UK Uncut have published the response of Boots, Tesco and Vodaphone to the charge of massive tax avoidance at http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/blog/our-response-to-their-pr
They are not accused of tax evasion, of course, which would be illegal. The issue is the willingness of the Inland Revenue to come to such generous arrangements.
Capitalism (in the sense of unchecked ability of organisations and individuals to compete in a market in which they can buy up the 'means of production', use their weight to crush competition etc), whilst dynamic, is ultimately self-destructive. It leads to exploitation, and in the long run inefficiency, waste, social divisiveness and once-free markets destroyed by monopoly power; ultimately it implodes, destroying any who are vulnerable in the process. It actually depends on regulation for its survival. (Business people were strong supporters of the minimum wage, for instance, because it protected them from being undercut by exploitative 'cowboys' . . that's not to say the minimum wage is anything more than a nudge in the right direction).
The absolutely basic role of political governance in a nation state - the one which even the most right-wing people accept - is maintaining law and order and 'defending the nation'. The state has a legitimate monopoly on the use of force. (That's not to say I believe it should be used - only that the use of force by any other agency is even more wrong). That means that regulating the markets and business is the key task of government.
This primary responsibility has been evaded by UK governments since Thatcher - Thatcher, who actively promoted the interests of capitalists. The failure to hold the power of large capitalist enterprises - most especially the so-called financial 'services' industry (who, actually, does it serve, other than its own interests?) - in check has been a hallmark of the Blair/Brown governments. There are a number of excruciating speeches by Brown on YouTube where he is wooing the City and telling them how beautiful they are.
Is it that transnational corporations (like Boots, operating from a PO Box in Switzerland and paying 3% tax) are so powerful that no national government dare challenge them? Well, how did they get to be so powerful in the first place? But actually, I don't believe it. Regulation (which doesn't have to lead to reams of trivial red tape) is essential for healthy business.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Thursday, 27 January 2011
A Pretty Penny
At my band rehearsal tonight ('Three Pressed Men') we decided we're going to have to cover Steve Tilston's remarkable song A Pretty Penny, written (amazingly) a few months before the banking crashes of 2008 :
There's some men in this city who are paid a pretty penny
Just for guessing where the money flows.
Certain handshakes, knowing smiles in this City mile :
that's the way you know the bonus grows.
We should be so lucky they're such plucky fellows
Only right they pluck the sweetest plums.
If we don't knock such wisdom, rock the boat or rock the system,
if we're good, we'll get to pick the crumbs.
Chorus :
And behind their hedge they don't plant wheat
they don't cut corn, they don't pick tea
they don't dig coal, they don't forge steel.
They just push numbers all about. They push too far - we bail them out,
keep their fingers firm on fortune's wheel.
Such fine aspirations, their justifications.
Where's the justice I would like to see?
It seems the simple fact is : keeping rules and paying tax
is just for simple fools like you and me.
The sky's the going rate; they want it on a plate,
they'll relocate should we dare to decline.
Well it's a global market : they can take their jet and park it
somewhere where the sun refuse to shine.
Steve Tilston 2008
recorded on the album 'Ziggurat'
http://www.stevetilston.com/home
There's some men in this city who are paid a pretty penny
Just for guessing where the money flows.
Certain handshakes, knowing smiles in this City mile :
that's the way you know the bonus grows.
We should be so lucky they're such plucky fellows
Only right they pluck the sweetest plums.
If we don't knock such wisdom, rock the boat or rock the system,
if we're good, we'll get to pick the crumbs.
Chorus :
And behind their hedge they don't plant wheat
they don't cut corn, they don't pick tea
they don't dig coal, they don't forge steel.
They just push numbers all about. They push too far - we bail them out,
keep their fingers firm on fortune's wheel.
Such fine aspirations, their justifications.
Where's the justice I would like to see?
It seems the simple fact is : keeping rules and paying tax
is just for simple fools like you and me.
The sky's the going rate; they want it on a plate,
they'll relocate should we dare to decline.
