Layer 395 . . . The New Dickensians, Victorian Christmases, Chatsworth Road, Markets, Regeneration, Honky Tonk Shopping, Having Fun, Fats Waller, Sutton House, Will Hutton, Fair Pay and a Better Capitalism

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Today, out and about in London, it felt very Dickensian, and in a very good way. In my little corner of it, at any rate.

By the late morning the sky had cleared, and in bright sunshine we, the Christmas shoppers and winter strollers, were out and about, dressed in layers of thick clothing and a variety of hats, hoods, scarves, mittens and gloves; our steamy exhalations filling the air.

The shop owners of Victorian Chatsworth Road - an up and coming area if ever there was one, or so I'm told - had worked with council officers to put on a 'pilot' Christmas street market. It's been many years since the old Chatsworth street market gave up the ghost of Christmases past, and ceased to be. That was back in the days when the huge new supermarkets with equally large car parks had just opened up, and local shopping seemed doomed for ever.

We're now in an era where people again love going to local markets, 'farmers markets', and suchlike, and local commerce is on the increase.

Take the crossroads in Chatsworth Road, for instance, where there's a cluster of excellent and interesting businesses - L'Epicerie (whose French owner seems to have been a key player driving the new market scheme), the Book Box Bookshop, Venetia's Coffee Shop, Hop Toyshop, and the Creperie, which has recently opened and seems to be doing very well indeed. In all, according to the map produced by the Chatsworth Road Traders and Residents Association, there are over 80 business premises clustered together in the central stretch of the road.

http://www.chatsworthroade5.co.uk/

Check out the excellent dokofilms movie on this site.

And watch this space for an Oxzenfilms movie - hopefully within a couple of days.

‘We had everything from clothes, cheesecake, jewellery, baked cakes, quality tea and even impromptu piano and clarinet serenaders. It was a crisp day but the sun shone and hundreds of people enjoyed the atmosphere.

‘It’s been kept at 20 stalls to start with, but we have every confidence it will grow from strength to strength as time goes on.

‘We would encourage those interested in running a stall to look on the website or call us, and for the rest to pay Chats Market a visit on December 5 or 12 for more bargains and interesting buys for Christmas.’

Chatsworth Road Traders and Residents Association (CRTRA), working with Hackney Council, are running three pilot markets in November and December before considering a larger, regular market from 2011. The market has a long history and was in its heyday in the 1930s, with up to 200 stalls lining the street.

Ian Rathbone, interim chair of CRTRA, said: “Markets offer a great opportunity for local residents to start up a business, allowing them to test their ideas and meet their customers.”

He continued, “Chatsworth Road has seen many changes over the last few years and the benefits to the local community of a revived market will be tremendous – a chance to meet people and build community spirit, a place to buy and sell goods – from gifts and clothing to food – all while supporting a local high street and contributing to the continued regeneration of E5.”

Remy Zentar, owner of L’épicerie, and CRTRA Treasurer, added: “Reviving the market will bring new people and more business to the street. It’s about offering the customer more options and the experience of shopping locally.”

According to this website, their current 'To Do' list  is -

* bring back a weekly street market
* make Chatsworth Road your favourite shopping street in Hackney
* promote our neighbourhood
* get the whole community involved
* have some fun!

So it's not all about making money and increasing turnover. The reformed Scrooge would have approved.

One of the fun elements today was being able to enjoy coffee and mince pies bought from a table in front of Venetia's whilst listening to live music coming from a honky tonk pianist  playing a piano parked at the crossroads, ably supported by a clarinetist, a guy playing a snare drum with brushes, and a guy playing a metal bollard with drumsticks. Well done the pianist for his excellent choice of jazz, ragtime, blues and stride. Loved the Fats Waller songs.

Ain't Misbehavin'   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Wwhe9Hx_w
This Joint Is Jumpin'  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7YAU8CTInw
I'm Crazy 'Bout my Baby  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfYzlEhocGM
(How many songs open with words like 'effervescent' and 'eulogising'?)

I love these lines:

"I'm exasperated 'bout my offspring -
My offspring's exasperated 'bout me." 

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From Chatsworth it was a shortish walk to Sutton House for its annual Christmas Fair. Every neighbourhood would be greatly improved if it had a National Trust gem like this one. When I think back to the days when this house was neglected, semi-abandoned and left for squatters to occupy . . . Those dim dark days of the Thatch revolution.

