Letter to my MP - Google's tax deal

I am concerned by the deal between HMRC and Google which was announced this weekend. It is hard to believe that the UK has come out well from the negotiations.

Google's position throughout has been that it pays all the tax it is bound to.  Matt Brittin, President of Business and Operations in Europe, is quoted by the BBC as saying "We were applying the rules as they were and that was then and now we are going to be applying the new rules, which means we will be paying more tax".

If Google was really applying the "rules as they were" then no back tax is due, yet the settlement includes a payment of £130 million for taxes owed since 2005. This is obviously inconsistent, and does not make me confident that the result of the negotiations has been presented honestly.

Then again, is £130 million the right sum?   Tax specialist Jolyon Maugham does not think so.  He calculates that £200 million would be appropriate for 2014 alone, and doubts that the company's tax payments in future years will be acceptable, since the company organisation allows it to report different earnings in the UK accounts and in those it presents to Google's investors.

The deal is criticised across the political spectrum, with Mark Garnier MP of the Treasury select committee observing that the agreement represents a "relatively small" amount of money compared with Google's UK profits.

George Osborne describes the deal as a "victory" but Robert Peston of ITV puts it more sophisticatedly.  The critics "may well have natural justice on [their] side; whereas Osborne may have done as well as any Chancellor could, given the power of global companies to move their homes to minimise their tax liabilities".

I would be interested in your views, because I suspect that many voters will join me in taking the "natural justice" position.

A short letter to my MP

Yesterday the prime minister called MPs who are not convinced by his proposal to bomb Syria "terrorist sympathisers".  In so doing he has applied the same label to millions of people in the UK who are also unconvinced.  I ask you to request that he withdraw this slur on the character of a large part of the British people.

Letter to my MP, trying not to be just angry

I share the concern voiced in many quarters that proposed reductions in tax credits are unfair and will have serious negative effects on a large number of working people.  When even the Sun raises its voice in opposition the government surely cannot ignore the many objections raised.

When Gordon Brown introduced tax credits it was against a background of punishingly low wages.  (I knew a security guard who worked a 72-hour continuously on-duty weekend shift to be not a very rich man at all.)  And, so that employers did not simply leave it to the government to pay their workforce, the minimum wage came in alongside.

Over the years since then the appalling administration of tax credits has improved, and real time information has made it far more workable, but the amount paid out under this heading has increased significantly, as ministers of your government never tire of reminding us.  Partly it was government policy to increase coverage, but much of the difference may be due to changes in the way the British economy works, with employers increasingly relying on the state to keep their workers alive despite the original intentions.

I therefore agree that a rebalancing is desirable, with employers becoming responsible for a greater proportion of wages paid.  Apart from anything else it would bring a greater degree of honesty to the world of employment.

The chancellor's declared intention to raise the minimum wage significantly over the next five years is therefore welcome, though his decision to restrict this rate to workers of 25 and above is unreasonable.  Such a series of pay rises could sensibly be matched by reductions in tax credits, so that workers in a particular low-paid position in 2020 would be in effectively the same position as those in 2015, but with employers taking a greater responsibility for their earnings.

The chancellor's decision to label this increased minimum wage a "national living wage" is unfortunate and misleading since, as you will know, the Living Wage Foundation's 2015 pay rate is much higher than the proposed "national living wage" for April 2016 and their 2015 London rate is already around the level that Mr Osborne has indicated for his country-wide hourly rate in 2020.

Most disturbing, however, is that the plan is not to withdraw tax credit payments in parallel with this healthy upward nudge in minimum pay rates.  Instead, the entire reduction is to be done in one go, and in year 1.  Many people, including obviously select committee chairs, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation (now headed by Lord Willetts, who knows the insides of a Conservative-led government) have pointed out the significant reductions in income that these cuts represent for millions of working people at the lower end of the earning range.  

How these developments will fit in with other government policies will be interesting to observe.  The ongoing (under-25) minimum wage, for example, is now the basis for a continuously rising income tax personal allowance.  Also, with public sector pay intended to be held to minimal increases over coming years what effect will the "national living wage" have on those at the bottom of government-controlled pay scales?