Well it's a global market : they can take their jet and park it
somewhere where the sun refuse to shine.
Steve Tilston 2008
recorded on the album 'Ziggurat'
http://www.stevetilston.com/home
Thursday, 9 December 2010
A sad day for politics
In the May elections in Oxford, the Greens lost two council seats to LibDems in student-dominated areas - one by 14 votes - and failed to take a newly-created seat, again pipped at the post by the LibDems. During the campaign, the LibDems had taken every opportunity to make out that the Greens were "anti-student". They made great play of being the party that backs students all the way. On election day, students in East Oxford turned out in large numbers to vote for Nick Clegg, who had made a point of visiting Brookes University. Many we spoke to on the street that day knew nothing about the political set-up in Oxford, so simply voted the same way in the local election that was running concurrently.
So the spectacular LibDem U-turn on tuition fees in the Commons today is particularly galling for us. If it is true that Clegg was already minded to support the rise in tuition fees before the election then the message is, "Lie your way to power".
This could and should rebound heavily against them. It should mark the first step in their journey to political oblivion. As Lou Reed once sang : "Stick a fork in their ass and turn 'em over - they're done."
But what causes me most exasperation is the likelihood that the lesson the younger generation will have learned is that all politicians are liars whose word cannot be trusted. There is no excuse for what they have done, and there was no need for it. Every politician of integrity, of whatever party, is tainted, polluted by it.
So the spectacular LibDem U-turn on tuition fees in the Commons today is particularly galling for us. If it is true that Clegg was already minded to support the rise in tuition fees before the election then the message is, "Lie your way to power".
This could and should rebound heavily against them. It should mark the first step in their journey to political oblivion. As Lou Reed once sang : "Stick a fork in their ass and turn 'em over - they're done."
But what causes me most exasperation is the likelihood that the lesson the younger generation will have learned is that all politicians are liars whose word cannot be trusted. There is no excuse for what they have done, and there was no need for it. Every politician of integrity, of whatever party, is tainted, polluted by it.
Monday, 6 December 2010
The more information that comes out about the many wondrous ways big companies find of not paying tax on income generated from the British public, and the more the evidence accrues that the banking sector is being financially rewarded for its colossal failures, the more convincing are the messages that public sector cuts (Oxford City Council - 28% reduction in 4 years) are unnecessary.The BBC and media generally - always (in true British style) happy to ramp up stories of gloom and despondency unless it's 'Weddings of Mass Distraction' - have colluded in this talk of 'hard choices' to be made. It's this sort of talk that got the ConDems elected.
Once it starts becoming apparent that we have been conned, and that there were ways of addressing the economic mismanagement of New Labour that didn't require an assault on ordinary people, the more the public anger will build. We're seeing signs of it already. But it may only be the tip of the iceberg.
For me, tax avoidance by big capital (with the connivance of cabinet and the Inland Revenue) is the issue that tips me over from frustration to downright anger. Private Eye has been reporting on Vodaphone's £6,000,000,000 tax avoidance scam via its 'flag of convenience' operation in Liechtenstein for months. Philip Green's Arcadia empire scam (see photo above, taken in Monaco I believe) is starting to result in occupations of Topshops, Burtons &c. Technically, I suppose I should say that Arcadia is his Monaco-resident wife's operation . . . What makes Green such a hate figure is of course that he's had the gall to accept a government advisor post to help Osborne the hard-right ideologue push through "efficiencies" for the rest of us.
Maybe he will suggest the British government set up its operating base in the Cayman Islands, where Tory donor Ashdown buries his own 'pieces of eight'.
Kraft, who bought out Cadbury's whilst promising to retain the Bristol plant then immediately closed it with the loss of 400 jobs, have now set up a scam in which a holding company in Switzerland 'sells' the products to Cadbury's UK, who then also have to pay the 'Swiss' operation for use of the branding. All of which significantly reduces (by hundreds of millions) Cadbury's tax liability in the UK.
