The BBC has been canvassing the views of the anti-Cameron protestors outside Downing Street….
Downing Street protest organiser, journalist Abi Wilkinson, told BBC Radio 5 live the week’s revelations raised questions about Mr Cameron’s commitment to tackling tax avoidance.
Abi Wilkinson, a journalist…well, yes, sort of…one that mostly does man bites dog type stories and who refuses to criticise Corbyn publicly because the poor lad has had such a rough time….
I’ve mostly avoided ever criticising Corbyn publicly.
It’s not that I don’t have any criticisms. It’s just, with the Tory media attacking everything from the depth of his bow to his choice of tracksuit, and most centre-left commentators being almost as antagonistic towards the Labour leader as those on the right, not to mention the fact the parliamentary Labour party has effectively been in a state of civil war since he was elected and even members his own shadow cabinet are briefing against him, I’ve tended to feel it would be unhelpful to add to the negativity.
But then again it could just be that she is a hardcore Labour supporter who hates the Tories….
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Not sure her protest outside Downing Street is altogether the honest and principled stand she makes out….just the usual renta-mob who use any excuse to bash the Tories.
Shame the BBC once again presents such a person as a legitimate voice without an axe to grind.
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Abi Wilkinson Retweeted
David Cameron repeatedly, deliberately lied by omission about whether he personally profited from the offshore Panama trust. That’s serious.
Owen Jones Only he didn’t lie…he never said he didn’t once have shares…..as the BBC notes….
What Cameron said when:
Asked on Monday whether she could confirm that no family money was still invested in the fund, Mr Cameron’s spokeswoman said: “That is a private matter”
Then in an interview on Tuesday, Mr Cameron said: ” I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description”
Downing Street issued a statement later that day: “To be clear, the prime minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds. The prime minister owns no shares. As has been previously reported, Mrs Cameron owns a small number of shares connected to her father’s land, which she declares on her tax return”
No 10 then released a further clarifying statement on Wednesday, saying: “There are no offshore funds/trusts which the prime minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future”
On Thursday the PM told ITV News: “We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010”
Quite clear, Cameron said he does not have shares. Not sure how that is a lie.
Curious how the BBC can totally ignore its own ‘facts’ and still intimate he has done something wrong in its reporting.
The BBC tells us that…
David Cameron remains adamant that he did not break any rules and that his father’s Bahamas-based business had not been established for the purpose of avoiding tax.
But he is well aware that taking several days to confirm that he used to hold shares has allowed his political opponents to accuse him of “misleading” the public.
But Cameron was first asked if he still had investments in his father’s company….
‘….the issue of whether the Cameron family still had funds in offshore investments was a “private matter”.’
So the questioner by the nature of the question accepts Cameron’s family had shares in the company once, so not a secret, and the only thing Cameron ‘hid’ was the fact that he didn’t have any shares…not sure how that qualifies as hiding a big guilty secret by omission.
The BBC knows this is a non-story and yet continues to stir the pot and not come out and say there’s nothing to show here.
Tax avoidance is legal.
Tax evasion is illegal.
To the BBC/Left, tax avoidance is somehow illegal if it applies to a Tory. But not if to a BBC Luvvie.
Biased BBC and double standards.
The BBC and their kind of commentator…
Unfortunately for Sky News as well. Mind, I do enjoy “Tory Boy” ripping the pi$$ out of him at frequent intervals.
I think this matter is being deliberately milked as a diversion away from the very serious issue of the Referendum to get us out of the EU.
Reminds me of how far down the foxhole the BBC have now gone.
There has been NO mention of the legality of the “leaks” from Panama-after Leveson, Greenwald and the like, it`s all too clear that SOME hacking is for the Common Good as defined by the Left…but other hacking requires imprisonment.
One law for them -one for us-and the media mediate and decide it for us , if we`re mug enough to let them get away with it.
And-in the lefty quest to rope in Camerons wife,(and-you wait-the funeral expenses of his son from 2009)-the Left and the BBC have shown themselves to be evil-dancing, yet again, on Thatchers grave by proxy.
I thought that a wifes earnings and personal assets were not related to hubbys…Lawson set that in law in 1987 in effect re the taxman -so do try and drag HER into it shows how evil the left are.
