Imagine this: you are given one dollar every second.

At that rate, after one minute, you would have 60 dollars. After twelve days, you would be a millionaire – something beyond the wildest dreams of most people on Earth.

But how long would it take to become a billionaire?

Well, at that rate, it would take almost 32 years.

I am grateful to Linda McQuaig, the celebrated Canadian journalist, for doing the sums.

She calls for a much more progressive tax system with a top rate of 70% for incomes over $2.5m (about £1,586,000). And she wants determined action to close the tax loopholes that almost exclusively benefit the rich.

She is talking about the Canadian system but there is a straight read across to the UK.

Our tax system is grotesquely distorted, rewarding the super rich and, too often, turning a blind eye to the tax cheats.

It its report last year (attached), the High Pay Commission tells us “top pay has spiraled alarmingly to stratospheric levels in some of our biggest companies”.

In BP, in 2011 the lead executive earned 63 times the amount of the average employee. In 1979 the multiple was 16.5. In Barclays, top pay is now 75 times that of the average worker. In 1979 it was 14.5. Over that period, the lead executive’s pay in Barclays has risen by 4,899.4% – from £87,323 to a staggering £4,365,636.

I see that Stephen Hester, the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland (83% State owned) is to give up his bonus of just under £1 million.

That’s a start. It still leaves him with a base salary of £1.2 million so he should be able to get by.

Will Hutton has a nice piece in today’s Observer, making the point that Hester’s salary is reward enough for the work he does.

More than enough, I’d say.

We should get rid of bonuses in State owned banks. If Hester and the other top executives don’t like it they can move on.

It’s time to call their bluff.

Ashcroft and the Royal Yacht

The notorious tax cheat Michael Ashcroft is offering £5 million towards the cost of a new Royal yacht.

He says he wants to give away his fortune before he dies.

What does he expect?

A round of applause?

Before he gives his money away, perhaps he should settle first his account with HM Revenue and Customs.

William Hague famously told Tony Blair, that once Ashcroft received his peerage in 2000 he would become UK resident for tax purposes in the following financial year.

Hague told us: “This decision will cost him and benefit the Treasury tens of millions of pounds a year in tax.”

Hague subsequently corrected himself.

Not tens of millions. No. No. No.

“Zero” would have been more accurate.

Honour killings come to Canada

Stone age attitudes of “family honour” led Mohammad Shafia, a wealthy Afghan Canadian, to murder his first wife and three teenage daughters.

The girls' Western ways infuriated Shafia, a bullying foul mouthed controlling tyrant who believed family honour had been compromised.

For the past four months the Shafia trial in Kingston, Ontario, has transfixed Canadians who see the world through the lens of gender equality.

“Honour” crimes are a relatively new phenomenon here and the trial got wall-to-wall coverage in the press.

The jury of seven women and five men today found Mohammad Shafia, his second wife, Tooba, and his 21 year old son, Mohammad, guilty of first degree murder.

They will have 25 years in prison to reflect on it all.

In the UK there were almost 3,000 honour crimes last year.

Attachments:

High Pay Commission 2011.pdf

[High Pay Commission 2011]

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