Elusive Profits

The remarkable manoeuvres  by which Apple has avoided a great deal of tax are said to go back to 1991. If it has taken 25 years to deal with such an extreme case, it seems likely that more modest strategies of evasion go undetected altogether.

There is a case for basing tax on something less elusive than so called 'profit', the value of which depends greatly on the skill of accountants.

If a little more money were squeezed out of less easily manipulated taxes such as business rates, value added tax, tax on dividends, and employers' National Insurance Contributions we shouldn't need to worry about profits.

Exporting Works of Art

I notice that a temporary ban has been placed on the export of a coronet that used to belong to Queen Victoria.

I find it hard to understand such bans. It makes very little difference to  most of us where such objects are. Their existence is of moderate interest, illustrating the way people used to live, but photographs are all we need. Even if the object is put in a museum, few of us will get round to looking at it.

On the other hand, if the legal owner has found a willing buyer, it seems impertinent for others to interfere with the transaction. If some individual or group of individuals very much want to coronet to stay in Britain, they should offer the owner a higher price.

Innumerates Play with Percentages

I'm frequently irritated by muddles involving percentages, but today's Radio 4 news perpetrated an atrocity worse than anything I recall encountering before.

There was a report that 14% of adults claim to have suffered sexual abuse in childhood. 11% of women report such abuse, as do 3% of men, and 11+3 = 14.

I wonder what errors may have been involved in the derivations of the 11% and the 3%.

Bells

Last week I joined a party of U3A members who visited our local bell foundry see:  http://www.taylorbells.co.uk/.

I discovered that bells and their manufacture are both much more complicated than I'd previously imagined.

A bell has five notes and after being cast bells are tuned to get all five notes in the correct pitch. That is done by removing metal very carefully in selected places from the inside of the bell.

Tuning lowers the tone, so bells are cast to be sharp; if a bell is flat the only remedy is to melt the metal and recast.

Molten metal is heated to 1200 C and then poured into a mould made from a mixture of sand and horse manure. The mould is buried in sand to contain any leaks. Before casting the mould has to be dried in an oven, otherwise water in the mould will evaporate explosively when the hot metal is poured in. One such explosion, in another foundry, once killed fifteen people.  After casting the bell is left in the mould for several days to cool.

The metal used makes a great difference to the tone of the bell. Steel is particularly unsatisfactory and the alloy nearly always used is bronze - about 2/9 tin and the rest copper.

The Last Box

I've just finished unpacking the last of the boxes I packed more than two years ago in preparation for   moving house, so I'm feeling quite pleased with myself.

Early Autumn ?

Going outside around 8:30 this morning I felt quite a 'nip' in the air, the sort of stimulating chill one feels in mid-September.

Has Autumn arrived six weeks early ?

A Diminished Buffoon

Boris Johnson seems to have shrunk since he became Foreign Secretary, diminished physically as well as mentally.

He looks like a hunched up old man, ill at ease, stumbling over his words, his old confidence gone.

Odd timetables

I've just collected booklets giving train services between here and London.

One booklet gives trains on weekdays and Saturdays, and another gives trains on Saturdays and Sundays, but I could not find any timetable giving trains on every day of the week.

How odd!!!

A Draw

We have had two referenda about British membership of the EU. The first favoured membership, and the second withdrawal. I make that a draw 1-1 which is no basis for action until a third referendum breaks the tie.

A Triumph for an Aged Brain

When I went shopping today I forgot my shopping list, but nevertheless bought all the items I'd put on the list, without adding any impulse purchases, so I still have a memory !!!

An unfortunate choice of words

Referring to a ten year old boy, delighted to have received tickets for a football match in the Euro 2016 tournament,  the BBC website chose the headline:

"NI stars call boy after seeing Euros clip"

Apparently footballers got in touch with the boy after seeing an online video of his delighted reaction, but when I first saw the headline I interpreted it quite differently.

An Unnecessary Dispute

I'm puzzled by the current dispute about the massacre of Armenians by Turks.

The deplorable events happened more than 100 years ago. None of those responsible will still be alive.

Determining just what happened and who was responsible is a matter for scholarly disputation between historians, not for angry diplomacy between governments.

Why did the German Bundestag vote on the question, and why should the Turkish government be so anxious to protect the reputations of Turkish rulers of long ago who controlled an empire that no longer exists ?