Are there any major companies that aren't playing this game? Every day, the list of tax-dodging companies grows. How long will it be before the total tax avoided equals the total amount of cash needed to balance the nation's books without the need for any cuts, I wonder.
I find myself wondering how, if MPs - many of whom have seats on the boards of these companies I wouldn't mind betting - are going to be so limp on this issue for fear of upsetting their donor friends, whether there are ways in which, at local government level, we can claim back some of our stolen money. After all, the money came from their local outlets in the first place.
Friday, 26 November 2010
Growing Pains
A new series of 'In Business' returned to Radio 4 last night. The first programme explored the idea of 'economic growth' and asked whether this was what the world needed. Surprisingly, for a programme that tries to present a range of perspectives, the message was clear : 'growth' (defined as growth in GDP or GNP) is a crude, fairly recent but already outdated and misleading measure of economic performance. Even the speaker drafted in to argue for growth (the author of 'Ferraris for All') said it can't be seen as an end in itself. Will this mean that we no longer get excited BBC News headlines such as "economic output fell by 0.3% today . . fear of recession . . blah blah"? (Meaningless headlines that make me want to throw the radio out of the window.)
The half-hour programme is served up as a podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/worldbiz but I reproduce my rough notes below :
Government loooking for alternative indicators : 'happiness'
Andrew Simms (Policy Director, New Economics Foundation and author of "Economics as if People Mattered) : extraordinary . . . how recent an artefact of economic thinking it is. Only appeared in run-up to WW2, and in that context - re-gearing towards a war economy. Kuznetz, the architect of it, himself said "don't see this as the only . ."
PD : Who's responsible for elevating 'growth'?
AS : we need better indicators. A huge natural disaster, crime wave, war - 'growth' indicator would tell you it's all 'good'.
Professor Tim Jackson (Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey and Author: Prosperity Without Growth) Confirms 'growth' is a recent development as an indicator.
We had to persuade people to go out shopping because they were getting tired of it. Post 9/11 : "Mrs Bush and I would like to encourage everybody to get out shopping."
PD : isn't growth good?
TJ : we did need to improve living conditions, yes. Growth - for the 'haves' - has delivered good stuff. But as long ago as the 1970s it was pointed out that resources are finite. And we still haven't lifted the poorest out of poverty.
Sustainable Development Commission loses its government funding next year.
Daniel Ben-Ami (Author, 'Ferraris for All'.) 'they all say 'we need growth' but then add loads of caveats'
PD : the monetisation of everything.
DB : for the benefit of humanity we need more prosperity, an end of scarcity. I don't support it as an end in itself.
PD (leading him on) : what about the 'hair shirts'?
DB : there's a real elitism behind the hair shirts. They don't like chavs with big flat screen TVs. It's a rich elite that's promoting this anti-growth thinking. They want the poor in the developing world as pets - they're filled with horror at the prospect of Chinese and Indians having their own cars.
John Kay (Economist and Author of 'Obliquity') : It's dumb how people obsess about GDP. If you ask people what it is they don't know what it is. It's not an objective fact, it's a construct.
Alan Greenspan said 'GDP doesn't weigh any more'.
Most important thing we can do is divert human ingenuity into things we actually want, not (e.g.) sub-prime mortgages. GDP doesn't measure human ingenuity.
To Totnes (transition town).
Hal Gilmore and Ben Brangwyn (Transition Towns Network).
Lots of listed buildings makes it difficult to install double glazing. Only river crossing for miles - lots of traffic.
Looking for a longer-lasting change - not obvious what's happening on the surface.
Small business closure doesn't register in traditional measures.
Working in schools : asking kids 'what do you think is important?'.
PD : era of cheap energy coming to a close.
Ben Brangwyn : we get 'transition pilgrims'. Some are disappointed we don't have goats on the roofs.
If we wait for the government it will be 'too little, too late'. If we leave it to individuals it's 'too little'. If we do it at community level we may just manage it.
Wouldn't it be good for health to grow?
Economic wealth and happiness are not linked once you reach a certain level.