The Living Wage Foundation is expected to announce its updated Living Wage within the next few weeks, with further announcements in subsequent years.  Since the calculation takes account of tax credits, it can be expected to jump significantly above the current figures.  I have seen several ministers over the last year or so, proudly announcing that their department pays no member of staff less than the current Living Wage.  Will we be seeing a succession of ministers proclaiming their determination to continue to keep up with the real Living Wage, or will things go quiet?

I hope that you will consider my letter and, no doubt, many others and use your good offices to help convince the chancellor that it is not too late to revise his policy so as to avoid the widespread suffering which at present seems unavoidable.

My memory may be unreliable, but that's not because it exists

Michio Kaku was on the radio this morning with that old chestnut, the idea of storing our memories electronically and recalling them at a later time.  He talked about being able to converse with a person long dead, and looked forward to maintaining a Library of Souls.

Now, I have no doubt at all that we can look forward to wonderful advances in observation and analysis of brain function (some but not all of which, Professor Kaku, could be called "thinking"), and that certain structures of brain impulses might be reconstructable from stored representations.  But I'm not convinced that something called "my memory" actually exists.

Michio Kaku has serious credentials in theoretical physics and can be very stimulating when he applies his mind to other areas.  He's a populariser of science but he tends towards the sensational and has been accused of weird mysticism.

I have a memory. It goes something like this.

I'm in a bus, an express bus, from London to somewhere in the north - probably Chorley or Preston, maybe Wigan.  I'm with my girlfriend, but I don't know which one.  And I'm sitting towards the back, on the left of the aisle.

There's nothing visual, except what I can fill in generally about what sitting in a bus is like - no colours, no movement inside, no scenery outside.  It was probably pretty full.

A woman is on the back seat, on the right hand side, with two children, probably both between her and the side window.  One is little - two? three? - and the other is older, a boy (I think) of sevenish.  I think I register them because there's more audible talking in that corner - trying to keep them under control and maybe interested on a long journey.

There's a squeaking of brakes.  It must come from our bus because it happens more than once.  Then there's a squeal from the younger child, and another.  The woman tries to hush him/her but fails.  The squealing continues, then the older one picks it up and starts squealing back.  The woman isn't happy, but eventually (I have no idea how or when) it stops.

The main part of the memory is my thinking and emotions at the time.  I realise that the small child is responding to the brakes, being at an age when sound input is of huge importance and the mind is working to make sense of it and produce answers (I am, or recently have been, a linguistics student at the time).  The older child is certainly responding to the younger, and might possibly have worked out what's going on and that they share a new way to annoy mother.

I'm pleased with myself for identifying these connections, and probably tell my girlfriend.

Also attached to the memory is a doubt, a worry that I've got the wrong end of the stick, that I'm making up the whole analysis out of nothing.

I've told this at some length, because I want to consider what this "memory" is.  The episode has no meaning to me without my pride in a small intellectual achievement.  Without that the bus ride would probably have faded completely, along with hundreds and thousands of others.  On the other hand, if someone said "Remember when you went to X?", other parts of the journey might suddenly come back, with or without the knowledge that those two children were travelling with me.

****

We don't store everything that comes into our eyes, ears etc.  We don't retain every fleeting emotion.  We couldn't, or we'd be full up and useless well before school age.

We select what to see (as is demonstrated beautifully by the Monkey Business Illusion) and we select what we remember (otherwise I'd be able to recall the sound of every keystroke I've used to type this short piece - I'd go mad).  Above all, we reconstruct memories when we retrieve them.  It's not just a matter of pressing Play and giving over body and mind to reliving a certain number of seconds from the past.

My bus memory is a single thing, not a period of time replayed.  I don't remember it as five minutes of nothing much, punctured by a few sounds and a flash of inspiration.

Of course we don't always retain what might be useful in later life, and we also sometimes store more than we ever realise (if somebody gives you the right prompt, you might be able to spout large amounts of what you learned at school, or remember an old friend who hasn't come to mind for decades).

And whether and how we remember something depends on our state at the time.  Am I stressed or relaxed?  Am I with somebody who prompts a memory or someone who should never hear what is suddenly clamouring to be let out?

"Remembering" is a process of construction. The story doesn't always come out the same, and sometimes the process of telling a memory might change what is associated with it, so that it's different next time you tell it (see my feeling of doubt above, which was probably added some years after the day itself).  And sometimes we remember things that didn't happen that way (consider newsman Brian Williams' recent bout of false memory).

