Tax and morals: we're all spared!

Phew! If you've paid someone in cash, it looks like you have a respite from eternal damnation. Apparently, even big Dave Cameron has done it...so it must be OK.

What a lot of nonsense, eh? Of course what the poor bloke who made this latest "morally wrong" pronouncement was saying was not that it's wrong to pay someone in cash, but that it is wrong if you are knowingly conniving in tax evasion by so doing. Trouble is, we all live in a world of sound-bites and headlines and anything requiring any kind of cerebral effort is wasted on us, so the nuance of his statement has wafted away on the breeze and he is left, like a bloke who thought the party was fancy dress with a Nazi theme, looking silly and alone.

It's an increasingly common occurrence that people are misunderstood, not because they have failed to express themselves clearly but because we have failed to look beyond the headline. This isn't really a new phenomenon: Thomas Beckett became a martyr because of a small conversational misunderstanding. What's the answer to this? It's probably to not say anything of any subtlety at all - just go for the spin without the substance.

Which reminds me of the fabulous "2012" TV show which finished last night (if you missed them, get onto the iplayer or the DVD store now). The star is the wonderfully vacuous Siobhan from the PR firm. Although her conversation consists mainly of "totally", "cool" and "the thing with this is..." she actually saves the "Olympics Deliverance Team" from disaster repeatedly as hard-wired into her otherwise empty head is the notion that all that matters is the TV image and the headline. So using a chocolate-covered nut instead of an acorn, or computer-generated fireworks instead of real ones is fine as no one will know the difference. She's right, of course.

And speaking of the Olympics, it all kicks off today - quite literally in fact, with women's football. Now, you may find it odd that women's football exists at all and astounding that it's an Olympic sport but get with it guys...the thing with this is, it's totally about inclusivity and the legacy angle is, like, really cool...plus, it's chicks in shorts fighting each other...totally...

Festival time again!

Elbow's stage set. Pink Floyd eat your heart out!

Doesn't time fly? Already the 2012 festival season is in full swing with campers huddled in muddy fields all over the place. Our tent hasn't seen the light of day yet this year but we've dipped our toes in the festival waters and here's my observations so far...

A few weeks back we headed to Jodrell Bank, a few miles south of Manchester and site of the Lovell radio telescope. They first put on a bit of a musical do here last year, in the shadow of the Lovell and my what a shadow it casts. It is a bloody huge thing and makes for a spectacular setting. Day 1 of this year's event was headlined by local lads (well, Bury anyway) Elbow. The weather forecast was not great but the rain restrained itself to a bit of a drizzle until shortly after Elbow hit the stage and then...splosh. We got wet. So did Elbow. They had a set piece where they sang grouped round a keyboard set up on a catwalk running out into the crowd. "Electronic equipment and rain" observed Elbow front man Guy Garvey "what could possibly go wrong?" Luckily there were no fatalities.

But the rain kept coming. Just prior to the encores, we made our excuses and left, fearing a waterlogged car park and a delay of several hours to get out. We were either clever or lucky as (a) we found the car right away, a feat in itself and (b) drove straight out, delay-free and got back to the hotel in Wilmslow in time for a pint. But those heading for day 2, featuring Paul Weller, were not so lucky: the car park did indeed become waterlogged (and probably the rest of the site too) and the thing was cancelled.

Elbow were excellent of course but what I really wanted to talk about was the supporting line-up. This featured two of my fave raves who I hadn't seen live before, namely Cherry Ghost and Field Music. If you're not familiar with these acts - do check them out - then you're not alone. Obviously neither of them is a household name and it became pretty clear that a large proportion of the crowd weren't familiar with them which means you have a rather weird vibe, with many thousands of people staring up at these acts but not knowing what to make of them. That's OK unless said crowd members have had a few drinks, are young and with a group of mates, in which case they are likely to talk/shout/vomit very noisily right through their sets. Call me naive but why do people do this?

Just like us, these anti-social types have paid a lot of money to be there, so why waste it by talking all the time? Or why not slope off to the bar and get even more drunk? I am being mainly rhetorical but there are several genuine questions begged here: why are bands so quiet these days? Why do people go to festivals? Why do festivals book so many acts?

Field Music wonder whether they can afford the petrol to get back to Sunderland

This last question doesn't apply to the Jodrell Bank do as there was only one stage with about 5 acts altogether but let's move swiftly down closer to home in Kent for the Hop Farm bash, where we attended for the first and third days (thereby missing Dylan which was probably no bad thing.) Now, like so many other festivals, the line-up is as long as your arm, with dozens of acts spread over about 5 stages. Unless, like big G, you are omnipresent, this means that you are going to miss at least 80% of the acts. It also means you have to be on your toes to work out where you need to be at any given time but then, having constructed a cunning algorithm to plan your day, you fall asleep, or get drunk, or stuck in the mud, or simply can't be arsed and you miss even more.

