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Gray still HMRC chair, says Parly website

The wheels of government turn slowly, drunk people often tell TS, and that cannot be better represented than on the Parliament's Committee calendar where HMRC ex-chairman Paul Gray is listed as appearing on the 5 December at a Treasury sub-committee - as chair of course.
Ironically Paul would be speaking about HMRC's administration and expenditure for 2006/2007.
While it's not exactly the Public Accounts Committee, acting chair Dave Hartnett will no doubt have some arkward questions to answer, after the events of the last 24 hours.
No doubt the Parly website engineers have got better things to do - like look for the taxman's missing discs.

November 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

London mayor 'newt' to politics

Boris Johnson's performance as compere at the Accountancy Age Awards was one of the evening's highlights, thinks TS.

From telling the audience that Accountancy Age had delayed the election through its coverage during the non-dom figures row, to handing out awards in a very speedy manner, Boris had the audience, and an increasingly sozzled TS, enthralled.

Of course, he kept away from discussing politics and in particular the mayoral battle.

Apart from describing the current mayoral incumbent as a 'gigantic newt', suggesting that spending London taxpayers' money on the European Space programme could only be justified if it was used to 'propel the mayoral incumbent into orbit'.

So, basically, he kept well away from politics. Oh, and likening the Mayor's London free-paper The Londoner to 'a sort of North Korean freesheet'. Yep, apart from those things TS didn't think he made a political speech at all.

November 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

EU sensitive on audit 'qualification'

The European Union is very sensitive to the suggestion that its accounts have been 'qualified'.

Newspapers have to tiptoe around the issue, saying they have 'failed the test' and that the underlying transactions did not get a positive statement of assurance.

So senior EU figures were more than a little cheesed off this time round when the Court of Auditors, which audits the EU, itself used the term.

Giving its formal opinion, the Court said in one document: 'With regard to budget aid, and without further qualifying the above audit opinion, the Court's audit revealed that the Commission's disbursement decisions do not demonstrate in a sufficiently formal and structured manner that there is compliance with the Cotonou Agreement.'

Ignore the EU speak and focus on the 'Q' word.

Brian Gray, the EC's chief accounting officer, told TS he was 'irritated' by the use of the 'Q' word.

Don't you dare use it yourself when discussing the issue.

November 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Naughty goings-on at Age's Awards

There' always someone willing to play up at the Accountancy Age Awards, and this year was no exception – in fact we had two naughty schoolboys this year.

Small firm of the Year winner SJD Accountancy sent someone to pick up its award who was, shall we say, publicity shy.

Eschewing the standard 'off to the side and have your pic done for the mag', the fella who picked up the award made a beeline for the opposite side of the hall. Even intervention by the Age's influential and persuasive Ed in chief Damian Wild was futile. Oh well, no pic in the mag then for you Mr SJD person.

The other incident was less expected.

Unlike the other well-behaved sponsors, Mature Accountants' award presenter shouted out a 'Mature Accountants!' slogan before handing the award over to the winner. More like Immature Accountants, thought TS.

Still, in 2005 we had award presenter Bridge Gadhok, of Doshi & Co, state that the award for small business software package of the year should go to his wife because she was such a lovely small package. Now that was really naughty.

November 16, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack