Fair?

Even The Times thinks it is on the dodgy side:

If Google thought it would win brownie points from its tax deal with the UK authorities, it misjudged things badly.

It might not be terribly fair. At least Google is coughing up £130 million more than it might have done otherwise had it dug in its heels. In future, it will pay a bit more than it did in the past. Yet the deal looks terrible, playing into the hands of those who see tax for multinationals as optional and usually cooked up in cosy sweetheart pacts with the Revenue.

The timing of the announcement, 10 o’clock on Friday night, looked suspicious, as did the paucity of hard information in the Google statement. George Osborne’s hailing of it as a “major success” was not a good idea. People are more likely to remember Boris Johnson’s verdict: “Derisory.”

So there you go - mud all over the government, the HMRC and Google ...