Odd Things – Tax Paid by Giant Corporations

Starbucks, Google, Facebook, Vodaphone, Barclays and other multinationals pay no or very little corporation tax on the profits of their enterprises in the United Kingdom. This is because they do not make profits in the United Kingdom, for corporation tax is paid on the profits of corporations. Nevertheless they turnover billions of pounds in the United Kingdom but make technical losses here and therefore have no corporation tax liabilities.

Waging cyber war

We are so dependent upon computers and the internet these days. Evil minded people cause disruption and damage and censor our speech and writings by cyber warfare.  There is already an established form of cyber warfare perpetrated by people who invent and spread computer viruses. A whole industry is dedicated to combating viruses. However there is another form of cyber warfare that nations wage.

Google say “no harm done” – nonsense!

“Who was harmed? Name the person,” Mr Schmidt of Google said, when talking about the company’s collection of private data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. The data included passwords and chunks of email messages. Well, Mr Schmidt, if you collected my data I was harmed. You see, private information about me is exactly that. It is private.

Should you stop using Google to save the planet?

You are sitting in front of your personal computer reading this blog. You would have thought that it was a fairly harmless activity, environmentally speaking, because in fact you are reading about the environment, contributing your bit to the ideas that will shape our future or simply researching or understanding something that you think your ought to know about. Suddenly up pops Alex Wissner-Gross, a scientist who says that when you do a typical Google search you are sending 7 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Google has defended itself saying that a search does not cost 7 grams, only 2 grams. Some other research institution claims that Google is now responsible for 2% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.