So why do they book so many bands in the first place? Our old friends Field Music were playing again but stuck in some tent with dodgy acoustics and down wind of the main stage (on the Sunday, Gruff Rhys found himself competing with Kool and the Gang.) The whole site didn't seem that busy and Field Music's audience can't have amounted to many more than they might have got in the local Palais de Danse in their home town of Sunderland, which is a hell of a long way from Kent. So Field Music (and the same must go for plenty of the other acts) have trekked the length of the country to gain very limited exposure and the organisers have forked out to book a load of acts that most people aren't going to see. It sounds like a lose:lose. I must be missing something here but I'm not sure what.

Gruff Rhys battles on bravely against Mr Kool and his gang

Given that you're not going to see most of the bands on the bill (plus I expect your algorithm crashed when the two bands you most wanted to see were scheduled on different stages at the same time); given the British weather; given the price of the beer; given the state of the toilets; given those noisy bastards next to you talking all the way through Lianne la Havas' quiets bits...why do you want to go to one of these bashes when you probably could have had a week in some hot foreign country for the same price? It's a mystery. (Before you point at me, let me tell you we did not pay anything like the full price for the Hop Farm! And Jodrell Bank was just one day and not our sole reason for venturing north of the Watford Gap, so...)

And finally...why are all the bands so quiet these days? When I was a lad, everyone was so loud it was quite impossible to talk over them. Those were the days! Crank it up to 11 I say and force the talkers to leg it for some more rip-off beer and overpriced/undercooked burgers.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Next up, in a few weeks, is Cropredy: only one stage so no rushing about in the mud, two pubs just a short walk down the canal and ticket prices that don't make you wince. Plus this year Cropredy features just about the best live band in the known universe: Bellowhead. Please kneel with me as we pray the current excellent weather holds... 

Some tickets still available...dig out the tent and we'll see you there!

People at the bar, let me hear you say "how much?!"

It's that groovy tax thang again

Morning folks. First off, mucho apologios for the lack of blogging recently. I've simply been too busy dealing with the financial engineering resulting from the worldwide sensation that is "Let's Kick the Euro into Touch". Inevitably, this has involved a degree of tax dodging, whoops I mean tax planning, with the occasional trip to that well-known holiday destination, the Cayman Islands. It's amazing the people you bump into over there but what nice a chap that Jimmy Carr is. And Tony Blair too.

So it's no surprise that my return post is about tax. As well as my own trans-national comings and goings, I am inspired by today's latest nonsensical blathering from someone in government to the effect that paying your plumber in cash is going to condemn you to the fires of hades. What a busy place hell must be.

If the government keeps telling us what's "morally wrong" about this tax business they are going to make themselves look very stupid and very red-faced. There is no end of government associates who might fall into this category and if Dave and his chums decide to shun them all, then they will be friendless very rapidly (too late to worry about that, I hear you cry!)

Now let's get this straight. Some years ago, a judge laid down the legal bottom line for tax. He said that "there is no obligation on any man to pay a penny more in tax than necessary." Do you pay more in tax than you need to? Possibly but only because you've cocked up or you're not that savvy when it comes to this confusing tax lark. Do you find yourself saying at the end of the tax year, well I've got a few bob spare, I think I'll send it to those nice people at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs? You do not. So why do we have a go at people in the public eye, who simply follow the same dictum as you and I? Why is this "morally wrong"? Where do you draw the line between Jimmy Carr's cunning little scheme and Mr and Mrs Smith next door who transfer some shares between each other so as to maximise their capital gains tax allowances? Are they morally beyond the pale too? Of course not. The difference is that Jimmy Carr has got a lot more tax to save than Mr and Mrs Smith. Our resentment is directed not so much at the tax dodging but at the fact that some people have a lot more dosh than we do. It's that good old politics of envy again. Remember this obvious truth: you can't dodge tax if you're not liable to it in the first place.

Remember also the following facts:

• British tax law is ludicrously complicated.
• The government is in charge of tax law. They can change it and they regularly do. So tax loopholes are created and/or preserved by the government.
• We are far too heavily taxed.
• The reason for this is that the government spends too much.

So, as always, we are reminded that the root of all evil is not necessarily the love of money but the government's love of spending other people's money. If anything is "morally wrong", it's that.

