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WALLSTROM/KINGSTON

Margo Kingston hasn’t appeared much at Webdiary lately. Possibly she’s been busy in her secret alternative role as EU commissioner Margot Wallstrom:

A very important event happened yesterday: The Commission put a white band around the Berlaymont to show its support for the Global Call to Action against Poverty campaign.

On the subject of white bands, Bono doesn’t pay any tax. Way to make poverty history, Bono.

(Via readers Gary Powell and Ernest Gudath)

Posted by Tim B. on 06/21/2005 at 01:50 PM
  1. This oh-so important event reminds me of a piece from the old Rush Limbaugh TV show. “See this ribbon?” asked the big man, placing a bright red ribbon on his lapel, “This ribbon means I care more than you.” I was about seven years old, and he had me rolling in the floor laughing. My parents let me stay up past midnight to watch, and that was the night I became a Republican.

    Posted by Nathan on 2005 06 21 at 03:01 PM • permalink

  2. But nowadays ol’ Rush would have to throw in a head tilt to assert his superior caring.

    Incidentally, there are plenty of tilted heads in those inane Make Poverty History TV commercials, of course.

    Posted by PW on 2005 06 21 at 03:30 PM • permalink

  3. Does the white ribbon mean that the EU is surrendering in the war on poverty? If so,then it must be the French influence. Or will a white ribbon sustain a family of, say, four Albanians for a week?

    Posted by paco on 2005 06 21 at 03:40 PM • permalink

  4. Incidentally, there are plenty of tilted heads in those inane Make Poverty History TV commercials, of course.

    Haven’t seen those. Just have the horrid “STAND” commercials in which unwashed, horrid teens act out “progressive” protest fantasies agaist smoking and anyone who’s ever been involved in raising tobacco.

    One of the earliest had a van filled with Earnest Pot Smokers activists driving around a neighborhood of REALLY BIG HOUSES on tiny little lots, late in the night, screaming into a loudspeaker about how it’s shameful that “tobacco farmers” can sleep at night, knowing what they grow.

    Never mind that no one’s ever grown tobacco commercially on a 1/2 acre lot, but if they pulled that stunt in real tobacco-growing country, their van would be peppered with buckshot.

    Posted by Rob Crawford on 2005 06 21 at 03:51 PM • permalink

  5. The post at The Corner has a link to Margot Wallstrom’s website. The comments are worth the trip. My favorite was:

    “A very important event happened yesterday: The Commission put a white band around the Berlaymont to show its support for the Global Call to Action against Poverty campaign.”

    If that is what Margot Wallstrom, Vice-President of the European Commission, Inter-institutional Relations and Communications Strategy thinks is a very important event, God help us all.

    Posted by disillusioned on June 17, 2005 at 10:20 PM CEST

    Posted by ErnieG on 2005 06 21 at 05:25 PM • permalink

  6. But a list of more than 1,000 artists and writers who have claimed tax-free status since 1998, released under freedom of information legislation, has caused sharp intakes of breath.

    I find that attitude of shocked surprise a little hard to swallow. Even in my teenage wasteland of a childhood I knew that writers didn’t have to pay taxes in Ireland, and had a pipe dream of living there when I grew up to be a Big, Important writer. The only thing that surprises me is how few are apparently among the lucky. Then again, there isn’t that much space in Ireland is there. (Also I’ll bet there are a number of hoops you have to jump through; I doubt that just anyone can waltz into Ireland and say “I write stuff. Support me.”)

    Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 06 21 at 07:10 PM • permalink

  7. I don’t have the info handy, but I did once read that there’s an employee in the Irish tax office who works full time on the U2 account.  If you’ve got to be a tax officer, I guess that’s the job to have.

    Posted by cuckoo on 2005 06 21 at 08:21 PM • permalink

  8. Update: U2 apparently get a tax break on their publishing, which is about a third of their income.  They still get taxed for tour revenue and CD sales.
    http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/music/story.jsp?story=648411

    Posted by cuckoo on 2005 06 21 at 08:24 PM • permalink

  9. Bono’s won the war on poverty for himself and the Edge (WTF is an “edge”, anyway?) How could you possibly imply that a popular recording artist could be in fact a self-aggrandising, self-important, puffed-up, hypocritical fucktard? For Shame.

    Posted by Habib on 2005 06 21 at 08:33 PM • permalink

  10. Margo has little need to continue to contribute to Web Dairy; she has all her little helpers busy running around whilst she lunches @ Byron with Bob Belly c/o SMH contract.

    Chin chin comrades!

    Posted by rog2 on 2005 06 21 at 09:33 PM • permalink

  11. I thought Bono was based permanently in New York.  Except for his hotel across the river from the Temple Bar, anyway.

    Posted by ninme on 2005 06 22 at 01:03 AM • permalink

  12. I thought he spent much of his time on Pluto, or at least somewhere with a substantial pixie population.

    Posted by Habib on 2005 06 22 at 01:07 AM • permalink

  13. hypocrisy - alive & well & living in ireland - but why isn’t ken loach on the list? i’m disappointed

    Posted by KK on 2005 06 22 at 04:58 AM • permalink

  14. It seems that the only activities that go tax-free are the ones you can do just sitting around the house. They want to make sure there’s never a repeat of the great couch potato famine.

    Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2005 06 22 at 11:54 AM • permalink

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