@JoeMurphyLondon: EXCLUSIVE LORD FINK INTERVIEW. Everyone avoids tax, says peer. He admits setting up family trusts in Switzerland http://t.co/FbMXGbV6ws
Blimey if he wasn't a tory everyone on here would be calling him a bottler!
I would have thought that his reputation would actually be damaged if it was said he hadn't engaged in tax avoidance and had paid more tax than he needed to. Surely tax avoidance itself should be deemed a neutral phrase.
Pretty hard for Ed's lawyers to argue that when he's said it's 'dodgy'.
The potential legal action may be bad for Miliband, but is it good for the Tories? Lord Fink is treasurer of the Conservative Party and has donated £2.62m to the Conservative party. He is one of the top 20 biggest donors to the Conservative Party. It'll remind people where the Tories get their money from and may explain how tax can be avoided perfectly legally.
For all excitement ahead of @IpsosMORI 's "corker" of a poll less than £1,000 has been matched on Betfair 's majority market since 4am
I think the "corker" element is Lib's on 6%.
It IS pretty astonishing that the Lib's could be doing that badly just weeks from the election, but it generally seem's to be pretty much "priced in" now....
6% would be a new low for the Lib Dems from Ipsos-Mori, if not for other firms, so it represents a further weakening of their position/an outlier (delete as appropriate).
So life imitates art. The Ukraine-Russia ceasefire deal feels a lot like the Federation-Cardassian treaty, one side will stick to it and force their people to do so and the other will brazenly break it and continue to ship weapons into the ceasefire zone.
There is no compromise with warlords like Putin, we can only defeat them, this is going to end badly.
"A candidate for Prime Minister should have integrity. Libelling someone - if that is the case - is not the mark of someone with integrity."
It's a very grey area. A newspaper was forced to pay 5p for calling Christine Keeler 'a shameless slut'. The jury agreed she'd been libelled but her reputation was already damaged.
If Miliband called into question the integrity of any one of a dozen bankers in 2009 the precise detail of the libel would be of little importance.
Indeed politicians are libelling people all the time. Didn't Edward Heath call Tiny Rowland 'The unacceptable face of capitalism'?
@JoeMurphyLondon: (2/3) Worst Lib Dem share for 25 years in superb @IpsosMORI poll. But most humiliating, they're behind the combined SNP/Plaid share of 7%
@JoeMurphyLondon: EXCLUSIVE LORD FINK INTERVIEW. Everyone avoids tax, says peer. He admits setting up family trusts in Switzerland http://t.co/FbMXGbV6ws
The normal man on the street doesn't have enough money to make setting up a family trust to legally avoid tax a financially viable approach to take, which is why legal tax avoidance can be almost as toxic as illegal tax evasion.
It's one tax system for the rich and another for everyone else.
@JoeMurphyLondon: (2/3) Worst Lib Dem share for 25 years in superb @IpsosMORI poll. But most humiliating, they're behind the combined SNP/Plaid share of 7%
Labour must be absolutely romping it in England with those numbers ?
@JGForsyth: First, weaponise. Now, 'another Milly Dowler moment'. Labour needs to stop showing how the sausage is made, it is not edifying
A Milly Dowler moment. Really.
I may be wrong on this. But wasn't it eventually shown that the hacking of her phone (which I did not like) did not in fact result in the deletion of her email messages?
If it's a Milly Dowler moment then EdM is going to have to say that Fink has done something criminal. That's quite a racheting up.
There was a thread (yesterday?) which showed the lead the Tories need over Labour falls as LD share falls. Does that continue with LDs on sub-10%, or is that an unreasonable extrapolation?
So do with think the upshot of today's MORI will be EMWNBPM or EICIPM?"
My feeling is that as we've had maybe 20 odd polls in the last couple of weeks all showing roughly the same result the only thing this one will tell us is how accurate or otherwise MORI is as a pollster
Not great for the minor parties, UKIP, LibDem and Green all in single figures. I suppose it's OK for the Greens as now within 2% of UKIP. Still, movements within MoR.
@JoeMurphyLondon: EXCLUSIVE LORD FINK INTERVIEW. Everyone avoids tax, says peer. He admits setting up family trusts in Switzerland http://t.co/FbMXGbV6ws
The normal man on the street doesn't have enough money to make setting up a family trust to legally avoid tax a financially viable approach to take, which is why legal tax avoidance can be almost as toxic as illegal tax evasion.