Must dash now as the plumber's just off and he wants paying...I think he said he'd prefer cash...a further spell in the fiery depths awaits I fear...

Ok here it is - my song for Europe!

Too late for Eurovision?

What with Bayern Munich somehow contriving to lose a match they dominated, thus consigning my beloved Spurs to the Ropey-Dopey league and threatening a mass exodus of our top top players, plus the continued turmoil in Europe, life's tough all round at the moment. So to cheer us all up, I've written a song. Lyrics below and watch out for a post on Youtube when I get round to it.

Is it too late to get Englebert to drop that slushy number and adopt this classic instead? You never know...it's called:

Let's kick the euro into touch!

(or, Buddy can you spare a centime?)

The Greeks are in big trouble 'cause they've run right out of cash

They riot in the streets and their windows all get smashed

There's empty homes in Ireland, they don't know what to do

The whole wretched Eurozone is mired in the poo...

So let's try and help them out now 'cause they really need a hand

Here's my message of salvation all the way from Eng-er-land...

Oh let's kick the euro into touch!

All this stupid talking, it really is too much

We're sick of seeing stock markets all falling off a cliff

Let's ditch the bloody euro - it's a stiff!

At the end of the millennium they hatched a cunning plot

To tighten their grip over us - it put us on the spot

We'd all have just one currency, oh wasn't it a hoot?

But the project's all gone belly up, let's give the thing the boot...

Oh let's kick the Euro into touch

The idea's just so bonkers - could have come straight from Lord Such

We haven't got the readies to go smokin' with the Dutch

So let's kick the Euro into touch

The drachma and the lire, they disappeared from view

The deutsch mark, the escudo, the Finnish thingy too

Now Berlusconi's bunga-bunga parties need a bung

And Portugal's as useful as a ladder without rungs

So let's kick the Euro into touch

Let's boot it in the long grass, no one likes it very much

The coup de grace is needed, let's kick away its crutch

Yes let's kick the Euro into touch!

The Germans they were thrilled, the Irish gave the punt a punt

Jacques Delors he really loved it but he's just a dim French c*nt

Now the emperor's new clothes have simply vanished in the mist

Dig out that old retsina, let's all go and get pissed!

Yes let's kick the Euro into touch

The pasta costs a fortune now, paella's twice as much

The chicken piri piri's price has gone right through the roof

Yes let's give the Euro one big hoof!

Oh let's kick the Euro into touch

The politicians conned us by talking double dutch

Now the whole damn place is b'rassic

When once we all were flush

So, let's kick the Euro into touch

Yes let's kick the Euro into touch

(We loved the lire)

Oh let's kick the Euro into touch

(And the peseta)

Yes let's kick the Euro into touch!

Pending the Youtube sensation you'll have to make up your own tune but, as a guide, think Mad Dogs and Englishmen. See you at Euorvision...

We make our own entertainment here, you know - part II

"'Oss 'oss, wee 'oss!" Such is the cry to be heard reverberating around the streets of Padstow on May Day each year. No, it's not an announcement of that day's additions to the menu at Rick Stein's place but a central part of the historic May Day celebrations in the town. Mrs Marshside had always wanted to witness this spectacle so we wrapped in a visit to Padstow with one to the in-laws and put on our best Cornish accents.

The Padstow 'obby 'oss (Hobby Horse in proper English) is another of these mysterious and ancient rituals that dot the kingdom. What happens is that the 'oss emerges from his "stables" at one of the pubs and kind of dances up the streets, followed by a crowd of blokes playing accordions and drums. In front of the 'oss, dances a "teaser", waving a small shield and trying to inspire/annoy/seduce (it's not at all clear which) the 'oss. The 'oss itself  consists of a chap wearing a horse head mask and a large black circular disk around himself from which hangs a kind of heavy black skirt. The thing must weigh a ton and not surprisingly, the 'oss man (it's always a man) changes very frequently. The teaser (usually a girl) changes rather less so.   

Just to complicate matters further, there's actually two 'osses. The newer one appeared around 1919 courtesy of the temperance movement who were concerned that the whole thing had become just an excuse for an enormous piss-up. This 'oss has blue colours and the older one has red. The locals all dress in white, accessorised with sashes and the like in the colours of the 'oss they follow. I was hoping that this would climax in some huge punch-up between the two groups (have you seen the film "Colours" about the LA gang wars?) but disappointingly this doesn't happen, there being little in the way of rivalry between the two factions; there's no 'oss wars in Padstow.

