Tuesday 21 May 2013

O'Apple

I hear that to avoid paying US income tax, Apple has set up three companies in Ireland. Ireland insists that Apple is still liable to pay US taxes, and the  lawyers are now taking issue through the courts here and there.

I can never tell which  bits of politically sensitive news that filter through my cloud of uncaring, are going to catch my fancy, so concern over Apple's buccaneer approach to social responsibility ( Not paying your taxes? You rascal!) has come as a bit of a surprise.

Then I get to thinking. In the same, 'drowsing through the night with the radio on' session that delivered Apple's chicanery to my consciousness, I also learned that only one percent of Americans have saved enough to allow them to retire. Now this IS serious. My cousins over here, I see, are  faced with the option of never retiring, or working till they're too sick to carry on. 

Yet the people who manage corporations that have stopped providing pension schemes, that don't pay living wages, that have out-sourced both jobs and tax liabilities, are serenely unbothered by any kind of kick-back.

They have entered the lottery that is the American Dream and have won the jackpot. The ninety-nine percent of the rest of you who have to work till you drop, can just suck it up.

I'm British, and I'm retired on a good pension what do I care? 

Besides, I daren't voice my opinions aloud for fear I might be accused of being a Socialist, and we all know how terrible THEY are. 





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