I think I'm right in saying that this is the only National Trust property in Inner London.

Every room today was filled with stalls and activities, such as instant portrait painting.

 In one room someone was spinning yarn whilst running a stall; in another someone was playing a lute. Another room was filled with music by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Marvin Gaye. Perfect.

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be . . . ?

Joni Mitchell
All I want
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joni+mitchell/all+i+want_20075383.html

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Will Hutton's column in today's Observer has generated a tremendous amount of comment - mainly from complete bozos, right-wing trolls, City fatcats and would-be fatcats, and backwoods Tories. Of course some of them are clearly all of these things.

Oxzen's comments attracted a fair amount of ignorant response, I'm proud to say.

Rein in the fat cat salaries or see public services suffer even more

The current market in top people's pay is creating an imbalance in society that makes life less fair for everyone

by Will Hutton

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/will-hutton-private-public-sector-pay

In tough times, when people's interests are stark, the what-is-fair question rises up. Who is deserving or undeserving of great reward? Is there common ground on which to make a judgment?

So what is fair? I've been considering this for the last six months while working on the first phase of a report on how to achieve fair pay in the public sector, along with any implications for "social norms" in the private sector, at the behest of the prime minister and chancellor. My answer is that people expect their reward to rise in proportion to their effort and contribution, recognise they should not be rewarded for luck and want the process to be impartial. But they also concede that in organisations others contribute, so no single person can claim to scoop the pool of reward. Fair pay has an upper boundary. Hence the case for at the very least tracking and monitoring a measure of how pay is distributed between the top and bottom .

The stakes are high. Britain needs to drive up the performance of its public sector and keep its top public sector pay fair. And no less urgently the private sector needs to get a grip on the CEO pay arms race in the name of a better, more productive and fairer capitalism. There are risks with reform and tracking pay multiples. But the bigger risk is doing nothing.

Will Hutton's been banging on about creating a better, more productive and fairer capitalism for ages - since well before he wrote The State We're In. And a fat lot of good it's done us, thanks to the blasted Blair and New Labour.

The reformed Scrooge, taking pity on Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and his family, decided to become fairer and more generous. Handing over a proper living wage brought benefits to both the employee and the employer.

What hope is there of Cameron and Co taking notice?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Cratchit

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More glorious cricket - for the record:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/04/ashes-2010-second-test-live

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/03/ashes-2010-australia-england-live
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Layer 129 Changing Consciousness, Paxo and the Victorians

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This should have been posted last night.

These are revolutionary times. Not in the sense of violent revolution and the storming of palaces and parliaments. The time is right - or more right than it’s been for a couple of generations - for a revolution in mass consciousness. For changes in perception about the nature of our political system, our economic system, our education system, and the way we live. We need a revolution in values and ways of living, and the financial crisis - the near collapse of capitalism - is causing a hell of a lot of people to re-think what they’re doing with their lives, and how we operate as a society.

The question then becomes - if there is such a change in consciousness, can the material, social, economic and political world still remain the same? Can the same dumb, hopeless, inhuman, unequal and exploitative system we’ve had for so long just carry on? Surely not?

Well - it’s possible. Such is the nature of apathy, and inertia, and anomie. The sheer deadweight of an endemic lack of focus, of purposelessness, of fearfulness and lack of self-confidence.

The masses do not believe they have the power to seize power and change the way we do things. They have no representative political party any more. They have no experience of governance. They’ve left governance to the ruling classes and the political elite (of all persuasions) for far too long.

Maybe the post-war consensus of relatively benign, liberal and social-democratic, well-meaning and decent governance deprived the masses of any reason for real anger and removed the need for a spirit of resistance to the rule of those who would exploit and dominate. For a very long time, before the rise of Thatch and the neo-conservatives, it appeared there was a consensus around the need for a welfare state and a drive for greater justice and fairness for all.

Given the disengagement of the masses from direct participation in politics it’s not too difficult to imagine the world as we’ve known it just carrying on in its usual fashion, even in its late 20th Century Thatcherite/NuLabour form. Dum di dum di dumb.

But we can’t afford to be defeatist now. We can’t expect the bankers and the politicians and the financiers and the industrialists to come up with a plan for a better world. All they know are the nostrums of neo-conservatism, of Chicago-school economics - voodoo economics, faith in the ‘free market’ and dog eat dog competition - but they also know that this is what’s fucked everything up, as more enlightened souls always knew it would.

