IT is no joke for certain people of course but I do feel compelled to ask the question: ‘Where do the very smart people put their money to hide it from the taxman?’
The answer is under their Panama hats.
Mind you, if it is the Turks and Caicos Islands we are talking about it would have to be under your Fez.
I can afford to be flippant about this serious matter even though my financial affairs have always been conducted in an offshore island by which I mean the one where I was born and brought up. You know the one I mean.
But they have always been safe from the scrutiny of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the United Kingdom. They can’t nail me, however, much they try.
I pay the low income tax required of me by the Isle of Man Treasury.
If anything it is they who are complicit in whatever wrong I might be accused of doing.
All I can say is that if HMRC want to investigate my financial affairs in this offshore island all they have to do is get on the boat and come over and call in at the offices of Lloyds Bank on Prospect Hill in Douglas where I keep my money and see where it gets them.
I have ordered them in no uncertain terms not to talk about my finances to anybody else but me.
All I can say now is that I hope the UK Labour Party’s self-appointed RichfinderGeneral Mr Corbyn reads the Examiner.
A READER wishing to be known only as the Whistleblower of West Baldwin tells me that in the Examiner there was a planning application for building a ‘single large gentleman’s residence’.
Wants to live off the fat of the land does he?’
THIS week’s crossword clue has come in from Sylvia Lawrinson. It was in the Times quick cryptic as follows: ‘People generally warm on island in the British Isles’ (7).
MEANWHILE in the current shortage of other crossword clues let me draw attention to the Daily Telegraph general knowledge crossword which asked which character in Shakespeare’s ‘Love’s Labour Lost’ uses the word :‘Honorificabilitudinatatibus.’
I have to confess that I don’t know.
I can’t even pronounce it.
JOHN Garfield reports how America’s George Mason University in Virginia decided to announce that its law school would be renamed after the late Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia, making it the Antonin Saclia School of Law. Its acronym has now been changed hastily to the Antonin Scalia Law School.
Well, you don’t want to make an ass of yourself do you?
CROSSWORD: Mankind
THE Daily Mail Online published a photograph with the caption ‘There is a deadly animal in this picture. Can you see it? Photo shows a rare and venomous predator perfectly camouflaged.’
It actually showed UK Chancellor George Osborne.
THERE are commercials on Manx Radio which say: ‘Official Manx government figures show that oil is cheaper than gas for heating your home.’
What do the unofficial Manx government figures say?
FUNNIES File: The Manx Independent reported a case of drink driving in which a motorist was found unconscious in his car. The story said: ‘When Constable Neil Harding arrived at the scene at 4 pm his breath smelled of drink and he appeared to be in a drunken stupor.’
WORLD headline: ‘If strike isn’t settled quickly it may last a while.’ Guess so.