RightMinds | Mail Online

ANDREW PIERCE: To this day, Hartnett believes that, despite his 'sweetheart' deals, he actually saved the taxpayer money...

As the most powerful mandarin at HMRC, Dave Hartnett had a duty to be impartial in his dealings with the powerful multi-nationals whose tax files came across his desk. But his 'sweetheart' deals over lavish lunches and dinners with firms such as Goldman Sachs and Vodafone allowed them to cut millions of pounds off their tax bills. Every hard-working, tax-paying Briton will be outraged by the disclosure that Hartnett has now landed a top job with a leading accountancy firm that has been at the centre of tax avoidance allegations.

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Public service and a question of integrity

Dave Hartnett, the former head of HMRC, now has a consultancy job at Deloitte

In an affront to every scrupulous taxpayer, the former head of HMRC waltzes into a consultancy job at Deloitte, the accountancy giant that advises firms such as Starbucks on how to avoid taxes the rest of us pay.

Will Speaker Bercow call smooth customer Sir Edward Garnier in future Commons debates?

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Garnier is the libel QC who won Lord McAlpine's case against Bercow's show-off wife, Sally. It leaves the couple with an estimated six-figure bill for settlement and costs.

Prune power: As sales of prunes soar (extremely) regular consumer QUENTIN LETTS sings their praise

Stand by the pumps! The statistics published yesterday suggested a leap of nearly 10 per cent in prune consumption in Britain in the past year

‘Prunes?’ some of you will say. ‘As in horrid prunes and custard in the old days? Ewwwww.’ But think again. Thousands of our fellow countrymen and women plainly are.

March of the little Hitlers: A N WILSON on the power-crazed jobsworths who are blighting our lives

Row: A traffic warden puts a ticket on a car as an old woman protests outside Our Lady and St Hubert church in Oldbury, West Midlands

We all recognise there is a need for parking restrictions in our towns. But what sticks in our throats is the sheer pettiness of these yellow-clad traffic wardens, who, puffed up with their own power and importance, put their narrow worship of regulations above the ordinary human instinct to be kindly, and, on occasion, to turn a blind eye to mild infringements of the law.

Foreign wars and a chilling legacy of hate

There are two ways to react to the horror of the Woolwich murder. One is sheer anger and disgust, the other is to try and understand why young Muslims can be easily ‘radicalised’, writes ANDREW ALEXANDER.

Why are we so paralysed in the face of our enemy?

Pictured: A young man identified as Michael Adebolajo speaks at a rally of Muslims Against Crusaders in 2007, a group who had openly called for the beheading of British soldiers

PETER MCKAY: Failing to confront and punish evildoers tears at the fabric of society, diminishing us all. Telling ourselves we are civilised is a poor response.

Why Drummer Rigby's killers should be charged with treason

Rant: A man identified as Michael Adebolajo, 28, brandishes a meat cleaver with bloodied hands near the scene of the killing

SIMON HEFFER: On one level, this shocking attack was murder, plain and simple. But it was the murder of a man who was targeted precisely because he was a member of Her Majesty's Armed Forces.

We've got enough problems at home without charging into yet another foreign bloodbath

The Prime Minister will earn the gratitude of the British people by sorting out the unholy mess at home, rather than by starting yet another foreign adventure in a cause that can profit us nothing

What infuses British governments with a mania for thrusting their sticky hands into other people’s messes that are absolutely no responsibility of ours? Asks MAX HASTINGS.

Until our leaders admit the true nature of Islamic extremism, we will never defeat it

Prime Minister David Cameron made clear he disagreed with an MoD ban on soldiers wearing uniforms in public

MELANIE PHILLIPS: Government officials have always refused to admit that this is a religious war. They simply don't understand the power of religious fanaticism.

I hate censorship but the BBC's wrong to pander to our enemies

Mrs May said it was inappropriate to interview Choudary in the wake of Drummer Rigby¿s death

QUENTIN LETTS: The BBC is accused of giving undue prominence to Muslim demagogue Anjem Choudary, the cleric who stands accused of having inspired Woolwich murder suspect Michael Adebolajo.

The police and the Funny People do have questions to answer. So this isn't a time when the PM should be seen to go missing

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Whatever Jim Callaghan's reasons for flying to the Lower Antilles in January 1979, the indelible impression was that he had deserted Britain at a time of national emergency. So what are we to make of those pictures of Call Me Dave 'chillaxing' in Ibiza in the wake of the murder of Drummer Rigby? Yes, yes, I know he hasn't had a proper holiday this year and no one begrudges him a week off every now and again. But I can't help thinking this could be his Sunny Jim moment.

My journey into the hell that is internet child porn: We asked AMANDA PLATELL to view the websites that twisted the mind of little Tia's killer

Victim: Tia Sharp, 12, was killed by porn user Stuart Hazell

What she saw will haunt her for ever. The details may offend, for which we apologise, but this evil must be exposed. The truth is, Google is getting away with murder...

OMG! How Churchill learnt text speak 100 years ago... and why Beyonce's bottom inspired a cheeky addition to the Oxford English dictionary

OMG appeared in a letter from the British admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher to Winston Churchill

For the past 37 years, JOHN SIMPSON has worked on the Oxford English Dictionary. Here are just some of the words that have made their way into the dictionary for the first time under his watch . . .

I was sexually abused by boys at the age of nine (...try blaming the internet for THAT)

Online unknown: Concerned parents and teachers say access to explicit images on the internet is sexualising children at a young age

Young girls have been vulnerable to assault for decades because of poor sex education, writes LIZ JONES.

Why Drummer Rigby’s slaughter should haunt Clegg – by top Lib Dem Lord Carlile

An astonishing denunciation by the terrorism chief of his own party - for blocking the Bill which could help to stop another atrocity like Woolwich.

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: New homes, green fields and happiness

Nick Boles has suggested that the answer to our growing housing crisis is to concrete over the glorious green fields of the countryside

The Mail is dismayed to hear a minister - and a Tory, at that - suggesting that the answer to our growing housing crisis is to concrete over the glorious green fields of the countryside.

Could outspoken Ed be gearing himself for humiliation?

Ed Balls commented last week: 'I'm more bothered, in a personal sense, about getting to grade eight piano by the time I'm 50'

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Ed Balls's majority in his Yorkshire constituency of Morley and Outwood is barely a thousand. Bookmaker William Hill is offering odds of 9/4 that he'll be a goner in 2015.

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Google's deadly web of poison and hatred

Google's transgressions, it seems, are greeted with a shrug of the shoulders. This cannot be allowed to continue. The public needs protecting from the dark side of the internet

Consider how Google – motto ‘don’t be evil’ – has repeatedly failed to respond to warnings about how the internet is used to radicalise vulnerable young Muslims.

Toytown jihadists and a lack of political willpower

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Drummer Lee Rigby's murder marked a grisly new departure in the annals of terror in this country. But the aftermath has played out along pretty much the same lines as every other terrorist outrage on British soil.