So where to go now? More of the same? Er - no. ‘Risk assessment’ and risk-taking is a busted flush. No-one’s going to take those sorts of risks any more. Or to take any risks whatsoever in the casino of capitalism right now. All the bankers want now is the reassurance of OUR money to cradle them and warm them and send them happily to sleep - perchance to dream their sweet and wet dreams of fabulous wealth and privilege. More of the same, really. Bail-out bliss.

What the rest of us want now is for banks to work in the way that WE want them to work - for the benefit of the masses, not the ruling classes and the self-styled masters of the universe. That’s a simple enough aim. Go figure.

What we want now is for government to make everything work for the benefit of the masses, not the ruling classes. That means tax policy, housing, health services, social services and public utilities. Simple enough. Go figure.

What we want now is for education to work for the benefit of the children and for adults who want learning to take place throughout their lives. This is learning geared towards their greater understanding of themselves, their lives, the universe and everything. This is learning that points the way towards the discovery of pathways towards enlightenment, not a so-called education that consists of nothing more than the narrow and functional skills that get you a place on the treadmills of industry and commerce. Or - if you would prefer - the treadmills of public service bureaucracy or the civil service. Or civil semi-slavery as it is now - tied to the yoke of government tasks and targets in return for money for rent, mortgage, food and clothing.

In terms of what the British working and middle classes will now do in order to determine the type of policies we need post-Big Bang/Big Bust, a lot might depend on what they see happening in other countries. It's possible that greater activism and street demonstrations might come about from what they see taking place in France, Eastern Europe and even America. When the dominos started to fall at the end of the communist era in Eastern Europe we saw previously unimaginable and radical change, due to people being inspired to get out and protest and demand change. We're at the end of another era now.

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Under the Victorians, said Paxo, on TV last night, the accumulation of wealth and land became more and more ruthless and violent.

Under Thatch and NuLabour, it became more and more - well . . . ruthless, relentless and aggressive. How else to describe the practices that characterise what’s been happening? The mis-selling of so-called derivatives from so-called sub-prime mortgages. We didn’t even know such things could exist. The currency trading and speculation; the property bubble, the over-valuation of stocks and shares, the bonus culture. The attempt to grab Iraq’s oil.

Victoria was no pacifist. Military force was used year in, year out - to subdue and govern what the British ruling classes saw as inferior races. Including their own working classes if necessary.

On the Albert memorial the figure called ‘Europe’ rides an ox into a civilised future. “Occupy, fortify, grab and brag” seemed to sum up the attitude of the wealthy and the ruling class, said someone to Paxo - then as now, as it turns out. There’s a fair bit of bragging going on at the moment about the success of the military ‘surge’ in Iraq and the pacification of opposition forces. But could that be anything to do with the hand-over of governance to the Iraqis themselves?

For how long could so few (Victorians) govern so many? asked Paxo.

The answer in our time might be - for as long as the State and the neo-conservative owners continue to maintain control of the major channels and the publications of mass communication and mass circulation - since pacification and disenfranchisement nowadays depend less on the army and police, and more on brainwashing the population and maintaining a state of consciousness and awareness (call it a hegemony) that basically consists of Thatch’s slogan - “TINA - There Is No Alternative”.

According to this thesis socialism doesn’t work, and casino capitalism is the only way to go. All attempts at regulating and controlling ‘the market’ are doomed to failure, they say. In order to do that you’d need a worldwide consensus towards more enlightened thinking and a worldwide determination to promote greater social justice and equality, and that’s just not going to happen.

So we live in very interesting times. Obama thinks he can do things better than the Chicago Boys - the Friedmanites and neo-conservatives - even though he’s a Chicagoan himself. The Republicans are determined to thwart him, of course, and they are the party of big business and big finance, the ones with control of the media and the traditional sources of access to information.

Back in the day, a rebel, a George Lansbury, would go out and set up a newspaper (the Daily Herald) in order to present an alternative point of view. It’s hard to imagine that happening now.

Thankfully we have The Guardian, which is hardly mass circulation, but has an excellent website that’s by far the most popular of all the newspaper sites on the Internet. The Guardian at least allows progressives and social democrats like George Monbiot, Polly Toynbee, Simon Jenkins, Jenni Russell, Roy Hattersley and others to present their point of view. But it’s hardly enough. Right-wing ignoramuses and scumbags crawl all over its website and the Comment Is Free feedback section, and deposit their evil turds of ignorant opinion wherever they can.

To what extent can the Internet provide the means for progressive thinkers to communicate with one another and build an alternative consensus? Supporters of Obama used the Internet very successfully to raise a fighting fund, so there must be some hope.

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Paxo pointed out that the men who worked in the docks were some of the poorest in Britain. They were paid by the hour, for an average of three hours a day. They went on strike for six pence an hour, and for a minimum of four hours a day. The suffering was intense - a confrontation between wealth and labour - then and now.

The bosses finally gave in. The underdog had won.

Incidentally - Paxo has done a very good thing by showing us some truly great paintings of British and colonial life in Victorian times. The book of the series might well be worth buying.

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Fred’s Pension & HH.

“Fury about Sir Fred’s pension had been flying around for days,” said someone on BBC News last night.

“It might be enforceable in a court of law,” said Harriet Harman, “But it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion. And that’s where the government steps in.”

Ominously the news this morning is that Downing Street is unhappy with Harriet for speaking out so forcefully. Never mind them, Harriet. You did well. Very well. It needed to be said. That was true leadership.

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The B Word (x2)

Blair’s in Gaza. He’s appalled by the conditions and the destruction. The fucking nerve of the man. What did he EVER do to try to change the perceptions, the strategy and the behaviour of the Israeli government? 'Cos that would have upset George as well, would it not?

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Cherie Blair presented an hour of waffle about Christianity last night. Awful.


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Key books for changing awareness and consciousness:

Affluenza .(Oliver James)

The Shock Doctrine .(Naomi Klein)

The State We’re In .(Will Hutton)

Pedagogy of Freedom .(Paulo Freire)
(Ethics, Democracy & Civic Courage)

The New Learning Revolution .(Dryden & Vos)

It’s About Learning .(Stoll, Fink & Earl)

Spiritual Intelligence .(Zohar & Marshall)

Destructive Emotions .(Dalai Lama & Daniel Goleman)

Emotional Intelligence .(Daniel Goleman)

Social Intelligence .(Daniel Goleman)


I was going to include in this post some chunks from Andrew Rawnsley’s page in the Observer yesterday, but that will have to wait.
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Layer 123 Signs of the Times; In Praise of Will Hutton

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Chantelle Loves Alfie

Max Clifford is now handling the publicity for the happy couple, and has said that Alfie will soon take a DNA test to prove he’s the 13 year old father of Chantelle’s baby. Several other diminutive lads have now stepped forward to claim they’re the father of the sprog - i.e. they’re responsible for getting Chantelle up the duff. Which presumably entitles them (or one of them) to a share of the Sun’s payout for photos of the children and their child.

Chantelle swears she’s never had sex with anyone other than Alfie, who she truly loves. And anyway, she only shagged him the once. Vikki Pollard couldn’t have said it any better - yeah, but, no, but . . .

Alfie has said he will do his best to do well at school as well as be a good father to the baby. When asked by a radio reporter how they will manage financially, Alfie said, “What’s financially?”

Circus? What circus?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090216/tuk-dad-at-13-alfie-will-get-dna-test-on-45dbed5.html

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Radio 4 this morning broadcast a fascinating programme about wives. I hope Chantelle was listening, as she went about her motherly duties.

“Nobody knows what a wife is anymore, and if they do, they certainly don’t want to be one.”

“Although it takes two to make a marriage, it’s on the wife that happiness depends.” (Which might explain why so many marriages are less than happy, I heard a misogynist mutter.)

“The very being or existence of the woman is suspended during marriage. We are willing these days to make sacrifices for our children, but not for our husband.”

“Arguments, resentments and negotiations are endemic when the terms of a relationship are not clearly defined.”

“After children are born the workload quadruples and nobody gets a day off.

“Shopping, washing and ironing are usually seen as the province of the woman.”

“Harmony, equality and sharing are the ideal, but relationships become attritional rather than companionable.”

“If you don’t have clear-cut roles then every day you have to work it out, which is hard work.”

“The important thing is the deal. If a woman specialises in being the homemaker and child carer then the man ought to be the financial provider.” (Alfie was presumably not listening to this, as he’s having to do extra maths classes to learn what financially means.)

“Is it any wonder that working women are scratchy and resentful?”

“Maintaining hygiene and comfort takes over a thousand hours a year.”

