The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequor, Alistair Darling, justifies his putative plans for a windfall tax on banks with the expression “we would expect the broadest shoulders to bear the greatest burden”.
Banquo will let others get into a lather about the negative consequences of capricious, retrospective taxes. What is most striking is the language that the chancellor chose to use. Isn’t it poetic? Doesn’t it make you want to do a Stanley Baldwin, call your tax office and make a voluntary payment? But also doesn’t it strike you as faintly sexist and old manual? Shouldn’t wealthy women, narrow shoulders and all, pay too?
Maybe the chancellor has noticed that the Carringtons are back on TV and Joan Collins has the broadest shoulders of all. Or maybe the chancellor’s vision of the City of London is of sweating, muscular bodies hewing glistening lodes of gold from a mine deep below Threadneedle Street. Harold Wilson’s “gnomes of Zurich”, but with broad shoulders.
Related reading:
Robert Peston: A bonus super-tax BBC
Banquo is still an active investor so will declare his financial interest where appropriate in any blog post.
