{"id":3131,"date":"2013-02-13T08:56:57","date_gmt":"2013-02-13T08:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=3131"},"modified":"2013-02-13T08:56:57","modified_gmt":"2013-02-13T08:56:57","slug":"an-accidental-starbucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/02\/13\/an-accidental-starbucks\/","title":{"rendered":"An accidental Starbucks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had a pretty standard cup of Starbucks coffee the other day; unwontedly, I should say. \u00a0\u00a0I was on a train and only saw the logo when the drink was on my little table. \u00a0I drank it anyway, my liquid and caffeine needs trumping the soft moral tug. \u00a0Anyway, I had, by that time, already contributed to their UK non-profits. \u00a0I don't normally patronise the brand, not thinking the flavour is up to much as well as being rather agin mega-globalised coffee chains. \u00a0I do try to keep up with their hype, however, and so\u00a0I was interested to see\u00a0that the reports that the company's panjandrums were so upset by the prime minister's recent criticisms of their non-tax policies that they were threatening to reduce investment in the UK, were quite\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2269012\/Starbucks-deny-threat-withhold-millions-pounds-investment-Britain-Camerons-cheap-shots-firms-tax-avoidance.html\">misplaced<\/a>. \u00a0Well, indeed, such a stance would have been a poor reading of the national mood.<\/p>\n<p>But why not reduce (or stop) investment? \u00a0Indeed, why not leave the UK altogether: why not go somewhere else and pay voluntary taxes there? \u00a0It must be something they think about. \u00a0Personally, I think this would be a double benefit to the UK: raising the proportion of companies that pay appropriate tax on earnings, and improving the taste of the average cup of coffee. \u00a0A Win-Win outcome to rival that of 30 years ago when prime minister <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercatornet.com\/demography\/view\/11170\">Muldoon<\/a> said the migration from NZ to Oz was raising the IQ of both countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a pretty standard cup of Starbucks coffee the other day; unwontedly, I should say. \u00a0\u00a0I was on a train and only saw the logo when the drink was on my little table. \u00a0I drank it anyway, my liquid...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}