I use a far cleverer tax avoidance scheme than Jimmy Carr. It’s called: “not earning much money.” Works a treat and is totally legal.
The thing that got him was the hypocrisy.
The fact that he had made jokes about tax avoidance and yet was doing it himself.
Hypocrisy is considered a terrible crime by the media because it’s so easy to prove. Just find video of two conflicting statements and BOOM! you have hypocrisy. It’s
the cheese sandwich of scandals – easy to manufacture, usually filling but in
the end a bit bland.
If Jimmy Carr hadn’t made those jokes on 10 O'Clock Live then the scandal just wouldn’t have had the same traction. It’s worrying when hypocrisy becomes more of a crime than the crime itself. The
danger is that you end up with people basically saying: “Well, at least Hitler never pretended to like bagels…”
We’re all hypocrites. We all sometimes say one thing
and do another, or lie or cheat or massage the numbers or claim the occasional
(or not so occasional) dodgy expense. That’s why we get so angry when someone
else is found out: we're worried that we could be next. This is a good thing: it's precisely this worry of being found out that prevents most of us exploiting the system too much.
I misheard my accountant and invested all of my money in Jersey cows. Now all of my milk is tax free.
But hypocrisy isn't the worst crime in the world. I'm far more interested in the corporations who avoid billions in tax, and have never pretended to do otherwise. Why should people with opinions or a conscience be held to a higher standard than the amoral? This is the trap that left wing politics often falls into: unless you are utterly without flaws how can you possibly criticise anyone else for anything? It's self-defeating and lets the real bad guys off the hook.
In the end what made me most angry this week was that I found myself basically agreeing with David Cameron when he criticised a comedian. That made me feel dirty. And a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch uncovered the story.
Truly we are living in strange times.
