explosives does not want exposure of the theory that the planes were simply sophisticated holograms and it was explosives in the building that brought them down. Similarly, the person who believes that the building was rigged to many explosives does not want to share air time with the person promoting the idea that it was actually a small number of nuclear devices, or even some ultra-high tech beam weapon mounted on a satellite in orbit.
That’s the trouble with conspiracies, there are far too many of them and they all claim to explain the evidence, and yet by definition, most of them must be wrong because they certainly can’t all be right.
So, when the BBC says its impartial, it is not at all talking about the myriad conclusions that misguided people come to. It is talking about the accurate portrayal of facts and the explanation of conclusions based on evidence. Sadly for those who continue to peddle the truth denialism that is the 9/11 conspiracy movement, this means that evidence does not explain their position and impartiality does not apply to their erroneous conclusions. It only extends to the acknowledgement that they exist.
If impartiality meant giving time to every alternative idea there was, can you imagine the chaos? Science programmes about health or how humans came to be would be intolerable as each regional myth was recounted as though it was of equal value. History documentaries would be confusing and impossible to follow as each biased interpretation was given its time.
No, Peter Drew, Paul Warburton, and Adrian Mallett are wrong in their assertions and the BBC will be right not to pander to them. Of course, those on Craig’s blog who have predicted that the BBC will stonewall the complaint will believe themselves proved right that the BBC is complicit. Sadly that’s the price of standing up against nonsense; thankfully the deniers of the truth of those September 11th attacks are a small and shrinking minority and over the passage of time their noise will grow fainter.
Related articles
- Media And The 9/11 Cover- UP : BBC Accused Of Breaking Its Own Fairness Rules – 14 July 2012 (lucas2012infos.wordpress.com)
- Media and the 9/11 cover-up: BBC accused of breaking its own fairness rules (veteranstoday.com)
- Embarrassing Conspiracy Theories: The Pentagon was hit with a Missile on 9/11 (illuminutti.com)
- BBC Campaign on 911 Truth Shifts into Second Gear (salem-news.com)
- Blatant distortions in BBC’s “The Conspiracy Files: 7/7″ documentary (fauxcapitalist.com)
- BBC claims ‘online lobby’ generated complaints over refusal to identify Israel’s capital (thejc.com)
- BBC says sorry to follower of conspiracy theorist David Icke over ‘Planet Zog’ claim (telegraph.co.uk)
Much noise has been made in the papers in the past couple of weeks about a certain investing programme that enables wealthy subscribers to reduce their tax burden to a ridiculous 1% and yet still enjoy all that living in the UK offers.
Among the culprits was the comedian Jimmy Carr, though he was certainly not alone and not the only one to be outed; he was singled out by our Prime Minister and named as an example of exhibiting immoral behaviour by actively seeking to reduce his tax burden. Its long been known that many wealthy people jump through various hoops in order to save themselves from paying as much tax as possible. These schemes are legal and have generally been tolerated by the powers that be and begrudgingly accepted by the wider populace.
What I did find bazar about the furore over the Jimmy Carr outing is the number of people who jumped to his defence using phrases along the lines of ‘what he did was legal’ and ‘everyone would have done the same in the same position’. On the second point, that is not a valid defence and I don’t actually believe it. A majority maybe, but certainly not everyone, there will always be an exception. It still doesn’t make it right though, even if a majority would do it.
On the first point, that’s still not a valid defence. Being legal is not the same as being moral. Those who argue that its okay because he didn’t break any law are a few small steps away from declaring that they take their moral lead from the state and what it tells them is legal. Are the morals of these people so weak and changing that they can’t decide what is right and wrong without being told so by the government first? I bet they’d be offended at that concept, and yet they think its okay to avoid paying their fair share of the populace’s tax burden if there is a legal way to avoid it.
While I don’t particularly think what Mr Cameron did the right thing by naming Mr Carr, he was right when he branded his actions immoral. It is immoral to avoid paying your fair share of tax in that way. What is even more cynical and depressing is that politicians have known about these schemes for a long time and chosen to do nothing about them while it suited them. That too is immoral.
There should never have been the ability for this to happen. However the law can never rule everything out and there were always going to be loop holes that someone would find and exploit.
I hope that this latest spat of moral outrage will lead to more honest banking activities by the most wealthy of the population, however, I don’t think that will be the case.
Related articles
- Why Cameron was right to condemn Jimmy Carr (newstatesman.com)
- Scottish News: Scots firm behind Jimmy Carr tax avoidance scheme to be investigated by authorities (dailyrecord.co.uk)
- The Jimmy Carr witchhunt should end (newstatesman.com)
- Jimmy Carr apologises for his tax avoidance (newstatesman.com)
- Jimmy Carr attacks ‘tax-dodging scum’ (thesun.co.uk)
- My thoughts on the Jimmy Carr tax scandal (selionmanagement.wordpress.com)
- David Cameron joins UK Uncut over Jimmy Carr’s taxes (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
A limey's ramblings 