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Matthew Parris

Why Gary Barlow should hang on to his OBE

It’s time the game of outrage over honours had some rules. Here are mine

17 May 2014

9:00 AM

17 May 2014

9:00 AM

‘Strip him of his knighthood!’ Or life peerage, or CBE, OBE — or whatever. The cry goes up with a kind of automaticity these days, and with increasing shrillness. As I write, elements in Fleet Street are hyperventilating about Gary Barlow’s OBE. Barlow and two other members of the band Take That are reported to have avoided paying tens of millions of pounds in tax by investing in the Icebreaker Management scheme, deemed by HMRC to be a vehicle for tax avoidance.

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