Treasure Islands and the Avoidance of Tax

I have been reading this fascinating book with increasing distaste for the concept that one should spend much time and money minimising one's exposure to tax. I have always felt sorry for those who thought that they had to organise their affairs - and even domicile - so as to pay less tax - such as the father of a friend who has to live half his life outside the country, with the result that his family only see him periodically; to those who have moved to Jersey and seem uniformly miserable. And we would no doubt be much wealthier today had my step-grandfather not taken the conscious decision not to shield his wealth from death duties on the grounds that all taxes were properly due to society and the country in which one lived. Should such noble sentiments return (particularly in corporations) we would no doubt be able to reduce the taxes that we do actually pay and care better for our society.

Favourite Poetry - Reluctance

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season? 

Robert Frost

The Drapers' New Year Service

Some of St Michael's Choir at lunch at the Drapers' Hall


The City New Year Service is traditionally held at St Michaels', Cornhill in January and lunch is offered afterwards by the Drapers Livery Company, who have been patrons of St Michael's for 500 years, at their Hall nearby (recently in use as the setting for some of the scenes in The King's Speech). St Michael's vicar, the Rev Dr Peter Mullen, is a traditionalist Anglican of deep learning and of often amusing and outspoken views, who holds services based on the Book of Common Prayer and King James' Bible.

The City New Year's Service follows a traditional pattern of prayers and hymns - including Jerusalem and I Vow To The My Country - and some beautiful anthems from the choir, which, led by Jonathan Rennert, is  one of the finest in London. Unlike the choir of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, the female sopranos are taught to sing like trebles, as Rennert believes that most church music was written for boy trebles. As a result, there's a wonderful purity to their voices.

This year the Master Draper, Maj-Gen Adrian Lyons, invited a fellow soldier, Maj-Gen Tim Cross, to give the address. In a superb talk, he pointed to the decline in human values in British society (which he called a 'cut-flower society', a brief and flashy show without roots and leaving no lasting seed) and called for leaders to emerge to reinstate them.  His address can be read here.

The Scottish Borders

The Countryside above Selkirk. Click for a larger view

The funeral of one of my parents' dearest friends took me to the Scottish Borders for the first time just before New Year where I found a fascinating and beautiful landscape still mostly covered with snow. I also discovered the astonishing ruined abbeys of Dryburgh, Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose and had time to visit the first two, and leaned much of the history of the area from those ancient buildings.  Click the heading for more photos

Favourite Places - Dartmoor

Dartmoor on Christmas Day 2010

Favourite Places - Plymouth

Plymouth Hoe, Drake's Island and Mount Edgcumbe on Christmas Day

Favourite Places - Stocks Farm

Stocks Down Farm in the snow

Thomas Miller Carol Service 2010

Thomas Miller's annual carol service at St Katherine Cree Church on 14th December was attended by some 60 people - both current members of the firm as well as a significant number of those who had retired. The fine Jacobean church, said to have been built after a design by Inigo Jones (who was also concurrently building the Mansion House) is is the process of being restored. Much ugly wooden partitioning has been taken out and both the organ and the peal of eight bells reinstated (with assistance from the firm). The west door, closed for over 200 years and through which its consecrating prelate, Archbishop Laud once passed, probably on his way to the Tower...now opens again into Creechurch Lane.

Click here for a links to some favourite carols.

Thomas Miller Carol Service 2008
Thomas Miller Carol Service 2009

The Royal Hospital Chelsea Carol Service 2010

The Friends of the Royal Hospital Chelsea Carol Service held on 10th December is one of the loveliest of the Christmas season. Unusually the beautiful Wren chapel has its candle-lit choir stalls in the centre of the nave, creating a wonderfully intimate atmosphere. This year one of the lessons was a fine poem written and read by Alan Tichmarsh which you can read here. A video of the choir singing the first two verses of 'Once in Royal David's City' can be heard here, but the solist was a woman, who's voice lacked the cut-glass purity of a boy's

Click here for the 2009 Carol Service

The Mission to Seafarers Carol Concert 2010

The Carol Concert 2009. No photos were allowed this time

The Mission to Seafarers concert of nine lessons and carols was held at St Michael Paternoster Royal on 8th December 2010 in the presence of the Princess Royal, accompanied by the chairman of the trustees, Robert Woods. Lessons were read by the likes of Jeffrey Archer and the choir was from the London Nautical School. Unlike last year, it was not a vintage performance and one wished that they would stick to traditional carols and not attempt jumpy tunes from Moldova.

Clic here for some wonderful on-line carols