Comments for Misanthrope Girl

Comment on The Business Journalist and her tax muddle by jameshigham

jameshigham — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:24:20 +0000

Could be subject to tax, eh?

Comment on The Business Journalist and her tax muddle by The Thought Gang

The Thought Gang — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:47:39 +0000

There are two reasons why people who do know that tax isn’t paid on sales still insist on referring to sales.

1. Sales will be a big number. This suits the narrative. That most people won’t appreciate the trick is the reason the trick is pulled.
2. Referring to profits, upon which tax *is* due, is no use when there are none, and the whole debate is about why that should/shouldn’t be the case. So the informed listener/reader is invited to think ‘if there are all those sales, then there should be some profits upon which tax should be payable’.

As for calling corporation tax ‘income tax’, I don’t think there’s any issue with the likes of Vince Cable not understanding the system. CT is regularly referred to as ‘corporate income tax’.. so it’s just a version of that. I’d agree that they shouldn’t do it.. but would suggest it’s a symtom of carelessness rather than incompetence.

Comment on The Business Journalist and her tax muddle by Misanthrope Girl

Misanthrope Girl — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:19:47 +0000

Is it any wonder that there is a campaign to have financial literacy taught in schools?

Comment on The Business Journalist and her tax muddle by SadButMadLad

SadButMadLad — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:52:57 +0000

It’s not only a business journalist. I also heard Vince Cable say on R4 that businesses should pay income tax. I nearly crashed my car when I heard that. The guy in charge of the UK’s business hasn’t got a clue about how it all works?

Comment on About the world-renowned author Dan Brown… by Who

Who — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:03:38 +0000

It does skewer him rather well, doesn’t it?

Comment on About the world-renowned author Dan Brown… by Misanthrope Girl

Misanthrope Girl — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:26:53 +0000

With only 140 characters to play with you’d soon learn to eliminate the superfluous words.

Comment on About the world-renowned author Dan Brown… by macheath

macheath — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:32:27 +0000

Take up Twitter? Julia, I have enough difficulty limiting myself to 140 words…

Comment on About the world-renowned author Dan Brown… by jameshigham

jameshigham — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:28:09 +0000

But far more than that – he’s one of Them.

Comment on About the world-renowned author Dan Brown… by JuliaM

JuliaM — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:26:08 +0000

Oh, you should take up Twitter, these things go round at the speed of light on there!

Comment on About the world-renowned author Dan Brown… by macheath

macheath — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:03:02 +0000

Thank you! Michael Deacon’s piece is an absolute gem: “He had all the sequels mapped out. The Mozart Acrostic. The Michelangelo Wordsearch. The Newton Sudoku” had me choking on my coffee.

I heartily applaud your determination to avoid the Brown canon and fervently wish I had done the same; my neighbours on a late-night flight were woken by my growls of suppressed fury as the protagonists – including a professional cryptographer – took a whole six pages to work out that a text was written back-to-front.

Part of the problem is that, leaving aside the dreadful prose style (if that were possible), the man appears to suffer from the common American affliction of regarding Europe as a kind of historical theme park and its natives as something akin to Hobbits or Martians; when confronted with a sort of glorified Easter egg hunt, these poor, benighted souls are naturally unable to solve the toe-curlingly twee clues until led to the sunlit uplands by a citizen of God’s own country. Grrrrrrrgh!