How then, Professor Kaku, do you propose to upload, store and reproduce "my memory"?  And how might you converse with something which contains lots of information (or at least data) but has no current sensory and intellectual state and no reason to construct memories for your satisfaction?

As Brian walked deeper into the caves, I saw...

Belatedly catching up on Brian Cox's Human Universe (I got rather annoyed with the first two, but I'll write about that another time) I came to episode 5

We started in the El Castillo caves of Cantabria, Spain, which I rapidly remembered as one of the oldest cave art sites in the world.  Prof Cox described the caves' usefulness for shelter and safe haven, then took us on.  As he walked into the darker corridors I knew we were going to see bison and other animals on the walls and wonder at the dedication and perhaps belief that had led to their painting.

As Brian walked deeper into the caves, I saw...

The cave art was just round the corner, but what do you see?

I know this is pareidolia, but spooky, don't you think?

Rochester and Strood - oh bloody hell

I write a couple of hours after the declaration of the results of the Rochester and Strood byelection and in a negative mood I can't really label.  UKIP have won their second seat in the Commons, Labour managed to snatch outrage from the jaws of being considered the irrelevant third party and I shudder to imagine what new, self-defeating idiocy Cameron will be driven to today.

There will be those spluttering on Twitter that the "natural Labour voters" who supported Mark Reckless "don't know what's good for them," but neither, it seems, do Labour.  The abandonment of working class communities in ex-industrial and seaside areas has not just been a feature of Conservative spells in power.

"We can't out-UKIP UKIP" has been the mantra for both of what will still, precariously, be labelled the two main parties.  Yet both compete to present their own, rather similar versions of UKIP-lite on immigration.  Meanwhile Farage and his cronies still manage, apart from the odd embarrassing slip, to keep control of the battles between UKIP's electables and its headbangers.  Their manifesto for 2015 may not look much like the one from 2010, or even various public pronouncements from as little as a year ago, but it will be "respectable".  And anyway, who reads manifestos?

The vagaries of the British electoral system and the compound incompetencies of the more traditional parties will produce a result in 2015 which will almost certainly make it hard for anyone to construct a convincing or manageable government.  I will not attempt a prediction, but I fully expect Labour and Tories to be battling to draw together DUP, LibDem and SNP groups into some kind of whole.  And UKIP will either be there as a handful, protesting the unfairness of first-past-the-post or tipped over into a fourth significant bloc vying for the big boys' attention.

I'm sure my thoughts will settle rather further from depression later in the day, perhaps after I actually get some sleep, but I'm not looking forward to the next few years.

Pain and pleasure

As an aged person I have trouble keeping up with new music, though it is one of my main interests.  So when I pick up on somebody I like, I try to follow their progress.  Some of them go from strength to strength, some hit a plateau, some crash and burn (or - worse - crash and fail even to burn).  Here's a small progress report on some of my pet projects.

Louis Barabbas and the Bedlam Six - beloved singer has been ill and is unable to perform, but the band is touring as well as contributing massively to Manchester music.

Civil Civic - barbarian Aussies who place nice tunes - touring the world and threatening to self-destruct at any moment.

Moulettes - folk, jazz, sod the genre - they play a violin/cello duet then a romp with bassoon bass.  Touring, recording, succeeding.

Help Stamp Out Loneliness - I love to add an extra vocal harmony line.  They play infrequently and admit to drinking too much.

More pleasure than pain, really.

Euro-madness

I remember a session led by academics from Cranfield University.  It would have been 1998, in the run-up to the introduction of the euro, and my enlightened employer wanted an arbitrarily selected group to learn about world economic conditions.  It was made plain that the UK was in a reasonable position to join the euro, and certainly in a better position than some of the countries which were actually signed up to do so.

If we had joined in, and the weaker currencies had not, we would have had some uncomfortable moments as we aligned our cycles but would probably have gone on to reasonable success.  Adopting the euro along with the southern basket cases, given the observable unwillingness of all countries (including France and Germany) to follow the rules of the club, would have been very silly.

