Be ye never so high, the law is above you ” – Lord Justice Denning

The antics in parliament brought that to my mind. I know he said it, but I can’t find the reference anywhere.

He also said: “The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country”.

Twenty odd years ago after one of my periods of self-inflicted recession I owed the tax man a weighty six figure sum. In due course the bloodhounds were on to me, and I was summoned to meet two officials.

You might imagine they would be in the traditional investigative roles of Mr. Nice and Mr. Nasty. This was not the case: they were Mr. Nasty and Mr. Extremely Bloody Unpleasant.

It was very, very worrying but in the end I did not try to bluff it out and claim I’d been perfectly justified in not paying the taxes. I told the truth: I am downwright incompetent. I admitted I was wrong and we came to an agreement about how I was going to pay it all off.

This seemed to me fair and reasonable even if the men in question didn’t. The key exchange took place when they said to me, “You owe us £XXX,000” and I replied, “No, I don’t. Then they said to me, “Prove it.”

Every one of the wretches who has been accused of stealing our money, starting with Brown and Cameron, should be forced to prove they didn’t, and if they did, forced to pay back the money with interest where appropriate.

They should be subjected to the normal procedures which operate when somebody is guilty. Can anyone tell me why not?

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

6 Comments

Anonymous

May 5, 2009 - 10:26 am

I couldn’t agree more! Why is there one rule for us and another for the ruling elite.

Doesn’t seem like much difference between the UK ruling elite and the most corrupt governments around the world. The only thing was that people of those other countries know about it, while the ruling pigs erm elite have tried to hide it and have hid it from us for years.

Rob Willox

May 5, 2009 - 12:55 pm

You should really have searched a bit more; was actually on the first page of Google:-
“To every subject of this land, however powerful, I would use Thomas Fuller’s words over three hundred years ago, ‘Be ye never so high, the law is above you.”Lord Denning (1899-1999)
British judge

Drayton Bird

May 5, 2009 - 1:01 pm

You know, Rob, I searched and I searched — but I had the quote slightly wrong. I at first thought it was “Be ye never so mighty…” It was only as I actually drafted the piece that the actual quote came to me. Anyhow, the thought is what matters, right?