Royal finances

It sickens me to see a gang of MPs demanding that the Prince of Wales open up his finances to the nation (see here). Not because Charles deserves to keep his own affairs as secret as possible, but because they don't demand the same of the super-rich in this country. In 2000, multi-millionaire Lord Levy paid £5,000 in tax - I paid more last year and I can assure you I didn't earn anywhere near as much as he did. He claimed mitigating circumstances and was appalled that the information had been obtained illegally, but we will never know if those mitigating circumstances were true or not, because we're not allowed to see what he's paid in subsequent tax years.

While we clamp down on the poor and the disadvantaged, we turn a blind eye to the tens of billions of pounds lost each year to the super-rich, who - let's be honest - are hardly in need of it. Rupert Murdoch's News International Corporation has - according to Johann Hari (see here) - paid zero in Corporation Tax for over a decade. So the next time you see The Sun or The Times bemoaning the state of Britain's finances, write them a letter asking them what their financial contribution to the country amounts to...

In other news, I see the US is finally making moves on climate change, but only in the sense it intends to reward those in its own country who offer technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (see here). Ultimately what it says about Kyoto is true, but it is a sad indictment on our capitalist way of life that the US, Australia et al refuse to countenance the one thing that would guarantee to make a difference in this battle, namely a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It's time people learned to consume less - from Big Macs to gas-guzzling 4x4s in urban environments. This expotential growth in consumption cannot continue indefinitely, and the fallout from its eventual demise grows bigger every single day.