Can I warmly recommend you watch the BBC2 programme 'Britain's Trillion Pound Island - Inside Cayman'? It is available on iPlayer here for the next four weeks.
I have worked with Jacques Peretti and like him.
I liked four things about this problem.
First, it got the understanding of offshore right. That was because it was advised by my friend, collage and co-author Pro Ronen Palan of City University.
Second, it went out of its way to highlight the paradoxes of Cayman: the wealth and the poverty; the claim of friendliness and fun lifestyles and the secrecy and paranoia; the no tax message and the massive costs this imposes on some.
Third, I liked the fact that this was extrapolated by Peretti to the possibility that we are heading for tax haven UK. How could he have known the Google deal would break on the same night?
And fourth, Peretti did some good interviews. He exposed both the Governor and Prime Minister as shifty, and verging on incompetent in dealing with wholly anticipatable questions. I don't think that was unfair of him. But what he also got from them were clearly different views on a key issue. The Premier argued that if the UK did not like what Cayman does it could very clearly close it down as it ultimately carries the can for everything on Cayman, which is a view I should say I share and have long argued, but which is hotly disputed in other UK tax havens but which legally has to be right, as the case of the UK takeover of the Turks & Caicos Islands proved. The Governor flatly disputed that.
Now they can't both be right.
And I think the Premier was telling the truth and not just passing the buck, whilst the Governor was just buck passing.
But that brings us right back to Whitehall and the obvious question of why do we put up with such locations dedicated to undermining democracy and the right of elected governments to collect the taxes owed to them? The question has only really arisen on the watch of David Cameron. He has to answer.
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Your Agenda is not technical. It is solely and shallowly politically and, from empirical experience, you act like a mini (socialist) Hitler on your blog. Just as well people like you don’t run countries or they would be bankrupt pretty quickly.
You should be more honest and transparent about your ultra socialist dreamer political agenda and not dress it up in pseudo technical mumbo jumbo professing to want to save the world.
Bertrand
Those are interesting suggestions. I note you do not have the decency to say you are an offshore operator when making them
Maybe what they say is that offshore operators take normal concern for fellow human beings as indication of extreme socialism
I’d say, given it is Sunday morning, that it is just evidence of ‘loving your neighbour as yourself’. But then I guess you’d describe the author of those words as an ultra socialist dreamer of a political agenda dressed up in pseudo technical mumbo jumbo who professed to want to save the world.
Speaking of honesty & transparency ….
Your comment has the venom of someone with something to hide or something to lose from Richard’s “agenda”!
No Not at all. Your mind is poisoned and needs to be drained. I hate crooks, I hate hypocrites and that is why I wrote this. Unfortunately integrity is very often incompatible with leftists. Rightist fall on their swords most times but they can be very, very crooked too. Both are wrong and I attack both. Richard is (sometimes) using the tax angle to hide his socialist attacks. That is wrong .That is a very big beef of mine. Every man should know when he has a conflict of interest and has an ethical obligation to declare it to all his clients (followers). Richard doesn’t do this all the time. He ‘forgets’ This means that if he ever became a politician he would be very quickly corrupted.
it is a problem for me as I believe in the power of integrity and practise it.
Brgds
Bertrad
I think we’ve heard enough of your opinion of me now
Bernard you are free to set up your own blog and say what you want. Richard, right or wrong works hard on his, and while I have some reservations about over relying on solutions mediated through the state, he has done a great service in bravely bringing up important issues in regard to a more equitable tax system, and more.
As for your shameless generalised smear of socialism, it shows you to be ignorant or unprincipled or both. Socialism in the UK as far as it has been present has in the main taken a democratic form as social democracy and in its less statist form as associative, coops, mutuals and guild socialism. Democratic socialism in all its forms in Hitler’s Germany was persecuted. The latter associative socialism has been overshadowed but may be resurfacing in a modernised form.
Hayek’s contention in “The Road to Surfdom” has proved to be mistaken, as all around Europe social democratic governments have stood down when they have lost their elecatoral mandate. Instead he inspired a world of wage and debt surfdom overseen by huge global financial and corporate undemocratic powers. We may be seeing the beginning of the end of this. John McNonnell has recently indicated support for employer owned and direcaated enterpises and other forms of mutual and cooperative enterprise. These can interface with a reconstructed public and market sector.
Mr Murphy supports and practices, free speech, transparency, education, financial and democratic accountablity, beat that!
Thank you Richard!
Thank you
I am afraid that you supposed hero blocks out comments that are not complimentary to him.
Like I blocked this one
And maybe you didn’t know that editorial freedom is part of free speech?
Bertrand – most countries and their banks are bankrupt, that is the problem if you hadn’t noticed!
