Cooking on Shrove Tuesday

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Making pancakesIn this time of austerity and belt tightening, I thought it might be nice to turn to the wisdom of Mrs Beaton to brighten the day with her much neglected recipe for richer pancakes. You won’t see cooking like this from Jamie Oliver, Jack Monroe and co.
Ingredients:

  • 6 eggs
  • 1 pint of cream
  • 1/4 lb of loaf sugar
  • 1 glass of sherry
  • 1/2 teaspoonful of nutmeg
  • flour

Mode:
Ascertain that the eggs are extremely fresh, beat them well, strain and mix with them the cream, pounded sugar, wine, nutmeg, and as much flour as will make the batter nearly as thick as that for ordinary pancakes. Make the frying-pan hot, wipe it with a clean cloth, pour in sufficient batter to make a thin pancake, and fry it for about 5 minutes. Dish the pancakes piled one above the other, strew sifted sugar between each and serve.
Time: – About 6 minutes.
Sufficient to make 8 pancakes

If you’re an MP don’t forget to expense all of the ingredients.

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Everyday tax avoidance

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So once more tax is in the news and the world and their dog seems to up in arms about people “avoiding” tax. Tax avoidance seems to currently be the fashionable thing to hate and who cares about the law or justice. Many people have said it before but it seems it’s worth repeating, tax evasion is illegal and naughty, tax avoidance is legal and is actually sometimes used by the state to encourage certain behaviors. The Government wanted more people to invest in film making so they gave tax relief to people that invested in films. So the government wanted people to avoid tax by investing in the films. The EU is designed so that companies only pay tax once in the EU, it is designed so that companies don’t pay tax everywhere they do business but only in the country of their choosing. This is deliberate. So if we want to stop people being tax efficient (as it used to be called) then we should be asking the Government to change the tax laws rather than attacking companies for obeying the law. It is also worth noting that the UK has the most complex tax system in the world, which isn’t exactly conducive to efficient tax collection. All of which brings me to the point I was stumbling towards, Mr. Fink recently got taken to task by the press for describing his arrangements as “vanilla tax avoidance”, which caused much amusement for some comedians. Apparently we should all be paying our bit (whatever that means), so if you agree with that and the general anti-tax avoidance zeitgeist then if you’ve ever done any of the following you better stump up to the treasury, because you’ve been avoiding tax:

  • Bought things on a buy one get one free offer
  • Joined a work place pension scheme
  • Taken advantage of a bike to work scheme
  • Bought an environmentally friendly car
  • Made home brew
  • Grown and smoked your own tobacco
  • Sold something on e-bay without declaring it
  • Paid or been paid cash in hand without declaring it
  • Collected wood to burn in a stove
  • Given to charity as part of a payroll giving scheme
  • Upcycled anything
  • Baked your own cakes, made sweets
  • Made your own clothes
  • Been on a booze cruise
  • Ordered anything from a country within the EU with a lower tax rate
  • Ordered goods from outside the EU without paying import and related taxes

That will do you for starters. Yes some of them are “normal” behaviors – but for example if you’d gone to a shop to buy that cake rather than make it yourself you’d have paid VAT. So by making your own cake – congratulations you’ve avoided paying tax. I’m sure I’ve missed loads of other ways we can all avoid paying “our fair share” – do please let me know any I’ve missed in the comments. Now I’m off to avoid more tax by cooking my own meal rather than eating out.

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When is a Muslim not a Muslim?

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He's not a Muslim! I’m quite sure that other people have covered this better than I will, or they will do shortly. I’m also quite sure this isn’t anything terribly new, however if I read one more comment saying:
“They’re not a Muslim”
I think I shall possibly have to at the very least have a very stiff Gin no matter what the time of day. I thought that in this day of identity politics we have to respect how people self identify, and an awful lot of people going round beheading people, burning people and doing other not very nice things seem to self identify as Muslim. Now you may argue that they don’t represent the majority of Muslims – fair enough. You might argue that they are a tiny minority – fair enough. You may even argue that they are utter maroons who use Islam as an excuse for the evil that they do – fine we can have that argument. However please could you stop saying they’re not Muslims. They think they’re Muslims, they claim they are carrying out their actions in the name of Islam – they self identify as Muslims. they are not dead parrots, they are not pining for the Fjords they are bloody Muslims! They may or may not be very good Muslims, they may not be very nice Muslims, they may not be following a version of Islam that you agree with – but they are most definitely Muslims. Unless of course you want to claim it’s all part of some huge false-flag operation, in which case we really probably don’t have much to talk about – although I do a nice line in tin foil hats you might be interested in.

Just because they’ve done something not very nice doesn’t instantly cause them to cease being Muslims. They may be a “very naughty boy” but they are also still a Muslim. Responding to every unpleasantness with the refrain “they’re not a Muslim” is ludicrous. It makes as much sense as claiming:

  • The IRA weren’t Irish
  • Westboro Baptists aren’t Christian
  • Child abusing priests aren’t Catholic
  • The Khmer Rouge weren’t Cambodian
  • The Nazi’s weren’t German

I could go on but I hope you get the idea. In all of these cases it may not be the majority, it may not have popular support but that doesn’t magically remove them from the groups they are members of. So could we stop declaring people to be “not Muslims” just because we’d rather they weren’t when they quite clearly think they are? Or you could of course just keep doing this:
Bury your head in the sand

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