Boris Johnson today announced that Bob Diamond, President of Barclays, will be heading up the Mayor's Fund - a scheme where businessmen & women can contribute to community groups in London. Within an hour, Ken Livingstone's little helpers were phoning round everyone saying he was a, wait for it, shock horror - a Non Dom! Turns out he isn't. But why are they so jumpy? Who would care if he was? Surely we want to encourage investment.
All this was on a day when Ken launched his community cohesion document - and then slagged of Belgians because they don't spend much money when they visit the capital. You couldn't make it up.
10 comments:
"you couldnt make it up"?
But Ken Leavingsoon has in the past and does now and will in the future!
Ken Leavingsoon will lie and cheat and smear and manipulate and use his private taxpayer funded information office/ministry of truth in his bid to retain power! Ken Leavingsoon is a typical socialist, a fake on the make?
You couldn't make it up.
Ken did.
The chap's non-dom status is of course due to Ken's party.
Why does it matter if Bob Diamond is a non-dom? He is working in the UK for a UK bank, so that is hardly bring investment to the UK. Barclays was here a hundred years before Bob Diamond was born. When I worked in the USA, I was taxed on my worldwide income, no ifs, no buts, just like any American. It is not unreasoable that we should do the same.
David said...
"The chap's non-dom status is of course due to Ken's party."
Huh? Bob Diamond is American.
He is working in the UK for a UK bank, so that is hardly bring investment to the UK. Barclays was here a hundred years before Bob Diamond was born.
Take a look at BZW's record before Bob Diamond took over. Compare and contrast with the performance of Barclays Capital since. Yeah, I'm sure he did all that with no inward investment, and knows nothing about how to raise money ? Jesus wept, the guy has been the most successful banking CEO in the world for the last 10 years - why the hell wouldn't Boris want his advice ?
As for non-dom - even if it were true, who gives a s**t ? The guy earns pots in the UK and therefore pays pots of tax in the UK - I don't care how much he earns elsewhere and where he pays tax on it.
Infoholic:
The highest paid earners at Barclays are not Bob Diamond but Iain Abrahams and Michael Keeley who made all their money from ripping off the UK and US tax man. If you think that is creaying productive investment then you don't know what investment is. I have no problem with Bob Diamond being paid a lot of money for what he does, and I have no problem with his tax status, because apparently he doesn't claim non-dom status (wouldn't do him a lot of good as a US citizen except for his capital gains), but I do have problems with people who have lived in the UK all their lives who can claim non-dom status who use it to reduce their UK tax bills when other UK tax payers with otherwise the same income and other fact patterns pay tax on a different basis.
Tax only works if it is seen to be fair. Saying we will let X or Y off because they are good for the economy is logically flawed. Too much inequity in the tax system causes it to collapse.
Maybe the problem is with the tax system? If it is so infernally complex that even its own administrators get their knickers in a twist (and they do), then it is open to the extremely bright to rip it off.
Make the system simple, straightforward and clear, and the financially savvy will move on to making money in a way that helps both them and the economy far more fruitfully.
But since the ex-chancellor is not very bright, he can't see that.
A non-dom? Like the new multi-millionairre non-dom advisor on reducing poverty that No Mandate Brown just appointed to his Cabinet of all the Talentless?
"Boris" has lost the plot and is losing the election so who cares?
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