With respect what on earth are you doing reading Richard’s blog? Are you in need of inspiration for your wealthy clients, or worried that there may be some truth in what is being said here. Surely you can’t be wasting your immensely valuable time just for fun?
No I am not looking for an advantage. My company is execution only and gives no advice but snakeskin oil served up as tax advice gets up my nose.
As Clint Eastwood’s character Harry Callaghan observes ” Opinions are like arse holes, everyone’s got one.” Although it is a rare treat indeed to witness both at the same time.
You are entitled to express an opinion on anything you like Bertrand, as is everyone else. But at present that is all it is, mere opinion dressed up as factual comment. Looking at your profile advises that you have an MBA. One sincerely hopes you did not pay money for this because if you did on the showing so far you really should ask for a refund. When some of us went to school it was customary to state a conclusion after having made a case based on factual argument and evidence rather than state something is so because you say it is so.
It’s called the scientific method Bertrand and was handed down to us via a period known as The Enlightenment. To be frank, so far you have been a big disappointment offering nothing other than school playground level ad homs. with no back up evidence or argument to sustain Walter Mitty level gems such as:
“but snakeskin oil served up as tax advice gets up my nose.”
and
Q
“Unfortunately integrity is very often incompatible with leftists.”
etc. Where’s the beef Bertrand? Is that really the best a Mikey Mouse MBA has to offer? No wonder the world’s economy is in such poor shape if this is representative of people who claim to be financial captains. Or is it that you can’t be arsed?
Either way you are letting the side down badly so far. The best that can get said is that your contributions so far add comedy value to this blog, in a court jester kind of way.
Have you thought of getting yourself an agent rather than sitting there in the dark handling yourself?
🙂
Bertrand, name calling is not argument. Are we to take it you have none?
I like Bernard’s website and CV which he has kindly shared (aka free advertising).
Such a well educated man with a colorful life in some of the world’s more questionable regimes and organisations. But I’m sure he has learned a lot from all of his experience and reflects a lot on the lessons he has learned.
Because after all he is a socialist at heart (or just gives to charities to make himself feel better!):
Causes Bertrand cares about:
Animal Welfare
Economic Empowerment
Education
Human Rights
Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
Poverty Alleviation
https://www.linkedin.com/in/offshorebroker
Well done Bertrand!
“Just as well people like you don’t run countries or they would be bankrupt pretty quickly.”
The UK cannot go bankrupt except voluntarily, it is the issuer of Sterling.
If we are headed for being a tax haven, all the evidence suggests it will be a corporate one only.
Most are these days
I could be wrong but I cant think of any that are just havens for the corportes. Plus If the left want make the claim they best say it will be only a corporate one not for individuals to.
Almost all abuse is now via corporate structures
Move to another developing country where they will listen to you or better convert UK into an uncompetitive third world country (like UK in the 60’s) and you will be happy but everyone will be poorer. You can’t reinvent democracy just to suit your socialist tax dreams.
The programme about the Cayman islands was fantastic, so good, it even got my wife interested. Jacques peretti was excellent. The interview he did with the governer was surreal. She reminded me of David Brent from the office the way she handled herself under questioning.
Also the comment above about your sincerity is pathetic. I’ve been reading this blog for over a year now and all what he said could not be further from the truth.
Thank you
I often wonder where these people come from
I am a chartered accountant, a believer in the mixed economy, a Quaker with social ideals I admit, and have always had problems with being described as a socialist because of the materialist implication
It’s laughable that this is suggested
But it says a lot about those saying it
It says they can bring nothing by way of argument against you. They accept you’re right, essentially.
Richard,
It makes you sound like a vicar, which is surely the intention. Good, but it is definitely marketing and again I can see the socialist chameleon hiding behind the supposed tax expertise..
Brgds
Bertranfd
I nearly dropped my e-cig at Sandys reading the bit about believing in a mixed economy on the Wi-Fi. Conventional wisdom is that you’d be a mixed-economy kind of guy if you advocated cuts to government spending on some things, and increases in other areas in roughly equal measure. I’ve read quite a lot of suggested spending increases, not much on cuts.
Another challenging thought from the UK’s most original blogger.
Utter nonsense
Belief in a mixed economy is about establishing the appropriate balance of spending to ensure the private sector and individuals thrive. That can be more than we have now. It is not about balancing so we maintain too low a spend
In the UK the six years of highest EVER real government spending per head are the last 6 years ( source Palan/Murphy ). You can argue that is insufficient and never advocate any cuts. But it’s not the conventional view of wanting a mixed economy where you cut out the things government does that hinders the economy and expand the things that might be beneficial.
