Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Test Tube Babes

The initial video in a campaign by the European Commission to encourage women to consider a career in science has generated some heat amongst the politically correct. Using normal advertising techniques in what is effectively an advertisement (imagine that!), they decline to portray women scientists in the usual stereotypical way (plain looking, mousey, wearing non-branded glasses) and instead show some more glamourous specimens. The message is that women need not be labelled unattractive by becoming scientists.

Naturally, people have mouthed off about this, including  a number of women quoted by the Daily Telegraph, that bastion of feminism. For example,Victoria Herridge, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, complained that the 56-second video did not give a "proper representation of what it means to be a scientist". She obviously thinks that 56 seconds is enough to achieve that, which shows what she thinks of her chosen field. She added, in the face of the scientific evidence to the contrary, that "you could not make it up." Err ... Vickie ... someone did.

Another lab babe, one Lisa-Marie (named after Elvis's daughter?) Mayne, a postgraduate student (of something), complained "as a woman of science" that the ad was "garish". Oh dear. Did it offend your fashion sense, Lisa?

And to top it all, a  "Dr." Petra (named after the Blue Peter dog?) Boynton, a social psychologist (no, I don't know what that is either) at University College London, wrote: "For the love of all things holy what is this ****?" Aside from the asterisked out coarse language (ooh, how liberated you are, doctor!), I cannot imagine this said in anything other than a broad southern Irish accent. Yes, that's what the campaign needs, a bead-fiddling fish wife.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Tangled Webs

"Every man is entitled if he can to order his affairs so as that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure this result, then, however unappreciative the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax." So said Lord Tomlin in the 1936 Duke of Westminster case.


Likewise, the Revenue can try to arm itself with as many weapons as it can, with legislation and in the courts: "substance over form", the Ramsay Principle, General Anti-Avoidance Rules, and so on.


So, if someone can engineeer a tax planning scheme which passes muster with the tax chappies and results in paying only 1% income tax, such as the one used by alleged comedian Jimmie Carr, I say good luck to them, especially as I pay only one tenth as much myself. There will always be those who have some sort of issue with this, but that is just sour grapes.


However, in Mr. Carr's case, he had made considerable mileage (i.e. money) taking the piss out of Barclays Bank and others for, you guessed it, only paying 1% tax on its earnings. The dilemma for Mr. Carr, who naturally blamed his accountant for his negligence in saving him money, was whether to carry on paying only 1% tax but to lose his credibility as a comic and therefore some of his future earning power, perhaps even to become the butt of others' jokes himself, or to opt out of the tax saving scheme and keep raking it in. In the end, claiming the moral high ground, i.e. choosing to avoid having the piss taken out of him and becoming redundant, he has opted out of the tax saving plan, but has not gone so far as to repay the tax saved so far. (And nor would I.)


In the meantime, however, one David Cameron, whose family wealth has not been harmed by the odd structure along the way, saw a populist opportunity and slammed Mr. Carr for his "morally wrong" behaviour, this just after he had told the French that their millionaires were welcome to move to Britian to save tax. His apparent hypocrisy was compounded when he went all schtumm after Tory supporters such as Gary Barlow (no, I hadn't heard of him either) were found to have used the exact same scheme as Jimmie Carr. The FT sums it up here.


But Mr. Cameron's troubles for the week did not end there. The supreme arbiter, albeit self-appointed and state-subsidised, in the UK of moral rightness and wrongness, the Church of England, or at least its leader, Rowan somebody, has said in his new book that Mr. Cameron's "Big Society" idea is mere "aspirational waffle". One has to wonder, however, whether someone whose employer has been peddling the idea of an invisible friend for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it, thank you, is best placed to make that particular criticism.


It would also be a reasonable question how the 30 pieces of silver this Rowan somebody-or-other will make out of his book, which ventures into secular issues, are any different from the 30 pieces of silver the "Bishop" of Southwark, aka Mervyn something, sneered about the Monty Python team making all those years ago when they dared to venture into "his" territory with the still hilarious Life of Brian.


Perhaps, after all, Cameron should take being criticised by Rowan, Merv and their ilk as a compliment. It may be the only one he will get.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Nosey Parker

How refreshing it is to come across a decent car park in Hong Kong. So many - virtually all - of them have just enough space for a good driver to park his (OK, or her) car, leaving little room for error in actually getting the car in the middle of the bay. And there are precious few drivers in Hong Kong capable of pointing their cars forwards accurately, let along reversing. Combine this with the usual passive aggressive behaviour, and you end up with a cnut who parks right on the edge of his space effectively rendering the adjacent space unusable.

