On Wednesday, Ed Miliband made a speech at Google - a business that has been making headlines recently for all the wrong reasons. To the outsider, the profitability of its business model looks plain to see. Yet of £3bn of revenue earned in the UK, it has paid only £3m in tax. Google are not alone in this seeming imbalance. The UK tax bill paid by companies from Amazon to Apple to Starbucks has raised deep concerns among businesses and families who pay their fair share. These are all prominent examples of a more general conundrum: the struggles for national governments framing tax rules for global companies.
Our response now should also be familiar: calm and measured. Not creating a sense of panic - this it what these people want - but not underestimating the threat either. And everyone should take some strange comfort from the fact that this types of mindless violence is almost impossible to stop: because that also shows how very few people in our country want to do it.
The people of Woolwich and nearby Plumstead have a strong bond with the army, one forged as much from living cheek to jowl as through mutual suffering... The EDL and its rally last night in the town centre will hold no sway over the response of the community in dealing with this horrific crime.
While I certainly agree that both men and women must recognise and escape the "confines of our gender", and that we need to acknowledge that we have all been ill-served by our culture's emphasis on certain gender stereotypes... I can't quite believe that it is truly down to women that men feel, well, emasculated.
Recent events reveal we can't complacently leave the NHS in the hands of the bureaucrats and the politicians. Our experience is they have created a culture of fear and bullying whereby good clinicians are persecuted for standing up for patients or medical science.
The problem for Miliband, and indeed anyone else looking to crack down on corporate tax avoidance, is that the world has changed. On this issue, the politicians are chasing the rampant forces of capitalism, and they appear powerless at the foot of the economic tornado.
Think for a minute about how much easier it is today to both start and scale your startup? When I started my first business eight years ago we had to get servers, server cabinets and IT managers to set it all up, buy software licences for practically every tool I needed to run the business.
I was sitting in a coffee shop last week with another coach and we were discussing the fact that we both come across many people who settle for a life and lifestyle that they are in fact not at all happy with. You deserve to do more than settle for the life you chose all those years ago if it's not what you love now.
Outgoing interim manager Rafael Benitez may have led Chelsea to Europa League glory and a top-three finish in the Premier League this season - but suggestions the Spaniard has had a successful reign at Stamford Bridge are wide of the mark.
Never do I see suggestions for the one thing that, over 90 percent of the time, fixes the actual problem within 24 hours. This one thing is Magnesium. A mineral found in low levels in many foods, it is a component of more than 325 different enzymes in the human body.
It's really quite sad if you think about it; not so long ago, Baz Luhrmann was the darling of Hollywood, a breath of fresh air in an increasingly formulaic industry. Audiences aren't so easily distracted these days by shiny colours and slick cinematography. More and more, they crave inner beauty over outer beauty. And perhaps it is that Baz Luhrmann hasn't quite realised this yet.
What is sad, and a tad frightening, are the undeniable gains that UKIP has recently made in membership and in elections. Despite the party's claims to want to protect Britain, what UKIP represents is not the deeply ingrained British values of liberty and equality, but actually, everything opposite to that.
Ever since the The Body Shop started the classroom craze for little potted lip balms, I've been hopelessly hooked. Thanks to those tiny, apothecary-style glass jars full of unctuous, sweet smelling goo - Morello Cherry for a cheery tint, Tutti Frutti for a moisturising glaze - I haven't been able to resist a lip balm.
Having a conversation may not seem like a luxury, but there is a point when it can become too late to talk, and you just never know if or when that point may come. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority never had a full and frank discussion with their loved ones about dementia, their wishes for care and their future planning.
Some people may dread that women will come on and talk about periods. I don't. I dread that the next 20 something white middle class male will come on and do some inadvisable and ill-conceived material on rape or pedophilia or something being LITERALLY the funniest thing that ever happened, when it LITERALLY is not.
"Go on, just suck it. You might like it." I roll my eyes. Yet another date who confuses sleaze and innuendo with flirtation. For me, they're uneasy bedfellows. I'm sitting in the park on an unseasonably warm day for the time of year. Before me is a mini banquet of all manner of romantic foods.
Sadly, thousands of the young people we help at The Prince's Trust do not grow up surrounded by positive role models. Many have had difficult childhoods, or grown up in workless households, with no one to turn to for advice about how to apply for a job or do well in an interview.
Salmond thinks that suggesting a debt free start is good politics, but people understand there are consequences. If you declare yourself bankrupt you don't start anew with a fresh slate, your bad credit history follows you around for the rest of your life. The consequences for borrowing, business and mortgages would be dire.
Scotland not only has massive economic strengths - we are financially strong too. This impressive track record in innovation, our wealth of natural resources and skilled workforce means that Scotland has every right to be confident about our economic prospects as an independent country.
In most circumstances today's IMF report would be taken as a pretty damning indictment of the state of the economy and our prospects for recovery. However, because the IMF has stopped short of openly calling for a "plan B" the Chancellor's allies appear to be classifying this as a victory.
Dead-set on proving to their constituents that Ukip are actually fluffy toys when it comes to Europe, Despite Cameron's commitment to a referendum in the next Parliament, Ukip would die. Excuse my Belgian-French, but this is crap.
The shady and immoral global tax system is allowing a whopping £12trillion in wealth to be stashed in tax havens. Yes that's trillion. More importantly, these assets are sitting offshore and off the tax man's radar. If governments could get at it to tax it fairly, it could raise an extra £100billion, which is enough to make a serious dent in solving world poverty.
William J. Furney, 23.05.2013
Phil Couchman, 23.05.2013