{"id":6579,"date":"2016-02-01T07:21:23","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T07:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6579"},"modified":"2016-02-01T07:21:23","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T07:21:23","slug":"googling-ourselves-to-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/02\/01\/googling-ourselves-to-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Googling ourselves to death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watched a very smooth man on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/iplayer\/episode\/b06znclc\/the-andrew-marr-show-31012016\">TV<\/a> yesterday explaining that Google pays corporation tax at 20% (like other companies in the UK), and that there had been no \"sweetheart deals\" with HMRC in the arrangement to\u00a0pay\u00a0\u00a3130m in 10 years of back taxes. \u00a0At 20%, that suggests that the Big G made\u00a0\u00a32.6bn profit on sales, services (etc) in the UK during that time. \u00a0You will have your own view on whether that sounds plausible or not, although, only Google and their accountants will actually know the ins and outs of it.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, \u00a3130m sounds a lot when compared to Facebook, which paid \u00a34,327 in corporation tax in 2014. \u00a0Then there was the offer from by Starbucks to donate \u00a320m to the Treasury for 2013 and 2014, having paid zilch in\u00a0the previous three years.<\/p>\n<p>But, here's the thing: how many of you reading this, who are outraged by it all, still use Google and Facebook and patronise\u00a0Starbucks or any other company using\u00a0<em>Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich, <\/em>or<em> Luxembourg Lark<\/em> arrangements?<\/p>\n<p>If you <em>really<\/em> cared, you'd give them all up. \u00a0I stopped\u00a0using the Google search engine about 18 months ago to see whether the world kept turning at the same speed.<\/p>\n<p>It did.<\/p>\n<p>........................................<\/p>\n<p>NB, the title of this post is a tribute to <a href=\"http:\/\/neilpostman.org\">Neil Postman<\/a>. \u00a0Such a pity he's not around to write today. \u00a0Discussing his 1971 book: <em>Teaching as a subversive activity,<\/em> was a formative experience in my professional development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched a very smooth man on TV yesterday explaining that Google pays corporation tax at 20% (like other companies in the UK), and that there had been no \"sweetheart deals\" with HMRC in the arrangement to\u00a0pay\u00a0\u00a3130m in 10 years...<\/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-6579","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\/6579","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=6579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}