Misanthrope Girl

So Starbucks has, as we now know, given into the pack of rabid dogs which have been assailing it by agreeing to review its tax position in the UK.

Whilst personally I’d like to hope that the result of the review will be them paying even less money to the UK Treasury, I doubt this wish will come true. Nor, I guess, will my second choice of the company sending a cheque for a single penny to UK Uncut and telling them to spend it wisely.

The hypocrites at The Guardian reported on Monday that in order to finance this change of heart Starbucks have begun withdrawing employee benefits. Predictably this lesson in practical economics hasn’t gone down too well with the idiots below the line. It’s almost as if they expected Starbucks to use the magic money tree to have obtain this extra dough without any of the laws of physics economics being broken…

If I were a shareholder* I would at this point be fairly livid. No, not over the changes to employee benefits, but at the thought that a company I part own is giving more of it to the wastrels in government to piss up the wall in pointless ventures, be they foreign or domestic.

I hope that the shareholders of Starbucks request answers as to why the policy has been changed and ask to see what the, if any, financial rationale for this decision was. If no decent answers are forthcoming then I suggest that they should demand that the heads of those responsible be delivered to them on platters as they don’t seem to be aware of their duty.

For myself I shall now be boycotting Starbucks. As someone who doesn’t drink coffee this isn’t a major hardship for me but I have, in the past, been known to pick up a hot chocolate on very cold days. Not any more.

Nothing, it seems, if you are Richard Murphy. Always looking to attack those of us who believe in a smaller state and lower taxes, Murphy sent these tweets which purport to show that the think tank The Adam Smith Institute is government funded:

Why is the right wing fundamentalist think tank the Adam Smith Institute 70% funded by UK government funds? ht.ly/dOYYw

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) September 19, 2012

The Adam Smith Institute is 70% government funded and pays its director £1.3 million a year. Why?ht.ly/dOZ5L

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) September 19, 2012

Which, to anyone who knows even a little about the ASI, seems odd… especially given that they don’t disclose where their money comes from.

If we read the (Gruniad) article to which Ritchie links we find this (my emphasis):

Attention has focused on the activities of Adam Smith International (ASI), a “leading international advisory firm” that is dedicated to promoting the “benefits of competition, good government and individual liberty”. Over 70% of ASI’s income now comes from the Department for International Development. The ASI’s managing director, William Morrison, received £1.3m in total pay and dividends in 2010.

Would it be libel to accuse him of deliberately lying to his followers?

Given that the Gruniad’s parent company has demonstrated in previous years how to make themselves as tax efficient s possible, it might be expected by now that some of their skill in reading a balance sheet might have passed down to the reporters of said organ.

It seems though that such knowledge transfer isn’t taking place if today’s attempt to do a hatchet job on Lycamobile is anything to go by.

So, what has Lycamobile done to deserve the hairdryer treatment?

A mobile phone company that has paid no corporation tax for three years has become the Conservatives’ most generous corporate donor after giving more than £300,000 over the last nine months, new figures show.

…

The latest available figures show the company did not pay any tax between 2008 and 2010, despite generating a turnover of between £47m and £88m.

Now those with half a brain cell will already be screaming that turnover isn’t profit and you’d be correct – but the Gruniad article is written to fulfil an agenda and nowhere in the piece is the actual profit/loss mentioned.

So what are the relevant figures* (2011 numbers were not available)?

And now we know why Lycamobile paid no corporation tax in 2010 and 2011.

On Tuesday the security firm Unisys released the latest results of what they call their bi-annual global Unisys Security Index, a ‘global study that provides insights into the attitudes of consumers on a wide range of security related issues‘.

Of the two questions that the survey asked, it was the second one about social media, which caught the attention of the MSM – or the Guardian anyway.

What did they ask?

During recent unrest in major UK cities, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were used to coordinate criminal activity. Do you agree with these statements?

• The authorities are playing catch up and need more resources to monitor online behaviour?
• During outbreaks of unrest, providers should temporarily shut down social networks to prevent coordinated criminal activity?
• The authorities should have open access to data about social network users in order to prevent coordinated criminal activity>
• Providers of social networks should get more information on the people using their services before they allow use?

The Gruniad’s article on the matter says:

More than two-thirds of adults support the shutdown of social networks during periods of social unrest such as the riots in England this summer, new research has revealed.

A poll of 973 adults carried out for the online security firm Unisys found 70% of adults supported the shutdown of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), while only 27% disagreed.

Which, after reading the report proper, only goes to confirm (as if confirmation were needed) that one should never take anything in the press at face value these days (if indeed one ever could).

The report says that the following percentages agreed with the four statements above: 49%, 48%, 46% and 42%.

Almost half I’ll grant you but hardly a majority, let alone 70%. Helpfully the report also gives some idea of how the responses breakdown by age. Not fully but enough to give us more of an idea of the views of each age group. It found that:

[The] desire to take strong measures rises with age:

• More resources for police: 41% of those 18-24 to 52% of those 50-64 (seniors: 44%)
• Temporary shut-downs during social unrest: from 28% of those 18-24 to 60% of seniors
• Police monitoring: from 36% of those 18-24 to 52% of seniors
• Background checks of new users: from 28% of those 18-24 to 49% of seniors.

Which shows us that a majority only exists as you go up the age scale. No surprises there. As for the 70% figure? The closest we get is for one age group on one statement.

Indeed the figure ’70’ doesn’t feature anywhere in the report, or assuming that the reporter James Ball (whose bio says that he ‘is a data journalist working for the Guardian investigations team. He joined the Guardian from Wikileaks, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’) didn’t get beyond it, the press release either.

About the only useful bit of the Guardian article therefore is the space filling rent-a-quote:

“It’s very worrying that people would believe shutting down social networks would be in any way desirable,” said Padraig Reidy, news editor of Index on Censorship. “The vast majority of social network use during the unrest was people spreading information and helping each other get home safely. These kinds of actions would weaken the UK’s position against authoritarian regimes who censor internet access. As we live more of our lives online, people should be conscious of the amount of power they’re potentially handing over to government.”

None of which I can disagree with at all.