Sorry to bore on about Guardianista hypocrisy, but it just keeps coming. Jackie Ashley (Mrs Marr) writes this morning under the headline “To Chop City Bonuses, Start by Cutting the Testosterone“. Leaving aside the casual sexist stereotyping, is it really true? After all her boss the Guardian Media Group chief executive, Carolyn McCall, was paid a package of £827,000, comprising a salary of £424,000, plus a bonus of £385,000 and benefits in kind of £18,000.

The multi-millionaire columnist Polly Toynbee is this morning ranting against tax dodging corporations in the Guardian. The paper has even set up a campaigning website with fancy interactive graphics. According to the their own annual report Guardian Media Group made £306.4 million before tax. Using astute tax planning and legal manipulation of the tax laws; such as the use of an equity owning trust and a Caymans Islands offshore corporation to avoid stamp duty, they managed to only pay get a rebate of £800,000 in tax last year. That is less than they paid the Guardian Media Group’s chief executive, Carolyn McCall, she got a package of £827,000 whereas so the media fat cats got paid by HM Revenue Commissioners a mere £800,000 in corporation tax. Unbelievable isn’t it?

Here it is in black and white:

The hypocrisy of the Guardianistas is just beyond satire, they are starting a campaign to get corporations to pay more tax, just like they campaign to undermine private education yet themselves went to private schools, they rail against City bonuses yet pay the editor and CEO hundreds of thousands in bonuses. Media fat cats attacking City fat cats is just laughable. Polly says “it’s time to rattle and bang in protest at this outrage”. Quite. Guido has tried to mention this on the Guardian’s Tax Gap campaign blog to no avail…

UPDATE 11.55 : Richard Brooks from the Guardian’s “Tax Gap” blog emails to say they are going to explain the Guardian Media Group’s situation using the same approach they used on the FTSE 100 corporations. Incidentally, before anyone points it out, this blog is published by an offshore corporation owned by an opaque charitable trust, in a remarkably similar way to the Guardian set-up. However, crucially, this blog takes an editorial line which is hypocrisy free, Guido is opposed to most forms of taxation in principle: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

UPDATE 12.09 : As some have pointed out, that looks like an £800,000 tax rebate, rather than a payment. Even worse. No wonder the Guardian can afford shiny new fancy offices…

UPDATE 16.50 : Note amendments and strike-throughs, also note that the Tax Gap blog has now let Guido’s comments through. They also cite Richard Murphy as a tax expert who approves of GMG’s tax strategies. Richard Murphy is hardly independent, he is a regular writer for the Guardian. The Cayman’s dodge was tax neutral they claim. Except when, in the future, it comes to capital gains tax of course.

The Tuscan redistributionist friend of the down-trodden, the three-house-owning, multi-millionairess toff, Polly Toynbee, is ranting against undeserved bonuses. With the colourful prose that earns her £117,000 basic (before book royalties, media fees and advances) she lays into the worth of “performance-related pay” and the bonus culture that sees loss making Northern Rock bosses get a 10% bonus.The loss making Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, got by on a total compensation package of a mere £544,000 up from £473,000 last year. A 15% increase as a reward for losing £26.4 million – no belt tightening for him. His boss, the Guardian Media Group chief executive, Carolyn McCall, was paid a package of £827,000, comprising a salary of £424,000, plus a bonus of £385,000 and benefits in kind of £18,000. An eye watering 90% bonus.

Handy having your friends, rather than shareholders, decide your pay isn’t it? Guido has said it before and he will say it again, Polly merely dislikes the “wrong type” of rich people.

Incidentally, GMG have always been adept at using the Scott Trust and other dodges to minimise tax charges. Guido congratulates them on achieving an effective tax rate 4.99% last year. Remember that the next time Polly Toynbee calls for higher taxes and everyone to pay a fair share.

More profound insight from Steve Richards in the Indy this morning:

“The dividing lines between the parties remain blurred.”

“It’s taken a recession for Brown to be candid about what it takes to make a fairer society. Suddenly the dividing lines in British politics are vividly clear.”

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Gordon’s dithering now appears to be the official government macro-policy stance. We all remember the introduction of the 10p tax rate, the disastrously implemented abolition of it, then Gordon being forced to compensate losers he denied existed. We can see with this inadvertent release of the Treasury document on the implementation of the immediate VAT cut and the planned subsequent VAT hike, how Gordon’s government really operates:

These are indeed serious times, so this kind of low political maneuvering is not just politically dishonest, it further damages confidence. It also shows politicians in the worst light, Guido would argue it actually shows them in a truthful light. World weary columnists like Michael White and Polly Toynbee say that Guido’s political analysis is flawed by his hostility to politicians. Guido argues that the public interest is ill-served by pundits who are too sympathetic and close to politicians.

Well here is a chance for them to demonstrate their superior powers of political analysis of this fundamental dishonesty with the voters. Go on Michael/Polly, stop sneering in the margins, explain how this is in the public interest and not narrow party electoral interest. Go on, for once: justify this behaviour.

The Cameroons should take heart from Anatole Kaletsky’s condemnation of their approach to economics. Kaletsky’s heyday is long past as Mister-E-Man notes on Nick Robinson’s blog -

The same Anatole Kaletsky who in January of this year, in his Times article “Goodbye to all that: the worst is over for the global credit crunch“, predicted that…

…conditions are not nearly as bad as the headlines and market pundits suggest. In Britain, there seems to be almost no chance of economic and financial disasters comparable to those suffered from 1990 to 1992. …I believe that the global credit crisis, far from taking a turn for the worse, is now almost over…. There will be no US recession. …Stock markets around the world will rise in 2008.

Shock horror – Cameron must be devastated not to have this prophetic economic genius on-board…

Anatole Kaletsky is long and very wrong.

Over at Politicalbetting.com Mike Smithson is encouraging the punters to vote on who they think is going to win the Glenrothes by-election – Labour or the SNP?

Over on Betfair the punters are putting their money where their mouths are and making the SNP odds on favourites. Back in July the punters made fools of the pundits over the outcome of the Glasgow East by-election. The pundits are as fickle as teenage girls, the punters are more calculating.

The London based punditry are out of touch, they talk too much to each other. Our old friend Tom Watson has been briefing the press that Labour will win Glenrothes and this will be a great victory for Gordon. He has convinced Gordon to stake what little political capital he has on a Glenrothes comeback campaigning in the constituency. However, as Ben Brogan has detected, so chronic is the shortage of local activists and supporters Labour are press-ganging English Labour MPs and Northern CLP activists to trek past Hadrian’s Wall to help in the constituency. Not exactly a sign of a forthcoming resounding victory.

Guido thinks the punters not the pundits are right, again. Gordon’s personal visit should, if the curse of the one-eyed son of the manse still holds, have doomed Labour’s candidate. Labour are throwing the kitchen sink at this, heck the 10p tax bailout cost a few billion during the Crewe by-election, this time the bailout of Scottish banks cost tens of billions for this by-election. It will be close…