Economic no-growth is an inevitability in the long term : we need to learn how to work with it.
John Kay : people have been telling us for three or four centuries that things would stop as resources ran out.
PD : what about poverty - don't poor countries need to grow?
JK : of course. China has grown and it's pulled millions out of poverty. They are not poor because we are rich, but because their economies have not been as productive as ours.
Human ingenuity is what is creating growth. Growth doesn't have to mean that we use more stuff. In Britain we are consuming better and more interesting stuff .
Andrew Simms : Ruskin, Smith, Mill. All assumed that economies would grow to a certain point and then level off. Even though advanced economies have continued to grow, the happiness the deliver is tailing off . . dimishing returns.
PD : yet we sigh in relief when GDP expands. GDP is ridiculous.
PD : is the human race not ingenious enough?
Tim Jackson (Univ Surrey): we're making assumptions so heroic about our own ingenuity . . . We're not that clever - we need to concentrate on our economic measures.
Thomas Carlyle : economics, the 'dismal science'.
The half-hour programme is served up as a podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/worldbiz but I reproduce my rough notes below :
Government loooking for alternative indicators : 'happiness'
Andrew Simms (Policy Director, New Economics Foundation and author of "Economics as if People Mattered) : extraordinary . . . how recent an artefact of economic thinking it is. Only appeared in run-up to WW2, and in that context - re-gearing towards a war economy. Kuznetz, the architect of it, himself said "don't see this as the only . ."
PD : Who's responsible for elevating 'growth'?
AS : we need better indicators. A huge natural disaster, crime wave, war - 'growth' indicator would tell you it's all 'good'.
Professor Tim Jackson (Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey and Author: Prosperity Without Growth) Confirms 'growth' is a recent development as an indicator.
We had to persuade people to go out shopping because they were getting tired of it. Post 9/11 : "Mrs Bush and I would like to encourage everybody to get out shopping."
PD : isn't growth good?
TJ : we did need to improve living conditions, yes. Growth - for the 'haves' - has delivered good stuff. But as long ago as the 1970s it was pointed out that resources are finite. And we still haven't lifted the poorest out of poverty.
Sustainable Development Commission loses its government funding next year.
Daniel Ben-Ami (Author, 'Ferraris for All'.) 'they all say 'we need growth' but then add loads of caveats'
PD : the monetisation of everything.
DB : for the benefit of humanity we need more prosperity, an end of scarcity. I don't support it as an end in itself.
PD (leading him on) : what about the 'hair shirts'?
DB : there's a real elitism behind the hair shirts. They don't like chavs with big flat screen TVs. It's a rich elite that's promoting this anti-growth thinking. They want the poor in the developing world as pets - they're filled with horror at the prospect of Chinese and Indians having their own cars.
John Kay (Economist and Author of 'Obliquity') : It's dumb how people obsess about GDP. If you ask people what it is they don't know what it is. It's not an objective fact, it's a construct.
Alan Greenspan said 'GDP doesn't weigh any more'.
Most important thing we can do is divert human ingenuity into things we actually want, not (e.g.) sub-prime mortgages. GDP doesn't measure human ingenuity.
To Totnes (transition town).
Hal Gilmore and Ben Brangwyn (Transition Towns Network).
Lots of listed buildings makes it difficult to install double glazing. Only river crossing for miles - lots of traffic.
Looking for a longer-lasting change - not obvious what's happening on the surface.
Small business closure doesn't register in traditional measures.
Working in schools : asking kids 'what do you think is important?'.
PD : era of cheap energy coming to a close.
Ben Brangwyn : we get 'transition pilgrims'. Some are disappointed we don't have goats on the roofs.
If we wait for the government it will be 'too little, too late'. If we leave it to individuals it's 'too little'. If we do it at community level we may just manage it.
Wouldn't it be good for health to grow?
Economic wealth and happiness are not linked once you reach a certain level.
Economic no-growth is an inevitability in the long term : we need to learn how to work with it.
John Kay : people have been telling us for three or four centuries that things would stop as resources ran out.