Wrong
We did not cover all time
And it was because of a crash in GDP, not excess spending
You are wasting my time again
I should have said your data was the ‘primary source’, but it is still true that the last 6 years are the record period in real terms spending per head. Now you can argue for even more spending, and for never cutting anything if you like, and a private sector that thrives because it has a government grant or subsidy from a National Investment Bank ( that doesn’t do loans apparently ) and for individuals thriving likewise. But there is an old name for this, and it isn’t the term ‘mixed economy’.
Good news for the UK that it was that high
Thinks what a mess we’d be in if it wasn’t
And think just how little there would be available for private enterprises if that was not the case
Oh my Richard, you must have touched a few raw nerves in the City and its havens today! They tried to let loose their attack dogs and fox hounds, but it looks like only the poodles came out to play (although I hate to think what vitriol didn’t get through for public consumption!)
It al got through actually
“If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it. I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it. My fight begins today. Thank you and good afternoon.”
Now who said that Bertrand?
Very good
Bernard may be a perfectly honest person with good intentions.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/offshorebroker
The trouble is that I think he is somewhat cut off from reality.
Secrecy jurisdictions/tax havens are currently out of control leechs of capital.
They don’t play on a level playing field with other nations and use this to their advantage.
Regretably they are conduit for dirty money of those that don’t wish to play by the same rules as the vast majority of citizens on this planet.
They are tool of globalism a failed doctrine that has seen the destruction of industrial power of the West and will result in the emiseration of 99.999% of the people on this plahe may not realise this!
Bernard may hate socialism and it does have many dark actors.
It is not the system itself that is at fault and the same can be said of capitalism too.
With both systems, the problem lies with the people that are allowed to manage or should I say mis-manage it!
The only way to ensure equity is through absolute transparency..
And by not playing at the extremes
Life is a compromise
I note some also doubt my commitment to a mixed economy here today – but that’s exactly what i do believe in precisely because no system has all the answers and I could never argue it did
Well said although I, of course, don’t agree with it all. Transparency like poverty begins at home. This means that this group should focus on making Britain more transparent and Britain is neither Cameron nor that other wally leading the Labour party. Focus on that and the fact that Britain is a major offshore nation. Fix that. It would make me happy. But please don’t give Walter Mitty importance to other minute jurisdictions, especially when the BBC is ‘promoting’ it. It undercuts the seriousness of your cause, one that I do believe in. Britain is your MASSIVE Offshore elephant in the room. Deal with it.
Kind regards,
Bertrand
p.s. my CV is out there in public domain (as you were quickly able to confirm) specifically in the interests of transparency in my business affairs to show potential conflicts.
Thank you for your time.
If you have not noticed I spend a great deal of my time trying to fix the UK
It is your paranoia that does not let you see that
Oh come on Bertrand, we all respect your right to stand up for your own financial/personal interests (Gibralter, Mauritius or whatever), but being abusive and vitriolic of others is hardly going to endear you to readers of this blog.
A simple apology for using words like “you act like a mini (socialist) Hitler” and “Your mind is poisoned and needs to be drained” would at least show that you are a member of civilised society.
Otherwise the reaction you get will be predictable!
Yes you do try to fix the UK, no question. My point exactly. Stick to your knitting (the elephant in the room) rather than going for cheap thrills elsewhere. I will ignore your last comment as not being becoming.
Cheers
B.
I think saying I am unbecoming when you have used the term Hitler about me just a touch ironic
Your comments are, and are clearly intended to be offensive
I will be deleting you from now on unless you add anything useful to debate in an inoffensive way
Does anyone recall the dilemna posed by the old Lifebuoy toilet soap TV advert from the 60’s and 70’s? Do you really tell someone they’ve got BO (or whatever) on the basis that you are probably doing them a favour in the long run or do you stay stum on the basis that you don’t want to upset them and cause offence?
Decisions! Decisions!
Well, seeing as I like you today Bertrand, because I might not like you tomorrow, what you are doing here is known as projecting. I don’t intend to elaborate further as the total absence of any supporting evidence or even argument to support your wild assertions, assumptions and ad homenin outpourings to date indicate that you desperately do need to get off your backside and learn how to do your own homework.
Who knows, with the application of a bit of mental elbow grease I for one have every confidence in you attaining the stage of being able to provide a coherent argument with at least a smattering of evidence rather than a series of bland pronouncements masquerading as meaningful conclusions.
Unfortunateley, like most BBC TV programs, unavailable on streaming outside the UK !
Sorry Christian
No control over that
And I doubt Ronen will get a DVD but may be worth asking him
Best
Richard
It’s available on You Tube – no need for iPlayer to be able to watch it
In many ways, the City of London is like the Elephant in the Room.
A bit like the vampire squid, with the Caymans just one of the tentacles.
This has been covered with Shaxson “Treasure Islands”.
It’s somewhat useful to look at the Caymans, but it’s hardly the nub of the issue.
As Ronen and I both know
Nick thanks us both in Treasure Islands