DANNY DANNY DANNY, OUT OUT OUT, AS THEY SAY IN INVERNESS, NAIRN, BADENOCH AND STRATHSPEY

What on earth was Danny Alexander thinking about when he agreed that the head of the Student Loan Company could avoid tax?


Indeed who did he think he was agreeing to this arrangement? Dave Santa Hartnell?


And when one member of the Cabinet (Pickles) is horrified that some people for example those running English councils are paid more than the prime minister (well, more excluding the country estate and desirable town residence, with generous expenses available to spend on both of them, of course. Not to mention a wide range of free transport from Queen's Flight to chauffeur driven cars, personal photographers, image consultants and staff for the wife), why is another member of the same Cabinet agreeing to a man who only has a little loan company to run, having a bigger salary than His Prime Sinisterness?


Ed Lester, for that is the bloke involved, managed to get himself a deal from Alexander that meant he could avoid around £40,000 a year by paying tax at 21% instead of up to 50%, and avoiding National Insurance altogether by being paid through his own private company. 


Isn't this a little embarrassing for a government that promised that as well as making life hell on earth for the poor in the UK, they would also be coming down hard on the tax avoiders and evaders?


This deal has now been rescinded and Lester is back in the land of the rest of us, paying tax and NI, but how many others are there getting away with diddling us on a government minister's say so? 


Needless to say, no one knows.


*******


I'm not sure that this can be true, but I just read it on Facebook. If it is, I would have to wonder if Mr McArthur is the full shilling, as my Granny would say:


SCOTTISH PARLIMENT MOTION
Date of Lodging: 02 February 2012
Short Title: Hands off Groundskeeper Willie
S4M-01921 Liam McArthur () (Scottish Liberaldemocrats): 


That the Parliament notes that it has been confirmed that Groundskeeper Willie of The Simpsons fame hails from Kirkwall, Orkney; understands that the revelation is made in an episode entitled The Daughter Also Rises, to be broadcast in America on 12 February 2012, where Willie confides in Bart that his father was a ‘doonie’ and his mother was an ‘uppie’, in reference to the two teams in the world-famous ‘Ba game’; understands how the tension created by this modern day version of Capulets and Montagues tore his family apart but welcomes the fact that the long-running debate over Willie’s heritage is now at an end, and calls on Glasgow City Council to renounce its claim to Orkney’s Groundskeeper Willie as a son of that fair city.