Of course the temperance people were right: the event is an enormous piss-up. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a large number of pubs in Padstow, which is necessary to fuel the large numbers of people there. Well at least there's large numbers on May Day; I can't imagine how that many pubs survive the rest of the year but perhaps they make enough money on May 1st to take most the year off. The place is so busy that all the pubs remove all their furniture for the day, so it feels like you're drinking in a village hall or something.

In recent years, Padstow has of course become more famous for celebrity chef Rick Stein than for the 'oss. There's probably no truth in the rumour that the 'obby 'oss ritual is not ancient at all but was conceived by Rick as a way of attracting punters to his various establishments. And my what establishments he has: the main restaurant; the cafe; the patisserie; the shop; the fish and chip shop; the fishmongers and the cookery school, which was advertising an evening of cookery demonstrations by the man himself at a bargain £85 a head. We were going to go for cod and chips from Rick's chippy but by the time we got there it had closed for the day and in fact most of his other places were closed all day. Rick himself was nowhere to be seen - gone fishing perhaps.

So I can't give you a recommendation to eat at Rick's but I can recommend checking out the 'oss business, although perhaps only once: the accordionists play the same tune all the time and after a while you either get into a kind of trance-like state (think Wicker Man) or make an exit, swearing you will kill the next person to start playing that bloody tune. But the locals love it. Round our way, this kind of thing, whether it be the Mummers, the Hoodeners or the Morris men, is greeted with a rather weary scepticism and people will actually go out of their way to avoid them. But in Padstow the locals, bless 'em, go mad for it and even babes in arms are suitably attired and adorned with their colours. 

So with a cry of "'oss 'oss, wee 'oss!" we salute the people of Padstow and long may the 'osses live to be teased another day. Like all May Day traditions, this one clearly has something to do with fertility which seems paradoxical given the effect of drinking all that beer and cider but no matter, the birth rate in the area seems healthy enough.

I leave you with a bit of homework. Just see if you can make sense of the chorus of the Padstow May Song, so incessantly played by the 'oss followers of old Padstow town:

O! where is St George,

O where is he O?

He is out in his long-boat all on the salt sea O.

Up flies the kite and down falls the lark O,

Aunt Ursula Birdhood she had an old ewe

And she died in her own Park O.

Catchy, eh? 

OK consumers, relax

OK you can cease your frenzied clicking...I see in the small print that this new route to untold riches is available only to blogs in the US of A. The rest of us are clearly of too delicate a nature to be exposed to this unremitting consumerist onslaught.  

Typical, eh? I know times are tough but people in the rest of the world can buy stuff too y'know! Sometimes you just feel completely in the grasp of some teenage HTML coder who has more money than most countries and is using you to make even more. I read today that the Swedish bloke who started Spotify is worth about £123,544,235,355,656,222,000 and is barely out of primary school.

And my point is...? Er....blerrrrrrghghghgggggg.....

Cola and sex!

I think you can safely ignore this post. It has nothing to do with cola or sex. It is simply here to try and fathom out how this advertising lark works on this blog business. Supposedly, if I blog about something on which you might spend money, then all sorts of exciting brands will appear, begging me to allow them to advertise to my millions of followers. Then you, dear follower, will excitedly click on the seductive ads and I will make loads of money. Or something. So...we've done sex and cola, how about cars, burgers, beer, holidays, gambling...er...music!

Click on!

Chez moi, le deluge!

I paraphrase de Gaulle (I think it was?) as I watch the rain continue to fall and the level of the water in the moat rise alarmingly here at Marshside Acres. Yes it is now officially the wettest drought on record.  With more rain forecast for the next few days, we're saved from worrying about the grass and the veg although unfortunately, the weather does not reduce the volume of bird defecation. The gun remains high on the shopping list.

My main reason for lapsing into French was not for the sake of  a witty and topical pun (well I liked it) but as a nod to the elections currently underway across the channel. El Presidente is in a spot of bother it seems and is now reduced to courting the national front vote. No doubt he'll be promising further repatriations of those less than 100% francais, which sounds risky as that probably includes him. I've not been following all this too carefully but I gather his main rival is promising "growth" as opposed to Sarkozy's "austerity". If only life were si facile.

What can we learn from the French? The thing is that they are amazingly successful when you consider that they work short hours, have long lunches and even longer holidays and as a result have markedly uncompetitive labour costs. Like the Chinese, they don't seem to believe in markets but unlike the Chinese, they can't produce every possible consumer item at a world-beating price. They produce some decent wine and cheese but surely that's not enough?

Relying almost completely on nuclear power stations is a clever move, allowing them to laugh in the face of rising oil prices. So there's one lesson for us, as we plunge ourselves into poverty in order to pay for more bloody windmills. But here's another thing: they have a ruling class with a shared and focused mind-set.

