With varying degrees of surprise, I find that none of the comments made so far are particularly disagreeable. Left and Right have from time to time condemned their respective demons in the form of alleged offenders when it was deemed politically astute to do so.

I do not endorse Carr's use of this scheme.

However, our individual liabilities in tax matters in a fair tax regime are probably best kept confidential to such degrees as to be open enough to ensure that we all enjoy a sense of fairness and proportion but exclude us from public opprobrium in all circumstances except where tax laws are broken and where alleged offenders have actually been found guilty.

However there is something of the very dark arts and even darker motive in that "Calamity" Clegg failed to prevent "Calm Down" Cameron from seemingly dipping into confidential and statutorily protected tax records and unilaterally electing to publish the tax affairs of a private individual, without regard to his duty to protect their privacy without exception.

With apologies to DerbyHillTop (with whom I have used this allegory previously in correspondence) and with reflection on the moral repugnance that "Calm Down" Cameron has engendered in his probably illegal publication of data that was gained from his very questionable access to a private taxpayer's circumstance:

"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me"

Substitute taxpayer into this parable and ask the question "who will protect me ?"

The potential answer provides no comfort - and absolutely no protection, particularly if "Calm Down" deems you to be beyond the pale of his political acceptability. ("Calamity" - watch out on this one - your party is doomed at the next election to be reduced to its former rump and old "Calm Down" will need a new whipping boy for his failures)

I openly admit that I have no information as to how "Calm Down" came to have info on Carr's use of the apparently legal K2 Tax Avoidance scheme and as to why he made his best and maximum effort to blacken the character of the individual.

He might have better adopted the at-least legal approach of condemning the K2 scheme directly and avoided any allegation of illegality that his actions in the form of the personal attack on Carr has attracted.

What I am sure of is that he has elected to ignore the widely held equivalent moral repugnance toward every Tory tax avoider, best exampled by former Tory Chairman and alleged man-of-broken-promise to "regularize all my tax affairs within the UK", the Right Honourable, The Lord Ashcroft, KCMG.