Rendering unto Rishi!

Are there no prisons?
Tradition is part of humanity. Like many things in this world, there’s a positive and also a negative side to it. On the lighter side of tradition, the game of Monopoly is a Christmas tradition for many families with young and old sat around the board with some player waiting in eager anticipation for some poor victim to land on Park Lane or Mayfair each with a hotel on!
Another tradition at Christmas is to watch one of the Christmas Carol movies, the classic of which is considered to be the definitive of the many film versions of Charles Dickens’ classic novel is this 1951 British adaptation, starring Alastair Sim (entitled “Scrooge” in its U.K. release).
Scrooge the Miser of course experienced a damascene conversion, not on the road to Damascus but in his London town house and became Scrooge the Philanthropist. A point of note is that Scrooge the Miser did pay his taxes, hence his questions about the prisons, the union workhouses, the tread mill and the Poor Law.
Scrooge however was supposed to have lived in the middle of the nineteenth century. We live at the start of the second decade of the twenty first century. Unlike the time when Charles Dickens penned his work, we have the welfare state, paid for by a tax system vastly different from that of that time.
Given the recent budget and the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Right Honourable Rishi Sunak the Member for Richmond (Yorks) and not the Right Honourable Henry Goulburn, FRS, the Member for Cambridge University (the Chancellor at the time of A Christmas Carol’s publication on 19 December 1843), OR insofar as the present is concerned, Comrade McDonnell the Member for Hayes and Harlington, it behoves us to consider tax avoidance measures in the light of this.
For myself, I was hoping that Comrade McDonnell would not occupy 11 Downing Street on Friday 13th December 2019!
Now that would have been a Friday 13th to remember!
I was somewhat concerned as to what would be contained in Sunny Sunak’s (the man appears to be always smiling) first budget and was relieved that my tax position has not been changed. As a result, I have decided not to take out a Stocks and Shares ISA. This because the amount of tax saved would, after taking into consideration the costs involved in setting up the tax wrapper, would not be coming my way until the time I begin to receive my state pension. That being the case, I have decided that HM Customs & Revenue can be the beneficiaries of this limited largesse on my part!
As for Scrooge, herewith where he meets Marley’s ghost:Herewith the whole movie: https://youtu.be/Cmft5uvQW8A (just under 90 minutes).
Enjoy!