We need to talk about Ken

Tax avoidance to the left.

Oh dear, what are Labour going to do, what are any of us going to do should Ken Livingstone defy the odds - and the supposed intelligence of voters - by winning the London Mayoral contest next month. At the moment it doesn’t look likely, thanks to the recent discovery that on the subject of tax avoidance he’s a hypocrite, or as Boris Johnson is supposed to have said, “a fucking liar”. It turns out Ken organises his tax affairs in much the same way as I (when a contractor) used to, only - unlike the former and would be future Mayor - I never combined this with articles painting the Tories as “rich bastards” exploiting “every tax fiddle”. That would be a bit cheeky, yet Ken did exactly this in a 2009 article in The Sun. How deliciously ironic to find that because of the way he arranges his own tax, Ken Livingstone pays a far lower rate than that of his Tory rival. Indeed, Ken Livingstone pays a far lower rate of tax than most people, including myself, despite having a far greater income.

In some ways this is a relief, as otherwise we might be discussing whether the allegations of anti-Semitism and his association with certain anti-Semites would help or hinder his chances of becoming Mayor. Sometimes it’s what Ken doesn’t say that we should worry about; this from the BBC:

Egyptian-born Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has been criticised for condoning suicide bombings and having anti-Semitic and homophobic views. The Mayor of London [at that time, Ken Livingstone] acknowledged that he and the cleric would not see eye-to-eye on Lesbian and Gay views.

How odd then that despite the double standards on tax avoidance, his openly antagonistic stance to Jewish people and having previously campaigned against his own party, party leader Ed Miliband is today throwing his support behind Ken Livingstone’s campaign. Well... he’s in the club, though Labour party rules suggest he shouldn’t be.

Pet cemetery

The goldfish is dead; long live the (other) goldfish. At 6pm on the evening of April the 7th, the father of Miss Ruse was called to a fish tank in a bedroom north of Bristol, there to pronounce Minnie the fish ‘dead on arrival’; dead on my arrival, it’s not like the fish could go anywhere. I’d expected a body afloat, not a ghost floating through a former home. Unsure of what should follow I asked my daughter, who fishing out her former pet requested a burial alongside Humphrey (the guinea pig) for the following day, Easter day, which entailed an overnight period of lying in state for the deceased. I can recommend Tesco re-sealable sandwich bags.

I am on the downward slope of my extended weekend yet nowhere near the arbitrary schedule imposed to complete Tender Is The Night. Unexpected deaths aside, I’m not too concerned as it’s achieved the desired effect of making me read, and when finished I can decide on Gatsby, recently read and Fitzgerald’s most famous, or this last and less well received of his novels. Of course I don’t really have to choose but I’m tending towards the latter. It’s decline and fall repeated; though extrapolated from where I am in his story, Dick Diver’s descent looks terminal in comparison to that of Logan Mountstuart whose own decline, whilst it might sometimes have been self-induced, was mostly one that afflicts us all.

Rise and shine, readers

Yesterday, having woken at an ungodly hour I remained such for hours, until close enough to an alarm that getting up made no difference. I was tired, so much so that driving into work occasioned one of those “where am I” moments similar to when, having driven from Bristol to Manchester, I failed to remember Birmingham. This time it was an eerie one minute tumbleweed along what later transpired to be the M48, but that’s motorways for you; and my excuse for the second - and definitely not the last - latte and cinnamon Danish combo of the week. It wasn’t enough to protect from a malcontent office air conditioner, but then what is?

Today starts a long Easter weekend in which to recover, eat chocolate, repent, think about fixing the blog, laugh at Ken Livingstone’s predicament and finish that book. Hopefully not in that order; I can laugh at Ken anytime and I’m committed to Tender Is The Night which, though brilliant, teases with the possibility of becoming annoying or worse, ordinary. I have four days, and no excuses.

How beastly the socialist is

How beastly the socialist is
especially the female of gender--

Pretty, exceedingly pretty--
shall I make you a present of her?

Isn’t she gorgeous? Isn’t she fit? Isn’t she a fine piece?
Doesn’t she look the fresh clean councillor, outside at play?
Isn’t she Bevan’s own? Tramping her thirty tweets a day
after outrage, or a little strike action?
Wouldn’t you like to be like that, all class, and quite the thing
in comment on Margaret Thatcher?

How beastly the socialist is
especially the female agenda--

Petty, exceedingly petty--
shall I make you a present of her?

It’s another ‘socialist says something mean’ story - would all Conservative whiners please leave the room. You’re surprised? Are you really surprised? You’ve not heard what they said - what they still say - about their last successful leader, the one who won three in a row, the “war criminal” Tony Blair? With apologies to D. H. Lawrence and a nod to stones and glass houses, grow up, the lot of you.

