|
 Ahlberg, best-known for his book "The Jolly Postman", has
written dozens of popular children's books, including many
illustrated by his late wife Janet.
He had been due to receive the inaugural Booktrust Lifetime
Achievement Award, presented by the Booktrust charity which
promotes reading, but after learning Amazon was involved he
rejected it.
"Tax, fairly applied to us all, is a good thing. It pays for
schools, hospitals - libraries! When companies like Amazon cheat
- paying 0.1 percent on billions, pretending it is earning money
not in the UK, but in Luxembourg - that’s a bad thing," Ahlberg
said in an open letter published on Thursday on the website of
The Bookseller, a business magazine for the book industry.
"We should surely, at the very least, say that it is bad and on
no account give it any support or, by association,
respectability," said Ahlberg, 76.
"Amazon’s defense is that it is not breaking any laws, but could
Booktrust not have found a more moral sponsor? The idea that my
'lifetime achievement'... should have the Amazon tag attached to
it is unacceptable," Ahlberg added.
In May, Reuters reported that Amazon.com Inc had filed accounts
showing a British tax bill of 10 million pounds ($17 million)
despite recording $7.3 billion in sales in the United Kingdom,
because the company reports most of its European profit in a
tax-exempt Luxembourg partnership.
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A Reuters call to Amazon's press department was not immediately
returned, but Amazon told Reuters in May that it follows all the tax
rules in every country where it operates.
Booktrust had been due to present the award to Gilbert last week.
His decision to reject it only became known publicly with the
publication of his open letter.
In an emailed statement, Booktrust CEO Viv Bird, said: "We are
naturally disappointed we could not celebrate Allan’s achievements
and his lifetime’s work, but this was his personal decision.
"Booktrust works with a wide range of partners in order to fulfill
our charitable aim of bringing books to children and children to
books. We are also grateful for the tremendous support we get from
many eminent authors and illustrators.
"Amazon’s sponsorship of the Best Book Awards, in its inaugural
year, enabled us to celebrate some of the best of children’s
literature, create a buzz around books, and make a significant
contribution to our mission of encouraging more children to read."
($1 = 0.5877 British Pounds)
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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