Archive for January, 2012

Newer Entries »

Tony Blair has income of £12 million, spends £8 million on administration but pays only £300,000 tax

January 8, 2012

I am not Tony Blair’s greatest fan and don’t have very high expectations of him. Nevertheless, the manner in which he cashes in on his former position is breathtaking! Personal ethics are clearly unknown to him.

Paying 2.5% of his income as tax is a pretty impressive case of tax avoidance (which is probably perfectly legal and not tax evasion). But it makes him a parasite. Some parasites are useful but he is not one of them.

The Telegraph:

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair channelled millions of pounds through a complicated web of companies and paid just a fraction in tax

Official accounts show a company set up by Mr Blair to manage his business affairs paid just £315,000 in tax last year on an income of more than £12 million. In that time, he employed 26 staff and paid them total wages of almost £2.3 million. ….

(more…)

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Ethics, Politics | 5 Comments »

The data, all the data and nothing but the data

January 5, 2012

(Reuters) – Unreported data from early trials of experimental medicines in humans can result in harm to future patients and needless costs for health systems, according to scientists writing in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday.

The role of statistics in research leads to obvious risks for the drawing of conclusions about causal relationships between parameters without actually increasing the understanding about the underlying mechanisms. In pharmaceutical and health research such conclusions provide enormous financial benefits for the researchers and their sponsors – and not always in the interests of the patients involved.

(more…)

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Medicine, Research, Science | Comments Off on The data, all the data and nothing but the data

Saving your losses for a sunny day!

January 2, 2012

A case of squirrelling away your losses to avoid taxes when times are good!!

Allowing for deferred taxes to average out the ups and downs of a business cycle makes good sense. But of course such provisions are exploited to the full – especially by the financial “industry”.

Barclays stockpiles ‘losses’ to soften tax obligations

Barclays has amassed a war chest of “losses” to offset against future tax payments that can almost rival those at the crippled state-backed banks, despite remaining strongly profitable.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Business, Ethics | Comments Off on Saving your losses for a sunny day!

Newer Entries »