Everything Wrong With the 2026 World Cup. “By far the most grave of those is a World Cup host starting a war against one of the participant nations, as happened with the USA’s attack on Iran at the end of February.
From the New Yorker, a long and difficult-to-read report by Heidi Blake about how the truly disgusting and evil Tate brothers built a sexual slavery empire.
Report says incivility and victimisation ‘at unacceptable levels’ within force and current culture presents ‘systemic risk’
Looked at from Britain, there is a lot to envy about Denmark. Mette Frederiksen, the country’s prime minister, is embarking on a third term after putting together a coalition of left-wing and centrist political parties, providing the kind of political stability lacking in the UK.
Denmark has also provided a template for Britain’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who has been seeking to apply elements of the “Danish model” to control immigration and asylum. “We have learnt lessons from our international partners, including Denmark; fundamental reform to its system has seen asylum claims at a 40-year low,” she said in the House of Commons recently.
The Danes are also some of the happiest people in the world, vying with Finland and Iceland for that title, according to the World Happiness Report.
What you do not expect from Denmark, with its generous welfare state, are lessons in cutting taxes. And yet, that is what the new coalition government plans to do.
The country’s corporation tax rate is 22 per cent, three percentage points lower than the UK, but it plans to reduce it to 19 per cent over the next three years. That would match the pre-Covid low point for corporation tax in the UK — when the ambition was to have the lowest rate among leading economies — after which it was put up to 25 per cent, partly to pay for the pandemic and partly to fund more generous investment incentives.
Other tax cuts are also promised, notably abolishing Denmark’s two top income tax rates, a halving of the VAT rate on food, and its elimination on fruit and vegetables.
“It is crucial that Denmark remains competitive,” Frederiksen said last week when announcing the reductions in taxes. “At a time when other countries are putting up trade barriers, global competition is intensifying and energy prices are high, there is a need to do more to support Danish businesses.”
Many in Britain will see what they are doing in Copenhagen on tax as rather wonderful. The CBI’s director-general, Rain Newton Smith, said that with the business tax burden at a record level, UK firms were reaching “a tipping point”.
On income tax, nobody is talking about a reduction in rates, and the freeze on allowances and thresholds, due now to last until 2031, is increasing the income tax burden by tens of billions of pounds.
So, if we can emulate Denmark on immigration and asylum policy, or are seeking to do so, why cannot we not also do so on tax? Is the only way up for tax in the UK?
The short answer is that Denmark can contemplate tax cuts only because it has its public finances under control.
Denmark’s gross government debt is 28 per cent of gross domestic product and its net debt, according to its central bank, is just 7.6 per cent of GDP. The corresponding figures for the UK are 101 per cent and 94 per cent, respectively.
Denmark also runs a budget surplus — tax revenues exceeding public spending — and it was 2.9 per cent of GDP last year, with a projected figure of 0.9 per cent of GDP this year. The UK, in contrast, runs a large budget deficit: it was £129 billion in 2025-26, the fiscal year which ended in April, or 4.2 per cent of GDP. Denmark’s public finances are in good shape, while the UK’s clearly are not.
We should also perhaps be careful what we wish for on tax. Although Denmark’s proposed cut will take its corporation tax rate below that in the UK — banking and finance firms pay a higher rate of 26 per cent — this will not be true of other taxes.
Food, for example, is zero-rated for VAT purposes in the UK, while even halving Denmark’s 25 per cent rate, as promised, will leave the tax at 12.5 per cent.
As for direct taxes on individuals, even the proposed reductions will leave Denmark as a high-tax country. Danish taxpayers pay an 8 per cent labour market contribution and a 25 per cent municipal or local tax, even before income tax kicks in, initially at a 12.01 per cent rate, rising by a further 7.5 per cent rate at the so-called middle tax level.
A further 7.5 per cent kicks in with the “top” rate, and another 5 per cent with the “top, top” rate, recently introduced but now due to be abolished.
Before the proposed reductions, Denmark had the highest personal income tax rate in the EU, according to the Tax Foundation, with the additional problem that its highest tax rates kicked in at lower income levels than in many other countries.
The cuts unveiled last week may take Denmark’s income tax rates slightly below two of the EU’s other high-tax countries, France and Austria. They will not take them below those in the UK, or turn Denmark into a low-tax country.