But feminism-as we now know-gets binned by the Left if they get to suck Islam, or smear the PMs wife.
But-as the MPs expenses showed-what starts as a Tory Duck House ends up with Jacqui Smiths husband and his porn stash…so the BBC and the Left had better get THEIR tax returns and income streams ready too.
Don`t the BBC know this?…or do they think that the “independent ever so `umble public servant crap” will buy us off.
THEY are the monstrous hypocrites and Judge Nutmegs-and will soon surely be in the dock for THEIR loose ways with money(and not inherited-but taxpayers money)
Those who now denounce Cameron as a hypocrite re his finances had better explain why Rene got an extra croissant in bed two years ago-and whether we paid for it-eh Evan, Mandy, Eddie, Kirsty, Sarah, Mishal etc, etc?…
The Left are THAT thick-like treating fuse wire as pipe cleaners…when it`s lit, then who knows who we`ll lose in the collateral.
Why does the BBC not cover this?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2808916/Did-Tony-Benn-help-children-avoid-tax-5million-PS-left-Labour-party.html
The BBC does not cover stories printed in the Mail, OG. It’s a question of principle.
Regarding Cameron publishing his tax statement.
The purpose of hiding money offshore is exactly that, it is hidden from HMRC.
Therefore, any hidden funds will not appear because HMRC will not be aware of them.
It’s like having two bank accounts and releasing info on one which is fully legitimate but keeping the other secret, the one which has dodgy dealings.
All his statement tells us is that he has paid tax on the funds the HMRC know about, but anything he has hidden offshore stays hidden.
The same goes for all the other politicians with their offshore accounts and avoidance schemes, they will not show up because they are hidden from HMRC.
Releasing any UK tax forms is pointless and proves nothing.
“The purpose of hiding money offshore is exactly that, it is hidden from HMRC.”
There are other reasons, like access to dollar markets. And offshore doesn’t necessarily mean hidden in any case.
Silly, simplistic comment.
Forgive my ignorance Maria.
Regarding access to dollar markets, must you have an offshore account to buy things in dollars or trade with the US. I would have thought that our UK banks would be able to do that.
Blairmore is a collective investment fund, based in the Bahamas but incorporated in Panama. The Bahamas has had a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar since 1970, so it was by far the most practical place for dollar-denominated securities.
Investors could be anywhere and could have faced double taxation if the fund had been based in, say, the UK – firstly in the UK, and also where the investor resides. Going offshore is no longer necessary. Blairmore is now based in Ireland.
Sorry if my response was a bit rude but, although no fan of Cameron, I am astonished at some of the nonsense being bandied about. I don’t know what else our PM is up to, particularly with regard to Europe, but I don’t see any evidence at the moment to accuse him of being corrupt on tax, particularly when we’re supposed to be holding the moral high ground over bias in the BBC.
Maria/Emmanuel. There’s a damn sight more useful information in your posts and this website generally than on the utter dross that passes for the biased BBC’s ‘impartial coverage’.
But in the spirit of your post, I’m puzzled. We have been known to hold the odd US share and on the dividend tax receipt my understanding is that the dividend is paid AFTER US tax is deducted. In the UK the tax is calculated as if it was a wholly UK dividend but the actual payment required to the UK is reduced by the tax already paid in the US. That being the case, the TOTAL tax appears to be independent of where the fund is based, so the actual benefit of the offshore fund is more to do with the costs of running the fund, not any tax avoidance benefit to the investor.
I’ll be glad if someone cares to explain whether I am right or wrong on this, as the biased BBC is obviously not going to entertain such accuracy.
This is almost certainly due to the double taxation agreement between the UK and the US.
These agreements vary and some countries don’t have them at all, so it depends on which two countries are involved.
Agree with your general point. The BBC behaves like an immature political party, with a right-on lefty manifesto affecting its stance on almost everything.
That’s the Abi Wilkinson, who now writes for the previously Tory Daily Telegraph. Now sadly lurched leftwards.
This (below) is the sort of dross that she turned out recently. Unfortunately the savaging that she received in the reader comments has been deleted by the Telegraph in an act of journalistic vandalism and censorship.
‘Stubborn old people who want to leave the EU are condemning the rest to a lifetime of uncertainty’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/03/29/stubborn-old-people-who-want-to-leave-the-eu-are-condemning-the/