“Is marriage on its last legs? Who is now prepared to trade domestic labour for financial security? Most women don’t need marriage any more, and often see it as licensed prostitution.”

“Obligation, being someone else’s property, servicing someone. But to inherit property, women need to change their status from concubine to wife.”

Interesting. Lots there for Chantelle to chew on, after she’s discovered for herself the delights of Radio 4.

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Book of the Week?

Also on Radio 4 this morning - the first part of the new book of the week, by Iain Sinclair. It’s even worse than I’d imagined.

What I really dislike is the fact that his pretentious, prolix, so-called love-letter to Hackney will make people who don’t know the place say to themselves - well damn it . . . if this gimp likes the place then I’m bound to hate it. And I wouldn’t blame them.

Actually it’s not all that clear that he does like the place. He sees himself as some sort of pioneer/discoverer, like a modern day David Livingstone or Walter Raleigh, who loved the ‘virgin’ territory he found many years ago, but hated what it later looked like becoming.

There’s no doubt Hackney, like anywhere else, especially after 30 years of Thatcherite and NuLabour despoilation, has a mass of problems, but so what? Why does this toff think he’s qualified to pontificate about it? What makes him think that anyone actually cares what he thinks? He’s got nothing original to say anyway.

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Signs of the Times

#1 More and more kids are putting on the Internet explicit sexual images of themselves which they’ve taken with their phones and digital cameras. Well they would, wouldn’t they? Does anyone seriously doubt the stupidity and thoughtlessness of teenagers?

#2 More and more of us are, in these hard times, spending our hard-earned funds on buckets of delicious ‘Kentuck’. KFC expect to open many more “restaurants” this year and next.

#3 An eight year old girl became terrified of losing her milk teeth. The doctors tried to help - by removing them. The girl refused to eat or drink, and subsequently died. The ‘authorities’ said that ‘with hindsight’ there was a ‘lack of communication’.

#4 A panel of senior figures in the legal establishment has said it’s time to repeal the abusive laws regarding privacy, detention without charge, civil liberties, etc, that were enacted after the events of 2001. They say they were, and are, illegal and counterproductive.

#5 BMW has dismissed hundreds of workers at its Oxford ‘Mini’ plant, having given them no notice at all. It simply called its ‘agency’ workers together at the end of a shift and told them not to come back. Some of these people are highly skilled and have worked at the plant for some years, but because they’ve remained on the books of agencies they have no protection, no employment rights, and no entitlement to redundancy pay. As a Union official said, if it was in Germany they wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. But that’s the very reason why they’re here, is it not? The unions have been asking NuLabour to do something about the excessive use of agency staff, and their entitlement to employment rights, for several years, but to no avail.

#6 According to makers of a scary documentary about Christianity, “The missionary boot is now on the other foot”. So look out Britain - the Pentecostals from Africa and elsewhere are on the rise and on the march. Millions of them, it seems. Doing their missionary best to evangelise us into shouting hallelujah, happy clapping, speaking in tongues, and carrying out exorcisms. We can only blame ourselves.

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Victorians

Last night was the first part of Paxo’s much-anticipated series on the Victorians, as seen through the eyes of their artists and painters. And it was good stuff - brilliant close-ups of paintings by relatively little-known artists such as Grimshaw, Egley, George Joy and John O’Connor, plus Gustav Dore and Ford Maddox Brown.

It make you think of how much of our infrastructure and our culture is directly attributable to the Victorians, and how little, relatively speaking, was added during the 20th Century. I guess the jury’s still out on how much of a benefit we ultimately get from the digital age.

It’s going to be interesting, for example, to see whether electronic surveillance helps the power elite to keep us all in our little boxes, or whether, on the other hand, the little people can use the technology to by-pass the ‘official’ media and communicate with one another about what’s really happening in our society. The phone video taken inside the mass meeting at the BMW/Mini factory would be an example of this. Will it galvanise and stir up opposition to what’s happening?

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Where would we be without Will Hutton in these insane times? For three decades or more he’s written intelligently about economics and finance, never deviating from his Keynesian understanding and insights, and he’s now the “go to” expert for all those who get even a glimmer of the reality of what’s happening. Anyone who wants to understand the big picture should definitely read his 1995 classic, The State We're In. We're in it now, alright. Big time.

