The Pong Papers

The only thing wrong with the Par­adise Pa­pers – the pongy rev­e­la­tions of (quelle sur­prise) nau­se­at­ing greed by some morally bank­rupt, tax-dodg­ing mega-mega rich – is the name.

Par­adise, fun­da­men­tally, has noth­ing what­so­ever to do with the Dol­lar, Pound, Euro, Ruble or Yuan. It is in some re­li­gions “heaven”, the ul­ti­mate abode of the right­eous, a won­der­ful place they go to after they die …. If… if they have led good lives. Not being par­tic­u­larly re­li­gious, I pre­fer to think of it as a de­f­i­n­i­tion of a walk in the Pri­o­rat moun­tains, and what comes with it, per­spec­tive and peace of mind.

Oh, I’m no saint. But I do heed my con­science be­cause like you I not only find the al­ter­na­tive un­bear­able but have worked out that try­ing to do the right thing usu­ally brings good things. We are all blessed, are we not, with an in­valu­able sense of what is fair and right? And we have eyes to see, ears to hear, souls to search.

UHNWI is not a place in Wales, though it could be. No. It stands for Ultra High Net Worth In­di­vid­u­als. They are as rare as hen’s teeth down here in the Pri­o­rat, but come to think of it they are thin on the ground every­where ex­cept per­haps at roulette ta­bles, the wheels of gold-plated su­per­cars, or sleep­ing off a Bel­uga caviar and lob­ster lunch on the swan-down sofa of a £100 mil­lion super-yacht. They make up 1 per cent of the global pop­u­la­tion, yet col­lec­tively own 50 per cent of every­thing. I can’t be sure of this, but I also have a sneaky sus­pi­cion that the vast ma­jor­ity of them are male.

All com­pletely legal, of course. None of that crim­i­nal squir­relling of back-han­ders by politi­cians here. Oh no. In fact some of them might well be fab­u­lous, fun and even kindly.

Yet, such is the way of our warped world, it is some­how quite al­right for those that own a stag­ger­ing pro­por­tion of the world to add to their cof­fers by avoid­ing tax - to such an ex­tent that they have man­aged to make giant strides in this re­gard dur­ing the past ten years. Yes, that decade just gone, when the global econ­omy was so sick that the vast ma­jor­ity of us were told that aus­ter­ity - hav­ing less - was im­per­a­tive if we were to avoid cat­a­stro­phe.

How on Earth is that pos­si­ble? This is how.

The mind-bog­gling sums of money they, the UH­N­WIs, are ac­cu­mu­lat­ing every sec­ond can come in very handy - not to fund core ser­vices and con­tribute to the pub­lic purse, but to line the pock­ets of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties that will keep this lu­cra­tive sta­tus quo. There ap­pear to be more loop­holes than grains of sand on a tax haven beach, which one might think it was not be­yond the in­tel­li­gence of gov­ern­ments to close.

Which means, of course, that to a shock­ing de­gree the planet is being run by a car­tel of self-serv­ing “elite” who pro­tect them­selves and those around them. It is all rather be­yond be­lief, and yet we al­ready had a shrewd idea, didn’t we?

The thing is, while I truly wel­come the blinds being pulled up on morally-im­pov­er­ished in­di­vid­u­als who feel en­ti­tled to opt out and cash in, I sense things are all com­ing to an ugly head. Re­flect­ing on the glut­tony, dis­dain and mad­ness that pro­ceeded the bit­ter end of past dy­nas­ties, things are be­com­ing in­creas­ingly edgy.

Hang on a minute. Hav­ing just raised the tem­per­a­ture I need to pull on my boots and coat and tell my­self what my friends and com­mu­nity keep re­mind­ing me about the qual­ity of our life here in rural Cat­alo­nia, in a strong, sup­port­ive, pos­i­tive, trust­ing, fam­ily-ori­en­tated, na­ture-cen­tric, sus­tain­ing, in­de­pen­dent-minded so­ci­ety. We are rich. Keep this in per­spec­tive Mar­tin.

Visca Cat­alo­nia . Today.