Carr Jacking?

 It must be frustrating, having a high income.
 I’m speculating, of course - I currently make about the same as the Helmland Province sales rep for Space Hoppers - but I can see how it would be irritating. If someone offered you a job with a salary of, say, £280,000 a year, and then found out you only got to keep £153,000 of it, you can probably see why you’d be miffed. [1]
 “Boo hoo,” say the rest of us. “A hundred and fifty grand a year is still far more than I’m on; I’m bringing in less revenue than Gary Glitter’s Myspace page.” [Yeah, there are gonna be a lot of these.]
 You have to appreciate, though, that if you had the option of a lot of money, you’d want to keep as much of it as possible. It’s human nature, for better or worse.
 So I’m not coming down too hard on Jimmy Carr. He weaselled out of his financial responsibilities in an act of moral cowardice, but in all honesty, I’d have been tempted to do the same, and I’m sure most of the people pointing the finger would have, too.
 Except, of course, the people pointing the finger are exactly the issue.
 The more I look at the story, the more it smacks of a politically motivated hatchet job.
 Carr and the rest of the crew on “10 o’Clock Live” have been openly leftist and critical of the Conservative Party since the show’s inception. Although they are, like any satirists, more than willing to mock both sides of the political divide, the show and it’s presenters have always worn their liberalism on their sleeves.
 Now, we find no less a figure than David Cameron himself charging in to attack Carr’s perceived lack of morality.
 Cameron seems a little quiet, however, about everyone who’s on his side of the political spectrum.
 In April of this year, the chancellor, George Osbourne, expressed “shock” at having found out just how rampant tax avoidance has become amongst the nation’s high earners., telling the Daily Telegraph that some of the nation’s wealthiest people paid “virtually no tax.” [2]
 This is the same Daily Telegraph, incidentally, which leans comfortably toward the right on matters of politics, and is owned by the tax-exile billionaires Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay. [3]
 Mr. Cameron’s thoughts on the Barclay’s tax exile status have as yet gone un-recorded.
 Following Mr. Osbourne’s comments, the BBC investigated his claims and, under the Freedom of Information Act, received anonymous examples of some of the tax practices at work in the UK, including one of an individual who received an income of £15 million but paid no tax at all due to charity loopholes. [4]
 With this in mind, it seems a little unfair to rake Jimmy Carr over the coals.
 Sure, he’s making a damn good living for not very much effort, but he’s hardly Scrooge McDuck. He’s an entertainer, not a trillion ire oil baron.
 I’m not entirely defending him - I make less money than Al Qaeda’s barman and I don’t try to skip out on tax - but I do think there are far more reprehensible examples of tax avoidance in this country that the PM hasn’t said a word about.
 Could it be, possibly, that Cameron had an axe to grind? That it wasn’t, as Mr. Cameron claimed, “a particularly egregious example of an avoidance scheme that seemed to me to be wrong" so much as a chance to have a pop at the most populist of his critics to get caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
 It seems fishy to me. If I were Charlie Brooker, I’d make sure all my parking tickets were paid.


[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18521468
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18434832
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Frederick_Barclay
[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18434832