KPMG secretly and repeatedly accessed a whistleblower’s computer to extract documents detailing allegations of data misuse, before later sharing the material with senior partners and former chief executive Andrew Yates.
While the content of those documents is not known, the covert retrieval appears to undercut management’s claims that they did not have enough detail to investigate the allegations.
KPMG Australia accessed the computer of a whistleblower in 2024 after allegations were raised about misuse of client information to secure work from clients such as Macquarie Group and Westpac. Bethany Rae
While the firm had the legal right to access an employee’s work laptop, the action is unusual because it occurred when the whistleblower was in a sensitive standoff with KPMG over legal protections. The move raises the possibility that the firm shared the documents with individuals who were subject to the allegations.
A spokesman for KPMG said that the firm had made multiple attempts to “identify evidence to support the claims” made by the whistleblower during the past two years.
“We have acknowledged our management of the whistleblower and their concerns fell short of the firm’s expectations and have apologised unreservedly,” the spokesman said. “Our investigations into these matters is ongoing.”
The firm’s handling of the matter has been heavily scrutinised by Labor senator Deborah O’Neill, who will chair a June 19 federal parliamentary hearing into the matter. She said KPMG needed to come clean on the whistleblower’s allegations and its treatment of the former staff member.
“It’s time for KPMG to fess up. The cover-up over the cover-up over the cover-up is just killing them and is not engendering any confidence in the work that needs to be done by auditors,” she told the Australian Financial Review on Tuesday.
“I’d be surprised if the boards of all of the affected companies aren’t looking at what their auditing and other arrangements are with KPMG.”
O’Neill also warned the firm that any attempt to use legal professional privilege to withhold documents or avoid answering questions during the hearing would be futile.
Labor senator Deborah O’Neill is chairman of the parliamentary joint committee on corporations and financial services. Alex Ellinghausen
The firm initially sought to have the hearing behind closed doors and indicated it would claim legal professional privilege, a legal right to protect confidential communications between a client and lawyer from being disclosed, over many documents. But it has since pledged to co-operate with the committee.
“There seems to be a culture of abuse of legal professional privilege to cover up sins in the large partnerships. It’s got to stop,” O’Neill said. “Legal professional privilege runs out at the door of the Senate and the House.”
O’Neill promised next Friday’s hearing would likely be a long day of questioning: “I will keep the inquiry open until we get to the bottom of the matter.”
The crisis began when a whistleblower – a former audit director – made a formal report in May 2024, alleging confidential client information was misused.
The whistleblower alleged partners misused confidential Lendlease board papers to pitch for Westpac and Dexus audit contracts. Inside information was also allegedly used to secure work from Macquarie Group and Westpac. The local firm and KPMG International refused to grant the whistleblower legal protection and failed to properly investigate the matter for two years.
The claims were first raised publicly by O’Neill in parliament in March 2026.
At the time, KPMG said it asked the whistleblower on more than 20 occasions for more information, but failed to mention it had also repeatedly asked the individual to sign a non-disclosure agreement and refused to provide legal protection.
Sources say IT personnel extracted the files under orders from the office of KPMG Australia’s general counsel Louise Capon.
The access started shortly after the whistleblower filed an initial protected disclosure in May 2024, with IT staff accessing the machine twice that November.
IT operatives identified two documents outlining misconduct, including the misuse of client data, that had not yet been formally disclosed. These files were copied and distributed to Yates and senior leaders within audit and HR.
In May 2026, Yates and head of audit Julian McPherson resigned over their handling of the matter. Internal pressure is mounting for the early exit of local chairman Martin Sheppard and former chief operating officer Eileen Hoggett.
Also under perceived pressure to depart are other senior leaders, including Capon, deputy chair Carmel Mortell and head of human resources Dorothy Hisgrove. All were involved in aspects of the firm’s earlier responses to the allegations.
KPMG Australia has apologised to the whistleblower and admitted its three earlier investigations were inadequate. The firm announced a fourth inquiry to be conducted by Allens, the law firm that produced an earlier report dismissing most of the allegations.
A dozen current and former partners – including Yates, McPherson, Sheppard and Hoggett – have been summoned to appear before the hearing on June 19.
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