The French booted out their aristocracy in a rather violent way some years back but since then have replaced them with something similar albeit without the titles and the laissez manger cake attitude. They have universities geared up to churn out a ruling class in the shape of politicians and civil servants. We used to have a ruling class who learnt on the job, i.e. on the family estate and it seemed to work pretty well, if building the world's biggest empire, making all the world's cotton fabric, controlling most of the world's shipping, etc., etc., is anything to go by. (I hear mutterings of "what about the workers!" but even Karl Marx was impressed: living in London he marvelled that in Britain, in the mid-19th century, you could buy five hundred kinds of hammer!)

Like the British aristocracy of yore, the French ruling class have the inner certainty that they were born to run the country and by and large, the rest of the population seems happy to go along with this. This is maybe because they trust the elite always to do what's best for France. While most of us float around in a kind of democratic vacuum, our futures decided by unelected wasters in the EU, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Central Bank, etc., the French make these extra-national institutions work for them (the Common Agricultural Policy) or just ignore them (the repatriation of gypsies).

We seem to have entered an age of "sham democracy". The Chinese and the Russians are making hay out of this but big questions are being asked in Europe as people find out that perhaps democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be (just ask the Greeks and the Irish) and what really counts is good government, not democratically elected government. In a funny sort of way, even the protesters at St Paul's and Wall Street were saying the same thing, as I've pointed out before. But how to you ensure good government without (or more to the point, even with) elections? Perhaps the French can show us the way.

With reform of the House of Lords on the agenda, now's the chance to re-empower our own aristocracy, not to mention the monarchy. Chic alors! Or as we say here, unleash the hounds...

Water shortage - God takes action

How's the weather with you? Well it's raining here, just like it has every day since the hosepipe ban came into force. I confidently predicted this outcome, putting my faith in a combination of sod's law and God's way of correcting the planet's little imbalances.

I don't know if you use a hosepipe but here at Marshside Acres it is pretty indispensable, whether we're trying to encourage a few acres of grass seed (we are) or tending the runner beans, so vital to man's well-being (see previous post) or cleaning the fleet of luxury motors. It's this last task that is exercising me today, my other half having inadvertently parked a car under the roosting place of some particularly loose-bowelled pigeons. So it came to pass that a few minutes ago I was outside - in the rain! - with bucket and sponge, trying to remove the avian excrement before it ate its way through the gleaming paintwork.

How silly did I feel? Groups of local peasants gathered round to chuckle at my endeavours, shouting incantations to our local feathered "friends"  to confound my efforts while all the time I became wetter and wetter and muttered reminders to myself about buying a gun (to shoot pigeons you understand, not local peasants, although now you mention it...)

All the while, the hosepipe hung mournfully in flaccid disuse. We are allowed to use it to top up the fish pond which means we could also use it to fill the many gushing ornamental fountains that dot the gardens here, as long as we bung a fish in them. (I suppose it has to be a live one.) And there is always the chance that when so doing, some of the water may find its way onto other parts of the garden, quite by accident you understand.  But otherwise, we're a hosepipe-free zone (honest).

So should we all get a nice warm glow from the knowledge that our abstinence is warding off the transformation of this green and pleasant land into a new Sahara? That's as well as the warm glow from drying out in front of the fire of course. I was wondering to myself just how much of the UK's water consumption is accounted for by domestic hosepipes when I spotted in the paper that total domestic water use represents only 8% of all the country's water needs. Blimey! Now how much of that domestic consumption goes through a hosepipe? Let's say it's 10% (although I'd bet it's a good bit less than this). This would mean that less than 1% of the UK's water usage is going to be saved by the hosepipe ban. Perhaps much less than 1%.

Now I'm all for staving off the drought but clearly, this particular measure is just a drop in the reservoir. This is very much in the same vein as buying organic vegetables (see previous post) or changing your car to one that does a few more miles to the gallon. You may get a warm glow of self-righteousness from all these things but if you really think you're saving the planet then you are suffering from delusions and descent into madness looms.

Buy a globe and one of Professor Brian Cox's excellent books on the solar system. Upon even the briefest of examinations you will see that the UK is a very small place in the context of the Earth and that the latter is an equally small place when compared to the Sun. These things are a lot bigger than you are so don't waste your time worrying about them and don't kid yourself that your actions are anything other than infinitesimally insignificant.

Instead, get an air rifle and set about those blasted pigeons. We've even got some nesting in the garage for goodness' sake! If you want to save the world, the best course of action is to praise the Lord...and pass the ammo.