We all know “lies, damned lies and statistics” We should all celebrate, as most of us in this country have the above-average number of legs: some folk have one leg, but nobody has three, so we bipeds are “above average” – see?

HMRC doesn’t report on the scale of aggressive tax avoidance. They don’t want stats to show how shoddy they are. But it does trumpet the numbers of prosecutions for evasion. HMRC chose a random figure of 1,000 a year. And then beat that number of prosecutions. Yippee. But we’re dealing with a taxpaying population of about 30 million. HMRC puts the figure of the “shadow economy” at 10% of our total tax received. So, aiming to prosecute 1,000 people really is less than useless… …”