From the Treasure Islands blog: a short article as an immediate reaction to the UK-Swiss tax deal. A much longer article, complementing this, will be posted on the TJN site very soon but as Nick Shaxson observes now:
I can only conclude, given that they now know this deal won't collect the money, that it has been conducted for malign purposes, to preserve financial secrecy on behalf of an unaccountable and wealthy élite.
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And how long have I been saying, this isn’t economic incompetence we’re seeing, it’s economic malevolence? I’ll stress again though Osborne’s clueless, he’s just doing what he’s told. After his laughable speech the other day we can plainly include Cameron in that too.
BB
I agree with you, I assure you
Nick is right, Richard. But it demonstrates more than that, I fear. It shows that we have reached a point in the UK where the corporate and financial elite and their supporters (e.g. feral rich, bankers, big business, PR, lobbyists, pseudo think tanks, etc) are sufficiently confident that their control of the state is such that they can blantly pursue and implement policies that are quite obviously ethically and morally corrupt without fear of any meaningful response or reproach.
Furthermore, it illustrates that support for, aquiesence to, or fear of that power has penetrated deep into the processes, systems and cultures of governmental bodies (such as HMRC) with obvious implications for the thinking and actions of public servants, particularly at senior management levels. In short, I think that this tax deal demonstrates that even the veneer that government’s role – and by implication public adminstration in general – is to act in the interests of its citizens has now been stripped away.
To take a Marxist perspective – and that is not one I always take – the UK Swiss tax deal looks like blatant class warfare by an elite to preserve their privileges to me
And that perspective clearly supports your conclusion
The time for talking is long gone. I’m not normally a violent person, in fact quite the opposite, but I can see when the people of this good land who are generally a peace loving and helpful nation will rise up and use physical force to redress the balance which has long tilted in the wrong direction!