Run! The Students Are Coming!

The campaign to demonise students is preceding apace. The head of the Metropolitan Police is issuing dire warnings of 'civil unrest' - conveniently for the cops, as they're facing budget cuts too. The Mail, as I detailed yesterday, fears the onslaught of the Gymslip Amazons hellbent on destruction, and my own institution has put on extra security in case the student body disturbs disgraced tax-avoiding expenses-fiddler Lord Paul while he has his lunch (which may well require a pastry fork). Heaven forfend that the Chancellor of a university should meet some of its students…

The origin of the violent student hordes is a mystery - I blame tabloid journalism and rolling news. Certainly the presence of extra security here is both an insult to the students, a marker of the massive divide between institution and students, and proof that management has no idea what our kids are like. There's no need to fear our lot, as I pointed out yesterday.

Meet your local tax evader!

Lord Paul is Chancellor of The Hegemon. He's has £500 million in the bank and a lot of time on his hands, having been suspended from the House of Lords for fiddling his expenses to the tune of £40,000. This member of MIT's advisory board's defence is that 'main residence' is technical language which no Indian would understand, which seems a bit racist to me.

He's also a tax avoider, claiming 'non-dom' status, meaning that he was happy to occupy an unelected place in Britain's legislature secure in the knowledge that he wouldn't suffer the consequences of his votes. The early Americans proclaimed 'no taxation without representation': I say to Lord Paul 'no representation without taxation'.

If you're in The Hegemon tomorrow, you can meet him. You could even try asking him to pay your £9000 tuition fees!

Your tax pounds in action

If you want to see what a real-life near-billionaire tax dodger looks like in the flesh, turn up at The Hegemon's sorry excuse for a Students' Union on Friday November 26th, where Lord Paul (who has plenty of time on his hands, thanks to his suspension from the House of Lords) will open the Ambika Paul Student Union Centre (2.30-4.15).

The APSUC is an area with sofas and a coffee machine. The Union used to have a bar and put on events. The Ambika Paul foundation diverts profits from Caparo Plc, not Lord Paul's personal stash of £800 million.

It's currently unclear whether and from whom he'll claim expenses for this trip. Do feel free to inquire about his tax status and his views on whether the poor (for him, anyone with less than £100 million) should pay for their own education fees.

Last night, I was continually disturbed by the sound of big groups of students wearing matching t-shirts, marching in the street, banging drums, chanting slogans and blowing whistles, following some kind of leader. "At last", I thought to myself, the Revolution's here. Or perhaps the students are protesting the evil and socially damaging Tory Scum plans for education".

Alas no. Commercial, organised pub crawls have appropriated the signifiers of protest and these students were being herded like sheep from one corporate alcohol-monger to the next, on a strict timetable. I found it profoundly depressing.

In my day, we organised our own pub crawls, but that's a side issue. There's a nationwide student protest on November 10th: do you think more Hegemon students will attend that or the pub crawls?

Exemplary news management

What do you tell the press when your prestigious figurehead is suspended from the House of Lords and forced to pay back £40,000 of expenses he wrongly claimed?

Do you say 'we take this very seriously and will discuss what to do next'? Or perhaps 'we're fully behind Lord Paul and have every confidence in him'. Or 'We're very disappointed in Lord Paul's behaviour and have sacked him'?

Er, no. You tell the journalists to sod off:

The university today refused to comment on Lord Paul’s future after the ruling was approved by peers.

A fine strategy that will no doubt pay off in the fullness of time. May I offer this visual aid for the next time journalists come calling?

It's official

The Maximum Leader of The Hegemon, the man who is meant to epitomise the values of the institution, and put our case to those in power - Lord Paul - has been suspended from the House of Lords for expenses fraud. 


Management must be so proud. 


The multimillionaire businessman (88th richest in the UK) with a Master's from MIT and member of its Mechanical Engineering Advisory Council, Olympics Delivery Committee member and Chancellor of the University of Westminster, member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Council, former Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, claimed that he's the victim because all Indians are naturally stupid (is there any other way to interpret this?): Meanwhile

"Lord Paul explained his interpretation of the term 'main residence' by reference to his cultural background.

"He insisted that 'anyone coming out of India would not understand what main residence means'. He accepted that he had 'not once' looked at the guidance on the back of the claim forms."

 Meanwhile, another friend of ours has been busy, presumably solely to get his face on TV. Yes, Paul Uppal's been costing the state money asking questions (and here) which he should have known couldn't be answered; attempting to curry favour with local reactionary newspaper the Express and Star by harping on about asylum seekers (and here) despite being an immigrant himself (and not receiving a very sensational reply); and finally, by inserting his tongue as far up Mr Osborne's posterior as it is possible to go:

It is often said of the last Labour Government that although talk is cheap, the consequences of their actions were very expensive. Does the Chancellor agree that the sentiment of the spending review is not about cuts but about responsibility and the financial responsibility that we bequeath to our children and our grandchildren?

George Osborne (Chancellor of the Exchequer, HM Treasury; Tatton, Conservative)

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We have talked a lot about fairness and about fairness across the income distribution, but there is also a fairness between generations. If we do not deal with these debts and do not have a credible plan, it will be our children and grandchildren who are saddled with the debts that we were not prepared to pay. I think that is very unfair.

Is it 'often said'? I've never heard it, and I spend most of my time obsessing about politics.  

Lord Paul - laughing stock

Poor Lord Paul. Suspended from the House of Lords and forced to pay back £40,000 of expenses based on a 'main residence' which was actually a room in a hotel he owned, in which he'd never spent a night.

According to him, it's all the fault of Parliament and that pesky English language.

