Collect more tax, says the auditor. Shame he also works for Barclays
• Surely HM Revenue & Customs could do more to recover more tax, says the National Audit Office. It's not a terrible record. "The Department could, though, achieve better value for money from its investment in compliance work." Which is all well and good. But the revenue might reasonably ask whether the NAO is best placed to lecture on the subject of maximising income from tax. For look who sits atop the National Audit Office: former Treasury accountant Sir Andrew Likierman, also a non-executive director of Barclays Bank. Barclays, as we know, recently prompted Treasury action to block the avoidance ruse used by the bank to avoid paying at least £500m of tax. One man. Two uncomfortable hats.
• Sobering times for the city of Liverpool, as those in municipal command press ahead with plans for a skyscraper scheme in the city's northern docklands. English Heritage don't like it and, as we said on Tuesday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation or Unesco definitely objects. Do it, said Unesco, and we'll consider stripping the Liverpool waterfront of its world heritage status. Well, Liverpool has indeed surged ahead, and now the city must wait until the summer, when 21 representatives of countries party to the world heritage convention meet in St Petersburg. They can designate the waterfront an "endangered site". They can take the heritage status away. Only two other countries have gained and lost world heritage site status in the past: Oman, where the Arabian Oryx sanctuary became the first site to be removed from Unesco's world heritage list in 2007. And Germany, where the Dresden Elbe Valley was deleted from the list in 2009. Both sites diminished. Not auspicious company.
• A sobering time, too, for Steve Rotheram, the MP for Liverpool Walton. He has tried to steer the city and Liverpool FC through the trouble of the Luis Suarez race row, parts one to 38. But now he is the one getting it in the neck. Responding on Twitter to fans objecting about the activities of anti-racist campaigners who have been pressuring the club, Rotheram offered comfort. "Lads you can't stop people intent on causing trouble from this sort of action other than ignoring them," was his response. That, too, caused uproar, and rightly so. One campaigner, Zita Holbourne, complained to the Labour leader Ed. "The fact that Mr Rotheram regards me as someone who is intent on causing trouble by setting up a petition is of grave concern," she said. Rotheram has now taken evasive action. His letter to campaigners contains three fulsome apologies and ends: "I wouldn't knowingly cause offence on such an important issue. If I did, then quite simply I AM SORRY." A student of the Chinese proverb: "If you bow at all, bow low."
• With the passing of another International Women's Day, fresh evidence of the quiet ways in which women of influence have changed the course of history. On Saturday, as BBC Radio 4's Archive on 4 examines the relationship between the American public and big government, we learn how women in the White House fought and won a sexism row with Bill Clinton. "The era of big government is over," was to be the soundbite, "But we can't go back to the era of every man for himself." Eli Attie, a former White House official, tells the programme: "A number of women on the Clinton White House staff didn't like the phrase 'every man for himself' because they thought it was sexist, they wanted it to be more gender-neutral." What emerged was "so convoluted that no one quoted the second half of it". The phrase, "The era of big government is over", entered political folklore. The new endline, "But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves", was quickly forgotten. Still, Bill had his way in almost every other respect.
• Finally, they had a swell time in London at Confex, the exhibition show for events. Parag Khanna, Obama's former foreign policy adviser, was there, as was Thierry Malleret, ex-chief economist at Moscow's Alpha Bank. Malleret took as his theme "Why we are about to live in a state of quasi-permanent disequilibrium." Obvious answer: Nick Clegg.
Twitter: @hugh_muir
• This article was amended on 9 March 2012. The original said look who sits atop the Audit Commission. This has been corrected.