This Sunday he had an entire page in The Observer, which is a must-read for anyone with any intelligence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/15/us-economic-policy

Obama has picked the wrong hero for our times.

In order to save the global economy, the President has to stop trying to satisfy everybody. He should follow the example of Roosevelt and leave Lincoln behind.

The ideological divides that have racked the US remain as entrenched as ever. Obama may be a champion of the importance of government, but he and the Democrats have a long battle to convert a political victory into an intellectual one.

What is beginning to look doubtful is whether he can build around him a buttressing team who share the same passion and capacity as President Roosevelt had in similar economic circumstances. Obama has no equivalent of Roosevelt's two key lieutenants, Harry Hopkins, who led the fight for work, or Jesse Jones, who took on rebuilding the financial system.
Instead he is resolutely following his hero Abraham Lincoln, trying vainly to build a cabinet of all the talents.

It is the incapacity to trump the voodoo belief systems that have laid the US and world so low that is so dismaying and dispiriting. We are living through nothing less than the disintegration of the global financial system, shattering the western banking systems' capacity to lend. The risk is growing of a worldwide debt deflation. The west's governments have no choice but to put their balance sheets behind their broken banks and to make good the consumer demand that is no longer there via fiscal policy. They may even collectively have to print money, much more effectively done together than separately. Yet conservatives deny these truths.

The acute problem is that, although the old order and ideas do not work, there is no consensus on what the new order and ideas will be. The lack of coherence is plaguing these early weeks of Obama's drive for economic recovery. Thus Geithner's disappointing speech last Tuesday setting out the next steps in his financial recovery programme, and then stone-walling the senate budget committee the following day.

The administration wants to act decisively along the same lines as Sweden in the early 1990s in putting its banking system back on its feet. But it hesitates to nationalise banks as Sweden did. And it hesitates to commit what could be 14% of American GDP in creating a "bad bank" to take over crippling toxic debt as the Swedes did. It wants the same ends, but cheaper - an intellectual challenge too far.

Bankers are in no position to complain. Their avarice and the scale of their business misjudgment have vastly complicated the politics of a bank bail-out, which will have to be on a stupefying scale to be effective. The open question is whether the US can afford to create a "bad bank" or equivalent that might cost up to 14% of GDP, on top of a budget deficit already of that same size. The answer is that it cannot afford not to do it. Otherwise it might suffer the same fate as Japan in the 1990s, whose refusal to accept the size of the problem meant that it temporised with half measures - and suffered a decade of economic stagnation.

The G7 is a cacophony of different plans and preoccupations. Everybody, including Gordon Brown, is looking for legitimation for short-term political advantage. It needs the Obama administration to cut through the cackle and impose an agenda equal to the scale of what needs to be done at home and abroad.

That inability is the gravest source of concern. There are signs that the Obama team is getting the message; it backed off the worst protectionist excesses in the Stimulus Bill, and both Obama and Geithner say we need decisive, large-scale action. The worry is that they will make too many concessions to the ideas and people who got us into this mess. Lincoln was a great man. But it is a Roosevelt America that the world needs now.

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In Saturday’s paper the blessed Will had a column in the Guardian on tax avoidance:

Behind tax avoidance lies an ideology that has had its day. We must end it.

Neoconservatism has collapsed. The need for the state should now be evident to all - and that includes big companies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/14/comment-tax-avoidance

Nearly a third of our top 700 companies pay no tax at all. At best, the spirit of the law is being obstructed.

How do they justify to themselves what they do?

The economic wreckage is now all around us.

Tax avoidance was a central part of yesterday's exploded financial structure.

The stench is overpowering. The takeover of Boots by the private equity firm KKR has become exposed as a transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to its astonishingly rich partners, only one of whom is domiciled in the UK, for tax purposes. The headquarters is moved to Zug to avoid tax. Nottingham is stripped of key jobs.

Boots no longer pays UK corporate tax because the interest on the debt overwhelms its profits. And the banks that lent KKR the money, now worth between 60 and 70 pence in every pound because of doubts about whether it can be fully repaid, have to be bailed out by the self-same taxpayer. No wealth is generated. It is transferred. How the libertarians, self-styled wealth generators and fighters against Big Government must mock the little people whom they run rings around.

What is required is the will. Neoconservatism has collapsed. The western financial system is bust. The need for the state, and for international collaboration, is now evident to all. President Obama is keen to act. If we cannot slay tax avoidance now, we never will.
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