Nick Cohen
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer

All last week, Bono was in court in Dublin arguing about a stetson. It was his trademark hat, as essential a part of the brand that is Bono as his compassion for starving Africans. His former stylist, Lola Cashman, says he gave the hat to her as thanks for her hard work. He looked like Nana Mouskouri before she remodelled him and it is outrageous, she says, for Bono to claim now that she stole it so she could sell it and make money which was rightfully his.
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The learned judges of Ireland have a duty to apply their fine minds to the case with due seriousness. What is surprising is that the rest of the world continues to take Bono seriously. I would have thought that after the revelation that U2 moved their music publishing company to the Netherlands to cut their tax bill in half, he wouldn’t have dared stepped out of his mansion for fear of being laughed to scorn.
Here was a man who incited audiences to condemn Western politicians for not sending enough of their taxpayers’ money to the wretched of the earth, avoiding tax himself. The Edge, U2’s guitarist, sounded as edgy as a plump accountant in the 19th hole when he explained the move offshore by saying: ‘Our business is a very complex business. Of course we’re trying to be tax-efficient. Who doesn’t want to be tax-efficient?’

The practical consequences of being ‘tax-efficient’ are many. If you say you care about Africa, why are you paying fees to international money movers who encourage Africa’s ‘tax-efficient’ kleptomaniacs to hide their loot in tax havens? You are also forcing fellow citizens, who didn’t make U2’s estimated $110m in 2005, to pick up the bill, not only for foreign aid, but for education, health, law and order and defence.

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