flanerie.org

[found at stuff.co.nz]
An American man who stuffed his girlfriend's cat into his marijuana pipe said he did it to calm the cat and the technique had worked for him before.

Unemployed Nebraska man Acea Schomaker said he never intended to hurt the cat called Shadow, the Associated Press reported.

He said he could not think of another way to discipline the pesky feline as he didn't want to hit it or take it to an animal shelter for fear it would be euthanised.

Schomaker, 20, admitted to putting the cat in the make-shift pipe three times in the past week and it had seemed stoned afterwards.

He was cited on suspicion of animal cruelty after authorities caught him smoking marijuana through a hose attached to a 30cmx15cm plastic box containing the kitten.

Police discovered Schomaker's attempted feline freakout after responding to a domestic disturbance call at the home he shares with his grandfather.

As well as being cited for misdemeanour animal cruelty and having to pay a US$400 fine, Scholmaker also faces charges for possession of marijuana and paraphernalia. He may face more severe animal cruelty charges if the cat dies or is found to have suffered permanent damage.

Shadow has since been taken off the couple.

He and his girlfriend were both fined for animal cruelty.

[found at bbc.co.uk/news]
A Somerset man has been fined £200 after posting a video on the YouTube website of cannabis he was growing.

Police in Bridgwater who were tipped off about the video said they were "amazed" that 25-year-old Shane Burfield had used his name on the site.

Officers went to Burfield's home and found a large cannabis plant and equipment used to grow the drug.

Pc Adrian Peck said the cannabis produced by the plant could have had a street value of up to £500.

"The cultivation of cannabis is illegal," he said.

"If you break the law and are foolish enough to then advertise your criminal activities on the internet, it makes it very easy for the police to catch you."

Sedgemoor magistrates also ordered Burfield to pay £75 in costs.

I confess that world book day would have completely passed me by, but thankfully the school is slightly more on the ball with a 'dress up as your favourite character' day.

Verity chose to be Angelina Ballerina, a simpering mouse that really grates after the first couple of hundred readings.

From Verity

I am not sure what I would choose. Presumably it should be vaguely recognisable, so I would probably end up choosing Long John Silver so I get some practice in for International Talk Like A Pirate Day (19th September, mark you diaries.)

My (very) long-term mission to visit the 60 racecourses in Britain (soon to be 61) arrived in Chepstow at the weekend.

It was a good day's racing and, although I didn't win a bean, I came very close on a couple of lucrative bets. Sally won a few small bets and Verity cheered everyone on.

Hopefully I will get to York this year.

Another excuse for dressing up at pre-school.

Today we are Pocahontas.

From Verity

Tomorrow we get married.

Professional interest made me track down the Barclays Bank tax avoidance documents today after the High Court ruled that we shouldn't see them.

Barclays think that it is less embarrassing to act (very) guiltily than it is to let us see the documents and judge for ourselves.

The documents themselves are pretty routine, setting out chains of spurious transactions in order to avoid tax. Example:

"The interest rate swaps between Barclays and its affiliates are £[381.4]m in the money for Barclays across Tranche 1 and Tranche 2. The economic benefit of the Transaction is derived from the Barclays group's ability to transfer the fair value gain on these interest rate swaps (which is currently unrealised for UK tax purposes) to the Counterparty without triggering a taxable gain."

What Barclays have done in not illegal, but it does have a very nasty whiff about it and Barclays should not receive a scrap of state aid. All special liquidity scheme help should be withdrawn and the bank can then be nationalised for nothing when it runs out of cash. Although one suspects that the board have tightened up their contacts so that such a scenario would result in massive pensions.

Not that I am without sin - I helped Amazon set up a very lucrative tax-avoidance scheme four years ago. It was worth around $1bn over five years, with $200-$300m of benefit per year after that.

The thing is, it is the government and HMRC that are to blame for all of this. The loopholes are very easy to find and the politicians have convinced themselves that closing them would drive businesses away. They believe, somewhat stupidly, that if businesses had to pay tax on all their profits, they would leave the UK. There used to be talk of 'keeping the City competitive' which seemed to mean letting foreign nationals pay no tax and letting big companies run rings around HMRC.

In reality, if everyone paid tax on all their earnings or profits, tax rates would be significantly lower and there would be less need to avoid them in the first place. Or at least we wouldn't be running a 10% budget deficit.

For all the spleen-venting going on at the moment, I doubt anything will happen to change the corporate tax landscape. Big companies can fund lucrative avoidance schemes. International companies can shift their profits to low-tax jurisdictions at will. Small companies get reamed.