More snowy pictures

My pick of the films from 2010

Kevin, what a trooper, has seen 29 films at the cinema. I, alas, have seen a lot less which is kinda remiss as I usually go a lot more. Impressed as well he endured The Lovely Bones and Let Me In (I saw trailers for both and both looked awful). I have Avatar on DVD watched some of it, got bored switched it off and haven’t looked at it since. The films I regret not seeing at the cinema (have on DVD) are Salt (yeah, ok, but it did get good reviews), Winter’s Bone and A Single Man.

I thoroughly hated The Killer Inside Me.

So here’s my list of great films/documentary I saw this year (in no particular order) and recommend.

1. Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

2. Inception

3. Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

4. Made in Dagenham

5. Green Zone

6. El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes)

7. Un Prophète (A Prophet)

8. La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman)

9. Kynodontas (Dogtooth)

10. Documentary by Polly Nash & Andy Worthington – Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

Toby Young is talking out of his …….

So Toby Young thinks that taxing companies properly would lead to customers paying more as the cost of the tax bills would be passed on in higher prices. Now let us think about things the way that Alan Sugar or Philip Green or Stuart Rose would as opposed to the way Karl Marx would. The market will stand a certain price for let us say a jacket. You can bring a jacket to the market for a certain cost. As you have a well run business that does not waste money on staff pensions or on making sure the jacket will last the cost is less than the price you can get the customer to pay. The difference is your profit. If you do not hide your profit away, in for example Monaco, the tax office will take 30% to pay for things that do not benefit you, as a rich person, like the NHS or education for people who cannot afford public school. We can assume that you cannot increase this profit margin by charging a higher price because if you thought you could you would have already…why would you not charge as much as you think that you can even if the tax rate for rich people was zero (which of course it is if you have non-dom status)?

Even if Young’s account had some internal logic most of the shoppers spoken to by protesters have agreed that the tax position of the super rich and their corporations is a scandal. The protesters have succeeded in putting corporate governance, taxation and the role of the super-rich right in the middle of political debate: they have therefore been successful by definition in terms of their immediate aims…no one is saying that to get corporations under proper control is going to be anything other than a long struggle. The high street protests though have been an excellent start.