What the bloody-hell is going on?

Or this week's news. According to the Daily Star (I won't sully this blog with a link) I saw in the newsagents this morning the EDL are forming a political party. Apart from the fact this means the Star has clearly run out of copy (aka breasts), I wonder, does this mean they are on the retreat or do they think they're on the forward march? I guess the former. It'd certainly be easier to permanently campaign against them. They'd also split the far-right vote.

Meanwhile, bankers beware, Gideon Osborne is levering £2.5 billion off you next financial year. It sounds a lot. Indeed, it makes Deal or No Deal seem like peanuts. But it is a fraction of the money that the banks should really be repaying the public (not the other way round). Besides, they're getting some pretty good perks.

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don't get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

Foreign means anywhere. If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here. The other is Switzerland. The exemption applies solely to "large and medium companies": it is not available for smaller firms. The government says it expects "large financial services companies to make the greatest use of the exemption regime". The main beneficiaries, in other words, will be the banks.

But that's not the end of it. While big business will be exempt from tax on its foreign branch earnings, it will, amazingly, still be able to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK. No other country does this. The new measures will, as we already know, accompany a rapid reduction in the official rate of corporation tax: from 28% to 24% by 2014. This, a Treasury minister has boasted, will be the lowest rate "of any major western economy". By the time this government is done, we'll be lucky if the banks and corporations pay anything at all. In the Sunday Telegraph, David Cameron said: "What I want is tax revenue from the banks into the exchequer, so we can help rebuild this economy." He's doing just the opposite.

Then you learn that over 50% of Tory Party donations comes from the City of London. £11.4 million pounds to be precise. What a bargain! Welcome to the Bullingdon Club sale! Everything must go!

Silvio Berlusconi may at long last be prosecuted, in this case for sex-offences. Judging by recent history it should send the greasy pimp's poll ratings even higher.

Ian Duncan-Smith reckons Hello magazine is responsible for the ruin of marriage. I'd have thought mass literacy would have suffered the most, but anyway, what on earth is this mentalist doing in charge of a ministry?