He said the House of Lords had no guidance on the meaning of 'main residence' until March 2010 and believes the perspectives and standards of 2010 should not have been applied to 2005.

He added: “I believe that the provisions which applied then on the designation of principal residence were wholly unclear.

I see. I wonder whether it was the word 'main', or 'primary' or 'residence' which foxed him. He seems to have managed to fill in the forms with enough understanding to claim £40,000. And obviously, in 2005 it was OK to steal from the taxpayer. Back in those days, highwaymen roamed the, er, highways, justice was a matter of trial by combat and ducking stool were the latest in forensic crime investigations.

To be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if the terrible mess this country's in can be traced to a literacy problem in Parliament. After all, if a man whose job it is to scrutinise every word of every law before it's passed can't even understand 'main residence', it's unlikely that he understood much of what he was voting for or against. I wonder what reading-age he has.

On the other hand, perhaps Lord Paul is a lying corrupt sack of shit. After all, a man doesn't acquire £500 million  - yes, half a billion pounds - by being illiterate. Maybe he's just selectively illiterate. Like when it comes to claiming £40,000, or just under 0.01% of his fortune from the taxpayer.

Still, at least he has his pride:

“First and foremost, my honesty and integrity have been upheld. I have never tried to claim anything which I did not believe I was honestly entitled to claim at the time.

The fish rots from the head

When an organisation's leader is suspended from his very important job and he's ordered to give taxpayers back £40,000 of 'misclaimed' expenses, you have to wonder how useful he is to us.

Lady Uddin, Lord Paul and Lord Bhatia face suspension from the house for varying terms and have been ordered to pay back £125,000, £40,000 and £27,000 respectively.

Only two other peers have ever been suspended before and the penalties are the most stringent ever imposed. Paul resigned from the party.

Uddin and Bhatia were judged to have deliberately broken the rules while Paul breached the rules demonstrating "gross irresponsibility and negligence" but did not act in bad faith.

Uddin and Paul escaped police prosecution when the Lords rewrote the expenses rules earlier this year to clarify that members could designate a property as their primary residence even if they only visited once a month.

Paul, 115th on the Sunday Times rich list, claimed for expenses purposes that his primary residence was a flat in a hotel he owned to claim overnight expenses. He "freely" admitted he had never spent a night there. The report said: "We do not feel justified in finding, on the balance of probabilities, that Lord Paul acted dishonestly or in bad faith. However, his actions were utterly unreasonable, and demonstrated gross irresponsibility and negligence." Paul faces a four-month suspension and has already repaid £41,982.

I'm talking about Lord Paul, the Chancellor of The Hegemon. Unelected Lord, until recently a non-domiciled tax avoider and now revealed as an expenses cheat. What a role model.

(Oh, and what would be the penalty if someone claimed housing benefit for a place they'd never lived in? It wouldn't be paying back the cash and a four-month suspension…)

"I didn't sleep there but it was my home"

… said Lord Paul, my esteemed Chancellor of the University, as he tried to explain how he managed to wangle very cushy expenses by nominating a hotel room outside London as his 'home', despite it being occupied by the hotel's manager, so he could claim for a London home. Add to this the fact that he's a tax-evader (he claims not to be resident in Britain for tax purposes, even though he has a seat and vote in the upper house of the legislature) and we have a microcosm of the money-fixated immorality into which Labour sunk under the leadership of Blair and Brown. I do pay taxes, don't fiddle expenses, yet don't get any access to our rulers.

Lord Paul has £500m. He claimed £38,000. That's less than 0.01% of his fortune: perhaps a couple of hours' interest.

What an example to management, staff and students.

Death and taxes - only one of these is inevitable for Lord Paul

I mentioned, a few days ago, that my institution's Chancellor, Lord Paul, is a tax-avoider: even though he sits in the House of Lords speaking and voting on current issues, he doesn't think this elevated position comes with a responsibility to pay taxes in this country - so he's declared himself 'non-domiciled' for tax purposes, essentially claiming that he doesn't live here.

These selfish bastards have now been prevented from donating to political parties, after a good deal of pressure on the government, so that's something at least, though I'm still not happy that someone who can propose, promote, speak for or against, vote for or against, is allowed to hide their money from a democratically-elected government.

Lord Paul, to say the least, is in a bit of a huff about this, and doesn't seem to understand the insulting nature of his position. He says he's a law-abiding citizen, and I have no reason to doubt this, but avoiding the taxes that we little people pay while wielding power is hardly in the spirit of the law:

Me, non-doms and the law

Your article "Tycoons pledge to stop bankrolling Labour if 'non-dom' tax bill passes" (News, last week) repeated the misconception that I once said that I am capable of bankrolling the Labour party. I never said that.

When I talked to your reporter, I made it plain that if the bill is passed which prohibits non-doms from giving money to political parties, there is no way I will be able to make a donation. That bill became law last Monday and as a law-abiding citizen I shall, of course, respect it. I will only do what the law allows. I think Labour is the best party for Britain. Gordon Brown's contribution to saving this country from economic collapse is recognised throughout the world.
Lord Paul
London W1

Gits in Ermine

Talking of management, our Chancellor is Lord Paul. He's listed in Private Eye, the satirical/investigative magazine as 'non-domiciled' for tax reasons. Essentially, this means that he's got a place in the House of Lords (unelected), voting on affairs of state, and leading this august institution, while telling the authorities that he needn't pay tax in this country because he doesn't live here. I wonder how he manages to get any work done, and how he squares influencing the country without paying his way. What an example to us all.

He is for ID cards, opposes action to tackle climate change, doesn't mind hunting and appears not to like our homosexual friends. A fine example to our students.