It's Totally Legal

British governments tend to do transparency almost as well as they do efficiency and compassion, and the present rabble are no exception. With his customary professional attitude to weighty matters of state, Britain's Head Boy took a moment off from charming the Mexicans with wetback jokes and dealt out some serious moral chastisement to a tax-avoiding comedian; but, having been apprised of the risk to the affairs of comedians such as Philip Green and other father-figures, Daveybloke has hurriedly reinstated the normal Government practice of not commenting on individual cases. The comedian who started the whole thing has now apologised, and a spokesbeing said she thought the apology was obviously welcome, though its welcomeness was obviously not obvious enough to be sure. She also expressed the Government's disapproval of aggressive tax avoiders, as opposed to cuddly tax avoiders of the Ian Cameron stripe. Nevertheless, Daveybloke has decided that plans for senior ministers to disclose their tax returns, in the interests of showing how much the top rate is hurting real people, should now be postponed to the not-very-near future. Translated from the Westminster, this presumably means until shortly after pigs start flying over the ski-slopes of Hell.