So, what joy to chance upon the CC Wu Building in Wanchai (the one near Hopewell - I think there is another one closer to CWB) and find larger spaces in a nicely maintained facility, with additional spaces between the spaces for door-opening and alighting (and delighting?). And the staff are friendly, too.


Obviously the featured car, being a Japanese model, is not your correspondent's. And it can't be Ulie's either: there are two letters missing from the number plate.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Sham Pain

If I had a dollar for every time I had been called an "English gentleman", I would have, let me see, several dollars by now. If there ever were such  creature, if would perhaps be defined as having grass stains on its elbows, if you get my drift, but - even so - I have my doubts.

The closest anyone might come to showing gentlemanly conduct these days would be some Johnny Foreigner such as the luckless David Nalbandian, an Argentine yet with a distinctly unswarthy name.

Cruising towards a win at a minor English tennis tournament yesterday, he lost his serve and kicked a hoarding advertising French fizzy wine. The poor British workmanship meant that the hoarding sprang loose and caught the linesman duffer on the leg. The resulting scratch bled - the horror! - the linesman whinged, and Nalbandian was disqualified for a code violation.

Did Nalbers complain? Did he blame anyone but himself? Did he even suggest that if some cnut had taken the trouble to do his job properly then there would have been no problem? Thrice no.

Poor old Britain. It even has to import gentlemen these days.


Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Parthian Shot

Good on you, York Chow. Hong Kong's only minister ('secretary") either qualified for his position or worthy of it, has spoken out questioning the Mainland authorities' claim that Li Wangyang killed himself, the first senior official to do so, or indeed to do anything like this.

As an orthopaedic doctor with a particular involvement with the disabled, his words have an additional authority which the Mainland government can hardly gainsay. As a reluctant politician, sometimes the target of internal struggles but never an instigator, and as a modest and decent man who must have been revulsed by the death of a disabled man, his words will make the Chinese very uncomfortable.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Selling England By The Pound

As the Diamond Jubilee wankfest in the UK shudders to a sputtering climax amid all the usual back slapping ("No one does this better than the Brits", "Everything that's great about Britain", "Proud to be British"), the usual headlines about fathers of sixteen kids being charged with murder after a pub brawl (no one does this better than the Brits), thuggish footballers arrested for affray following a night club brawl (everything that's great about Britain), and corrupt white politicians close to the prime minister escaping investigation whilst Muslim politicians are investigated straight away (proud to be British) confirm that it's business as usual for high and low life alike in the modern UK.

As part of the excessive hype celebrations, the 153-year-old clock tower (strictly the bell inside the clock tower) formerly known as Big Ben is likely to be renamed the Elizabeth Tower. Those supporting the proposal admit that Big Ben will still be known colloquially as Big Ben and I suppose that 60 years' service merits a gong. And at least it keeps it within the family, the clock at the other side of Parliament having been renamed Victoria Tower in honour of the only previous 60-year time-server in the post.

However, this reminds me of a less justifiable renaming of a piece of UK history from a few months ago. Flamboyant and not-yet-tainted-by-arrest local tycoon, purveyor of overpriced baubles to the rich and stupid, Dickson Poon has made a £20m donation to the 173-year-old King's College, London's law faculty, ranked in the top 25 law schools in the world (QS 2011 rankings). The law faculty is to be renamed the Dickson Poon School of Law, apparently in gratitude rather than as part of the deal, although a nod and a wink before the cheque was signed would have amounted to the same thing. Whilst it is said to be the largest single donation by an individual to a British or European faculty (at least in nominal terms), and whilst Mr. Poon is an undoubted Anglophile and his intentions are surely genuine, to get such an institution renamed for about 1% of his net worth, or the price of one of his houses, is surely tantamount to a gift ... by King's.

Recognising the gaffe they have made concerns of alumni, I see that those who have sold the family silver, primarily "Professor Sir Richard Trainor, Principal and President of King’s College London" (clearly a man who likes his titles, especially if they don't contain the words "Dickson" and "Poon"), have issued a statement that degree certificates will not bear the name Dickson Poon. I think that says it all save to remark that it could have been worse. Suppose Mr. Poon had acted in concert with Henry Tang (poontang - geddit? Oh, never mind.)?