This is what I faced today, but the two are not connected, well not directly, optionally even indirectly. They are connected by the smallest sliver of thought. To start, the first part comes from the BBC. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61080536) gives us ‘Sanctioned Russian oligarchs linked to £800m worth of UK property’, which sounds nice, but lets take a deeper look. We get “Some of the individuals deny ownership of the mansions, which may mean they are beyond the reach of the sanctions. To get to the bottom of who owns what, we carried out a detailed trawl of leaked offshore documents, the Land Registry and court papers – as well as previous reporting.” It comes down to the first part. There we see “Because of the system of secrecy here in the UK and in relation to the Overseas Dependencies it’s really easy for people to hide their assets and their funds in the UK and not even the police necessarily have sight of where those assets are,” these people are skating around the central issue ‘What they did was perfectly legal’ a setting of creating actual tax laws is at the heart of this and this is decades overdue. It should have started in the age of Gordon Brown (2007), there is a stage where we could agree that Tony Blair (1997-2007) should have started it, but the pressure was not on for the UK at that point, the meltdown in the US should have been a clear signal, but from 1997 onwards NOTHING was done to rewrite tax laws into the laws the UK needed to have in 2010, and now a decade later we see “To get to the bottom of who owns what” and there hiding behind the Panama Papers is jut a farce. This should have been adjusted in the EU, UK and US by 2010 but none of them did ANYTHING to clear the waters. They merely pretended to do so to appease political friends, they all did. And now when we see the laughingly weak “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains” this implies that laws were broken, so is he just incompetent, stupid or both? And this matters, because it is all linked.
Roman Abramovich, has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. On Roman Abramovich we see “He has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. His most expensive London property is a 15-bedroom house on a street that is nicknamed Billionaires Row. With its vast stucco-faced Italianate mansions, it is home to royalty and ambassadors – as well as oligarchs.” The one element missing (two actually) were any laws broken? More important we see sanctioned by UK and EU, not the US. Then we get to the main event. It is Alisher Usmanov, sanctioned by all three and the desert of all this is more than a Medovik. We are given “a spokesman for Mr Usmanov said most of the billionaire’s UK property, plus a $600m (£456m) yacht, had already been “transferred into irrevocable trusts”, potentially putting them beyond the reach of sanctions.” A stage that is perfectly legal and the laws were never rewritten making this a sliding scale of discrimination, a scale of injustice and no laws were broken. The law makers were too stupid, too lazy to do anything about it. In the UK, the US and the EU. The lawmakers appeased THEIR friends as I personally see it and the oligarchs merely used the laws available to THEM TOO. A stage we need to accept and respect if we are a nation of laws. More important, which of these oligarchs ACTIVELY supported the war by Putin? I am asking, I actually do not know and the media merely surrounds itself with emotional BS, not a fact in sight and it is time to call these media players out on that too. The BBC article is actually quite good, but where do we see ‘Laws were broken’? We see “Ravenmorrow Limited was set up in December last year and no individual is identified on UK company records as the beneficial owner.” A clear failure of UK Laws, a setting where it was allowed to do this and no one is to blame but British Parliament and the House of Lords. The BBC does not really state that do they? As. I see it I see not the acts of Oligarchs, I see the failures of governments not overhauling tax laws when they could and as I see it all parties are guilty (except the greens), unlike the others the green parties all over the world seem to be oblivious on what a rudder is or does, so they are going Hades knows where at a speed no one can predict to arrive at some location no one knows.
Home-run
Yes, like the side we saw before there is another side and it makes more of a case towards the end of Microsoft, all whilst Adobe is getting more and more in place of taking over 25% of their office business. It is depending on two elements, and when these elements are out I will happily hand them over what I have if Google or Amazon buy the other IP and give me permission to hand that over to Adobe, I will gladly do that, just to see Microsoft squirm a little more. 5 markets lost to stupidity, 5 markets lost to shortsightedness and Adobe will be one of the winners. The setting that comes has been out for a while and the lost sides (four at present) are things that Microsoft should have seen years ago, their inaction is now more than enough. If you are asleep at the wheel you lose the ship, it is that simple and unlike the Ever Given, others are not in the Suez Canal, we can go around this Microsoft vessel and let it sink. A home-run out in the open and Microsoft just will not wake up, well let them sleep, I reckon that Adobe is more than ready to take over a chunk of the Office users. Consider that after all this time and all these follies, people do not merely gain a program, they gain a suite of options to tantalise their creativity.
There is no telling where the creative people are going to end, but it will be ahead of where Microsoft hoped they would be, a lag that only intensifies the losses they will face. The setting reminded me of an article I saw in LinkedIn.
There we see a person objecting to the discrimination of scouting. There we see “The announcer labelled the boy scouts as ‘Future leaders of America’ and the girls scouts as a group that were ‘just having fun’” This is what we see as a setting for Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe instills and propagates creativity, whilst Microsoft merely sets a mediocre foundation of presenting. Yet if there is one thing I have seen from Adobe, it is a clear stage where presenters can create works of art, whilst Microsoft sets a stage of mediocre joyous presentations, but in this day and age presentations are serious business, it sets the tone for corporate stories, sales events, propagating new projects and products. Joy gets us nowhere and Microsoft joy is close to a decade old. Adobe is on the verge of setting the next generation of presenting tools. So where do YOU wanna be when your idea is ready to be shown to the world? At the edge of what is possible, or in a joyous looking meadow, one that we have seen a million times over? I will let you decide on where you want to be and be honest, do you really think that Microsoft has any serious relevance left?
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 