It's one tax system for the rich and another for everyone else.
Most pensions and life insurance policies are in effect trusts. Far more of us benefit from trusts than just the rich of this world.
I may be old-fashioned but I rather like the idea of the rule of law. The law gets made. You comply with it. And you have the certainty of knowing that having complied with the law you are not going to be pursued by the state just because it doesn't like you - for some other reason - in an arbitrary, capricious or even malicious manner.
The barons felt a bit like this when they forced Magna Carta on King John 800 years ago.
Judging by some of the comments Labour seem to think that caprice and ad hominem insults rather than the law are a good basis for government. This is a fundamentally and dangerously unserious position for Labour to take. Aren't there any grown-ups left in it?
Now is time to air the hypothesis that Ashcroft's polls are telling Tories what they want to hear.
Well possibly but I can't see it as deliberate. Would Ashcroft really spend serious amounts of his own money allowing the Tories to delude themselves before an election?
The lesson to follow is the Scottish nationalists. They genuinely thought they were going to win the referendum because of internal polling done by a Canadian firm. The reality was that the firm was telling them what they wanted to hear. I would be very very suspicious of anyone saying that their internal polling is much better than the national polls.
Comments
Now is time to air the hypothesis that Ashcroft's polls are telling Tories what they want to hear.
Lord Fink is treasurer of the Conservative Party and has donated £2.62m to the Conservative party. He is one of the top 20 biggest donors to the Conservative Party.
It'll remind people where the Tories get their money from and may explain how tax can be avoided perfectly legally.
Oh my.
There is no compromise with warlords like Putin, we can only defeat them, this is going to end badly.
"A candidate for Prime Minister should have integrity. Libelling someone - if that is the case - is not the mark of someone with integrity."
It's a very grey area. A newspaper was forced to pay 5p for calling Christine Keeler 'a shameless slut'. The jury agreed she'd been libelled but her reputation was already damaged.
If Miliband called into question the integrity of any one of a dozen bankers in 2009 the precise detail of the libel would be of little importance.
Indeed politicians are libelling people all the time. Didn't Edward Heath call Tiny Rowland 'The unacceptable face of capitalism'?
Ed isn't that stupid.
meh.
But I'm confident I'll be winning £400 from Neil in May
It's one tax system for the rich and another for everyone else.
I may be wrong on this. But wasn't it eventually shown that the hacking of her phone (which I did not like) did not in fact result in the deletion of her email messages?
If it's a Milly Dowler moment then EdM is going to have to say that Fink has done something criminal. That's quite a racheting up.
There was a thread (yesterday?) which showed the lead the Tories need over Labour falls as LD share falls. Does that continue with LDs on sub-10%, or is that an unreasonable extrapolation?
So do with think the upshot of today's MORI will be EMWNBPM or EICIPM?"
My feeling is that as we've had maybe 20 odd polls in the last couple of weeks all showing roughly the same result the only thing this one will tell us is how accurate or otherwise MORI is as a pollster
Kippers are finished.
Green LibDem crossover is pretty much confirmed.
Only thing it really suggests is Green/Kipper crossover is close now.
Instead of all the rabid attempts to smear Ed MIliband on a daily basis why don't Tories put out some genuinely popular policies?
Starting point: Rein in your idiotic CCHQPress twitter feed.
Still, movements within MoR.
I may be old-fashioned but I rather like the idea of the rule of law. The law gets made. You comply with it. And you have the certainty of knowing that having complied with the law you are not going to be pursued by the state just because it doesn't like you - for some other reason - in an arbitrary, capricious or even malicious manner.
The barons felt a bit like this when they forced Magna Carta on King John 800 years ago.
Judging by some of the comments Labour seem to think that caprice and ad hominem insults rather than the law are a good basis for government. This is a fundamentally and dangerously unserious position for Labour to take. Aren't there any grown-ups left in it?
The lesson to follow is the Scottish nationalists. They genuinely thought they were going to win the referendum because of internal polling done by a Canadian firm. The reality was that the firm was telling them what they wanted to hear. I would be very very suspicious of anyone saying that their internal polling is much better than the national polls.