The only thing I ever liked about Fred Goodwin

(And me and Fred had to suffer each other for about five years, during which time I had a more or less perpetual Sell on his stock)

... was that when he was doing his egomaniac thing, he would always announce as the crowning glory of his achievements at RBS that "Royal Bank is the single largest payer of corporation tax in the UK".

I've always thought that, rather than allowing the Sunday Times to sell a bumper issue's advertising with their "Rich List", HMRC ought to publish every year the 500 largest payers of basic and higher rate income tax, plus capital gains tax in the year. Not only would this be a better measure of who was actually rich in the country (after all, "wealth", when it depends on guesstimates of asset values, is an opinion, but tax paid is a fact), but I suspect that it would have a salutory effect on tax compliance. Ted Turner used to regularly try to buy Forbes magazine, simply in order to stop it from publishing the "Forbes 500" rich list. He genuinely believed that American plutocrats were driven into avoiding tax and reducing their philanthropy, purely out of fear of losing ranking places on that list. From casual observation (admittedly of hedge fund managers rather than the inherited rich, but frankly there's no saving them), I think he might have a point.

I am beginning to think, btw, and completing this post and reading it back rather reinforces it, that I'm beginning to sort of take advantage of limited-audience blogging and that "writing things that I couldn't normally say to a general audience" is shading into "writing things that I wouldn't necessarily be prepared to stand behind". Any opinions, readers?