In a famous 1929 tax case, the judge, Lord Clyde, ruled that there was no such imperative: "No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or his property as to allow the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores." The Revenue, he said, quite rightly took every advantage afforded to it by the law, and the taxpayer was equally entitled to protect himself.

It would be something to post Lord Clyde's judgment in the Treasury's back office, or on the OECD's walls, or even in St Petersburg, where the Group of 20 is due to meet next. Perhaps the Cayman Islands should adopt it.