I recall from many years ago, during a visit to the harbour at Monaco, marvelling at the boats tied to the docks. Magnificent craft, many of them Italian built and displaying the owners toys on deck: sylphlike bikini-clad young women naively taking advantage of their short-lived assets along with the jet skis and speedboat affixed on their davits together with a BMW cabriolet and a light helicopter. Certainly it was an extravagant and somewhat vulgar display of wealth to flaunt and so I concluded that such lack of sophistication is the reserve of lottery winners and small-time white powder crooks.

Away from the shallow draft docks lay some much larger vessels at the deep water anchorage; vessels better described as ships rather than mere boats and requiring a captain and crew numbering fifty or so; multi-million gin palaces with their accompanying overheads feeding on big money, old money. I continued my stroll along the quayside doing my best to quench my coveting lust by emulating Topol and singing “If I were a rich man.” All things are relative and I calmed myself in the consolation that at least I was here too, in good health and breathing the same air.

GF I have already confessed that one of the reasons why I rest my bones in Brazil is because of a tax advantage, however if I had a trillion, or best part thereof, I think that I could find a better place than this potholed dungeon and its keepers.

Incidentally, do I detect a new air of political correctness regarding tax and its avoidance? I feel a groundswell from the chattering classes about paying “your fair share” and that if the rich paid their full taxes [whatever that means] then the world wouldn’t be in the current fix. Of course the people who say such things are too dumb to make any real money in the first instance or to recognise the folly of the spendthrift politicians who have not only spent all of their hard-earned taxes but have borrowed unsustainably on future tax revenues. I wouldn’t give a government that last drip from a shake at a urinal.

I am of the opinion that the trickle-down from hidden wealth is a separate and intrinsic part of the world economy providing manufacturing and employment. Is it not preferable to forego our envy or jealousies when we see exotic cars, boats, planes and homes together with their associated employment that is provided in no small part by the tax avoiders? Or is it preferable to see such costs going to bailout countries such as Greece and its profligate population or indeed corrupt politicians? After all, we are doing our best but we are not communists.