Letter to Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary

Dear Mr. Hunt,

Rupert Murdoch is a man who will change his citizenship to gain a business advantage - not a toehold, as an immigrant might do, but a dominant position.  He will kowtow to Chinese suppression of freedom to gain market share in Asia.

Now he wants to take full ownership of BSkyB - News Corporation is a large entity, but it is still a very personal fiefdom - and is wondering how much he will have to give for that.

He has come up with a proposal to separate himself formally from Sky News, thinking that this is the kind of small price that the UK will be satisfied with, and you have recognised that the letter of the contract does offer  some kind of protection.

This is a small price to pay.  UK media law does not allow TV news organisations to take positions, so the provision of a respectable news service - a necessary commitment in the early days to gain Sky's general position and licensing - can be supported by means of an arms-length body.

He would not accept the same separation from the Times or the Sun.

The current move to take over the whole of BSkyB may not - on the face of it - constitute an increase in his control of British media outlets.  My argument is that his control is already too great.

The current scandal of phone-hacking and its latest development with the Milly Dowler case is the first time Mr Murdoch has shown any sign of vulnerability.  So far he has been beyond any but the minor criticism of the courtiers in the PPC - the weight of News Corporation silences or sits upon business and political attacks.

I understand that you have been painted into a legal corner concerning the grounds on which you could refuse the current application, but I cannot believe that it is impossible to stop the process in the light of new developments.

A news organisation which apparently behaves with impunity while flouting the law should give you pause.  I am amazed that they have not already started briefing against other papers - the fact that they have not suggests to me that News International's culpability is so massive that they dare not.

Mr Murdoch's control over the British media is already disproportionate in percentage terms, but the major factor is the cold weight of control - not just power, but deadening influence.

A judge-led inquiry into hacking and its relationships with police and politics (just to begin with) should be established immediately.  And an organisation which is under such scrutiny should not complain if other processes that it is involved with are halted.

Ed Wilson

A boring old fart protests

Syrian authorities demand the facebook and gmail passwords of arrested protesters. Twitter is the backbone of revolutions.  White-hat hackers work on firewall busters to support Iranian demonstrations. The internet is a force for freedom.

Well yes, but...

We have electricity, water, internet... it's just another utility. And, just as our electricity is run by French and German companies, the big net services are served from the US.

There are plenty of email services, but every pensioner directed towards internet literacy is presented with a hotmail or gmail address. Facebook and Google may have achieved an unassailable critical mass in their fields. We talk of hoovering, and now we talk of googling.  And all of these are American companies.

So what?

Google and Facebook make billions from selling information about us without our informed consent, but even that's not the problem.

Does the world need more than one Facebook, one Google, one Ebay, one Amazon, one Twitter, one Blogger? Does the world need more than one GPS? Is the world outside China going to be run on Californian servers?

I use these services. I like them (mostly - watch it Zuckerberg). I am not anti-American. I am anti-oligopoly. It may be too late to think of an alternative but, if it is, "too late" suggests a power we have relinquished without thinking enough.

I fear I have offended someone tonight

Every Tuesday evening a dozen or so of us gather to discuss literature, our own literature. Plays, poems and stories we have written and which we would really like to see gaining a wider audience. It's a writers' group, a workshop ( http://manchester-writers.org.uk/ ) and it seems to improve our writing even if most of us remain unpublished.

In recent weeks we've tried a new technique. Rather than reading your own stuff and then looking up expectantly for helpful comments, you ask somebody else. You can select a reader or accept the next random volunteer, and you have to listen to your own deathless (or lifeless) prose while you watch the faces of your audience.

Another kind of artificiality you might say, but I've learned a lot. Think about the way you read a book.

The first time you see a page is almost always the last time you see it. You make just one attempt to read it, and if the intended meaning doesn't come through that one time, it's the last chance the writer has. And I've seen evidence here and elsewhere that some people don't get much out of reading - looking ahead, interpreting the syntax and punctuation as you go, are all unused skills.

The offence I may have caused came when I said that I could have read my chapter better than the person who took that responsibility. I know what it's supposed to say, how it's supposed to be read.  I could perform it on stage or on radio.

But if all that isn't actually on the page, then either I'm not doing my job properly as a writer or I have unrealistic expectations of my readers. I can't judge how much of each is true, but it makes me think.