What does it matter what these 103 businessmen say who’ve signed the Telegraph letter? None of them wrote the letter – it was a party political stunt concocted by the Tory party to to get some cheap publicity in praise of themselves. But why does the Tory party think these names matter? It’s not as though business has been such a raging success this last decade that the electorate automatically think company bosses are worth listening to – quite the opposite after libor and forex rigging by the banks, the massive product protection insurance scam, and deliberate artificial, aggressive tax avoidance/evasion on a scale which, if companies paid their tax dues, it would almost wipe out the deficit without any further need for austerity and another decade of cuts for ordinary people. Several of the companies in the list were well-known tax-dodgers. Continue reading
Tagged with Corporate greed
If you think bankers are greedy and self-interested, you should meet fund managers
The latest incomes data shows bankers still getting obscenely high remuneration and whopping big bonuses, yet they are being overtaken by another group within the finance sector. Fund managers have now overtaken the pay and bonuses of bankers, though they’re keeping it very quiet. They say there’s no need for customers (i.e. the investing public) top know about their pay because all the overall data about running a fund – its cost, performance, etc. – is already published. But this evades the role which fund managers should be playing, but are not playing, under free-markets anything-goes contemporary capitalism. Continue reading
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Cut corporate welfare not people’s welfare
Corporate welfare has been estimated in a University of York social policy study to cost British taxpayers nearly £85bn a year. That is not far short of the current level of the entire budget deficit which is still £100bn. If industrial-scale corporate tax avoidance were added in to the corporate welfare state, the cost to Britain would comfortably exceed the whole deficit.
So instead of focusing on £25bn (unspecified) further benefit cutbacks and a further huge squeeze on departmental public services bringing their cumulative cutbacks since 2010 to a staggering 40% or more, Osborne might be well advised to look at where money is truly wasted. Continue reading
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Ecclestone shouldn’t be able to bribe his way out of bribery – he should go to prison
It is shocking that Bernie Ecclestone could offer a £100m payment to walk free of a massive bribery case for which he was clearly guilty. He admitted he had given an official a £44m bribe in order to head off an investigation into his tax affairs, but when this is rumbled he gets away with it scot-free by offering an even bigger bribe to a judge which to a multi-billionaire like him is small fry. No question of him serving a prison sentence for a very serious criminal offence, not even of his being disqualified from holding a senior executive corporate position when his record had shown he was fundamentally dishonest and untrustworthy. Appallingly this case reveals yet again that prison is for the little people, not the big name offenders who can buy their way out. Continue reading
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US-EU trade deal (TTIP) stalls over corporations suing governments
Until recently investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) cases were rare. This is the provision that allows companies to take governments to international arbitration panels to seek compensation if they feel their investment has been harmed by government action. There has now been a surge in filings by companies taking an ever broader view of what constitutes a legitimate cause for action. According to the OECD, 57 ISDS cases were filed against government in 2013, almost half of them in developed economies. What is disturbing is that ISDS has increasingly been stretched to cover regulatory actions rather than simple expropriation. Several recent cases illustrate this point. Continue reading
