Another week, another Picayune – what are the chances of that? Some cold frosty weather to start the week followed by some less-frosty weather and mud. No real rain to speak of so that’s a bonus, I suppose.
Week before last Ms Playchute and I had to take our campervan back to the garage to have some repairs carried out. It turns out there was a hairline crack on the pop-up roof which was letting rain water into the passenger side of the van. We only discovered it on New Year’s Eve when Nick, Lucy and Annabelle were staying over and we went to retrieve the foam mattresses we keep in the van. The one which lives in the pop-up roof was soaked! Thankfully, they’ve found the crack and a new pop-up lid is being dispatched from the manufacturer. Also, thankfully, we’ve not got any outings planned during the depths of winter!
We’ve been in more movie-watching mode this week – what else is there to do on a cold, dark, winter’s evening?
This Week’s Films include Liquorice Pizza which was Number 5 on the Guardian’s films of 2022. It’s set in the 1970s in the Los Angeles area and it’s a romance/coming of age tale starring Cooper Hoffman as a former child actor who sets his sights on 10-years-older Alana Haim as he gets into the waterbed business. We found it on Prime. Apart from the nostalgia of 1970s LA (there’s a scene where the kids are in bed listening to Vin Scully call a Dodger game on the radio – exactly what happened in our household on many a summer’s night), it’s mediocre at best and I think both Penelope and I were mildly (perhaps more than “mildly”) disappointed. It certainly did not seem to us to be anywhere near as good as, for example, The Banshees of Inisherin which the Guardian listed at number 13. Hey ho.
On the advice of one of our offspring (I think) we also watched Everything, Everywhere All at Once, this week, again on Prime. As you will know, it has secured a plethora of Oscar nominations – I thought it was good and enjoyed it; Penny would rather have watched paint dry, I suspect. Neither of us are huge Sci Fi fans and it is definitely in the Sci Fi genre. It’s a plot line which has been done many times before – in this instance an aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, in which she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led had she made different decisions.
And finally on the entertainment front this week, someone (Steph?) suggested we have a peak at the series Godless on Netflix. Thank you to whomever made the recommendation – we’re about half way through and thoroughly enjoying it. It’s set in the American West in the 1880s. Jeff Bridges stars as a thoroughly evil, murderous outlaw gang leader who is trying to track down a former member of his gang who has gone AWOL with some ill-gotten gains. The trail ultimately leads him to a town inhabited, after a mining disaster, almost entirely by women. Like The English, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, it’s a brutal depiction of the wild west, brutal being the operative word. It’s been around for a number of years so I’m not sure how we missed it.
You Could Not Make It Up!
We’ve been following the travails of Nadhim Zahawi this week, one of the more corrupt amongst an embarrassment of crooked members of Parliament. For our foreign-based reader, he has “agreed” to pay £5 million to HMRC in back taxes and a fine for trying to evade taxes due on a £27 million profit on the sale of shares through an offshore trust. So far, so normal. What makes his particular corruption so note-worthy is that (a) he was being investigated by HMRC and negotiated the final settlement while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, i.e., the government minister responsible for overseeing the work of the tax collectors and (b) when he was questioned about this by journalists, he instructed his lawyers to issue notices threatening libel, declaring it was all a “smear.” Isn’t it funny how so many “smears” later turn out to be true?
Announcing the settlement he negotiated with HMRC Zahawi claimed that his failure to declare the profit and the creation of the offshore trust in an attempt to hide it was “careless” rather than “deliberate.” I know what that’s like – I went to the corner shop one time to buy a pint of milk and carelessly set up an offshore trust instead. Interestingly, the head of HMRC said, in testimony in front of the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday, that there were no penalties for “innocent” tax errors. Hmm, Zahawi agreed to pay the back taxes owed along with interest and a fine – I know who I believe.
This is a man who, sadly, has been “careless” on more than one occasion.
In 2013 he was found to have improperly claimed nearly £6000 to cover the cost of heating his Warwickshire home. This is, apparently his “second” home and it’s perfectly legitimate for a multi-millionaire MP to expect the taxpayer to pay for such expenses. About half of MPs make similar claims.
Where Zahawi was careless was in assuming that the taxpayer should also pay for the heating costs of the stables on his Warwickshire estate. You will be amazed to learn that this is not allowed! Quelle surprise! He was “mortified” when his “careless” error was discovered and promised to pay back the amount he had illegitimately claimed. So far, so normal. Who of us hasn’t fiddled our expenses? Perhaps not six grand’s worth of fiddling but what the heck? He has a very large second home and very large stables. And some very expensive horses which need to be kept warm and cosy.
And then, of course, he was careless in threatening libel action against journalists who were seeking to report on something that turns out to have been true.
Paul Waugh had a splendid article in the i on why he needs to go:
As ever, it’s not just the political crime, it’s the cover-up that matters. Zahawi stands accused of misleading the public when he claimed questions last summer about his tax affairs were “smears”.
He told Sky News at the time “’I always declared and paid my taxes”. Only on Friday, Zahawi’s spokesperson said his tax affairs “were and are up to date” – but the very fact of a HMRC penalty (a fine to you and me) suggests that they “were” not up to date.
Paul Waugh
And Julia Davies had an excellent article in the Guardian on Wednesday explaining why it was important for millionaires to pay their taxes.
Tax pays for our NHS, cares for our pensioners, educates our kids and defends our country. Anyone ‘careless’ about that is unfit to govern.
Julia Davies
Perhaps not surprisingly, his constituents don’t seem to be too happy about being represented by a crook.
STOP PRESS:
Nadhim Zahawi has just been sacked. The news broke as I was just about to press the Publish button. Good riddance to another “careless” corrupt crook. Only another couple of hundred to go!
Adam, Ava, Jessie and Julieta have just returned from a short visit to Morocco! Looks like they had fun.
Finally, I meant to put these two photos up last week and forgot – an outing to Wagamamas in Leamington a mere ten years apart. Neither of them has changed a bit!
And finally, finally, we missed the opportunity of wishing our grandson Max a happy fifth birthday last week – increasing evidence of creeping senility, I’m afraid. We gather he had a happy time. Sorry we’re so useless, Max!
Meanwhile, keep happy, keep smiling, be careful, wear a f**king facemask in crowded places and keep your distance. And keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees.
Lots of love to you all,
Greg