The poor should pay

Another budget and if you believe the calculator on the BBC website (what kind of simpletons use such things?) I’ll be £100/year better off. Usual lefty rubbish regarding the 50p rate being lowered, never mind whether it’s effective they’re predictably displaying their ‘tax as a punishment’ credentials. Who’d have thought tax should be about raising revenue with the lowest impact; certainly not the Labour party. Of most interest is this theme, for which we can thank the Liberal party, of excusing the lower paid from paying anything; I read one who fancifully described it as an obscenity that those on minimum wage should pay any tax, and it’s not limited to those on the left, Conservatives seem bound to hold the same view; I don’t.

For all the good intentions, such beliefs marginalise those they’re meant to help, entrench a ‘them and us’; those who contribute and those who don’t. This isn’t about worth, it’s about upkeep; I don’t know many - aside a few libertarian wingnuts - who believe society (however we define it) has no cost and are thus unwilling to pay. If we believe we should be in this together (putting aside the issue of whether we are) then we should share the responsibility in addition to the benefit. Though for the lower paid this may be token, or cancelled for administrative - not social - reasons, the principle should remain; everyone has a stake.

49%

toothpastefordinner.com

So much misinformation, so let’s look at just one piece of nonsense; the hysteria raised at the news NHS hospitals will be allowed to generate up to 49% of their income from private patients. This has been presented as anything from “handing over 49% of the NHS to the private sector” to the only slightly less-nonsensical “49% of NHS resources being used for the private sector”. Such statements fail to note the private sector will have to pay. Also we can be confident in the assertion (since otherwise there would be nothing in it for the hospital) that any provision of services to the private sector would be at a charge greater than their cost - in other words, a profit - an important detail given that simple logic shows this will enable the treatment of more (not less) NHS patients.

In this illustration, whilst accepting that not all operations cost the same and therefore some beds cost more than others, we will for the sake of simplicity use a hospital bed as the financial unit of measurement. And since we accept there must be profit, in this example we will say it is in the order of “1 bed” profit for every “100 beds” of service to the private sector. This allows us to make the following three statements:

1. An NHS hospital funded by the tax-payer to the equivalent of “510 beds”, and with no income from private patients, has a capacity of 510 beds for use by NHS patients.
2. An NHS hospital providing “486 beds” to the private sector will make (rounding down) “4 beds” profit for NHS patients.
3. An NHS hospital funded by the tax-payer to the equivalent of “510 beds”, and with a private income of “490 beds” of which “4 beds” is profit, has a capacity of 514 beds for use by NHS patients.

Of course the service provided by a hospital is more than the number of beds, and in the example above we arbitrarily choose the level of profit, but what we can also see is that the 49% limit is entirely artificial and no doubt politically motivated. The fact remains that an NHS hospital having any level of profit generating private income will, for the same level of tax-payer funding as a hospital funded by the tax-payer alone, be able to provide more services to NHS patients. Indeed this statement is so patently obvious, I wonder at all the fuss.

God distracts the faithful

Whilst God distracts the faithful I see eleven films over four days, only two of which are new. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Garden of The Finzi-Continis; the latter had been sitting on my shelf since just before Christmas and as I’d seen The Conformist on Netflix only a few weeks ago, it would complete a Dominique Sanda double-bill. The Conformist is visually striking but in that category of ‘appreciate’ as opposed to ‘love’, whereas Finzi-Continis, having a gorgeous colour palette, is not only beautiful to look at but a film I’ll watch again; this despite a soundtrack that on occasion appears off, apparently the result of being post-synchronised rather than recorded live. Something I couldn’t help noticing with both Italian films is that voyeuristic regard to female nudity you find in late 60’s and early ‘70s European cinema. There are some who will call this a brave (for the time) expression of female sexuality; you believe that if you want, it looks like a wet t-shirt to me.

Giorgio Bassani's story is of a wealthy Jewish family separated from the rise of Italian fascism by the walls of their estate; odd that I too came to believe the high-walled garden would shield them from the world outside. There were many festival highlights, but the other that springs to mind is an old favourite, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. My reaction each time is the same. It starts quirky, turns rather clever and - just at the moment you feel a danger of it disappearing up its own fundament - becomes something quite wonderful. Joel shows Clementine an embarrassing moment of his past, to which the younger Clementine leads the younger Joel away through a gap in the fence. “I’m so ashamed” he says. “It’s OK”, she replies “you were a little kid.”