PD : what about poverty - don't poor countries need to grow?
JK : of course. China has grown and it's pulled millions out of poverty. They are not poor because we are rich, but because their economies have not been as productive as ours.
Human ingenuity is what is creating growth. Growth doesn't have to mean that we use more stuff. In Britain we are consuming better and more interesting stuff .
Andrew Simms : Ruskin, Smith, Mill. All assumed that economies would grow to a certain point and then level off. Even though advanced economies have continued to grow, the happiness the deliver is tailing off . . dimishing returns.
PD : yet we sigh in relief when GDP expands. GDP is ridiculous.
PD : is the human race not ingenious enough?
Tim Jackson (Univ Surrey): we're making assumptions so heroic about our own ingenuity . . . We're not that clever - we need to concentrate on our economic measures.
Thomas Carlyle : economics, the 'dismal science'.
Monday, 8 November 2010
Lobby for Financial Reform, Nov 19th!
On Nov 19th the Financial Services (Regulation of Deposits and Lending) Bill has its second reading in the House of Commons. Although it's being brought by two back-bench Conservative MPs the issue should be able to secure cross-party support. We have a financial system in which the greatest proportion of money in circulation is effectively counterfeit, and as it circulates (your average deposit being lent onwards 15 or more times over) it requires interest payments. The private economy has to grow simply for us to stand still, with all the knock-on implications for global warming that that entails.
Quite why this bill isn't getting more media attention I don't understand. A brief account of it is found lower down the page at http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/. The summary includes the following :
"The Bill proposes ending the privilege currently held by the retail banks whereby they may create credit based solely on their borrowers' debts. In the future, bank lending will be limited to the amount deposited with them by their savers (as many people wrongly suppose to be the case at the moment).
"This will prevent the further expansion of the money supply over and above the amount created by the Bank of England. It will therefore permit the Bank of England to move towards increasing the amount of positive, debt-free money within the economy without fear of inflation.
"As the Bank of England is a government agency, this money will be available for the Government to pay off its debts without the need for public spending cuts, tax increases, reducing the nation's money supply or for more households or businesses to go ever more deeply into debt."
Lobby your MP!
Quite why this bill isn't getting more media attention I don't understand. A brief account of it is found lower down the page at http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/. The summary includes the following :
"The Bill proposes ending the privilege currently held by the retail banks whereby they may create credit based solely on their borrowers' debts. In the future, bank lending will be limited to the amount deposited with them by their savers (as many people wrongly suppose to be the case at the moment).
"This will prevent the further expansion of the money supply over and above the amount created by the Bank of England. It will therefore permit the Bank of England to move towards increasing the amount of positive, debt-free money within the economy without fear of inflation.
"As the Bank of England is a government agency, this money will be available for the Government to pay off its debts without the need for public spending cuts, tax increases, reducing the nation's money supply or for more households or businesses to go ever more deeply into debt."
Lobby your MP!
Thursday, 4 November 2010
C4 : "What the green movement got wrong"
For those that watched tonight's Channel 4 documentary (see http://www.channel4.com/greenmovement) this is my quick response :
The debate revealed that the film alone - without the debate - would have been a disaster. The documentary was ideologically driven, contained serious factual errors, and omitted key information.
The debate revealed that the 'green movement' left its hippy origins behind 20 years ago and has grown up, whereas documentary makers are still stuck in the past.
The debate revealed that the green movement is broad, more united than the documentary suggested, and much more interested in solutions than personal point-scoring and partisanship.
In fact the documentary itself was largely unnecessary.
The debate revealed that the film alone - without the debate - would have been a disaster. The documentary was ideologically driven, contained serious factual errors, and omitted key information.
The debate revealed that the 'green movement' left its hippy origins behind 20 years ago and has grown up, whereas documentary makers are still stuck in the past.
The debate revealed that the green movement is broad, more united than the documentary suggested, and much more interested in solutions than personal point-scoring and partisanship.
In fact the documentary itself was largely unnecessary.
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