As the Guardian notes in an editorial this morning:
The offshore industry is marked by the same combination of sleepy watchdogs who have rings run around them by those gaming the system. Companies House now has records full of fake directors, who actually have nothing to do with the firms they notionally control. As it stands, the Land Registry allows individuals and businesses to conceal their ownership of property. Responsibility for both organisations ultimately lies with Vince Cable. Since he has spoken often and well about the need for tougher regulation, we look forward to hearing his plans for tackling the kind of abuses uncovered by the Guardian this week.
In 2009/10 500,000 companies went missing in the UK, and no one bothered to ask how much that cost us in lost taxes. I estimate the loss was £16 billion. That was Labour's fault.
Vince Cable has done nothing about that.
If you want to indict him for ministerial failure that's the evidence. He has failed. And we're all paying the price.
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Does anybody remember the politician called Vince Cable when he was in opposition?
Q. What has happened to his values,ideas, promises and beliefs since he became part of the Government?
A. Sold out.
With the rest of his party, and its morals.
Now they’re just tory footstools.
Whilst I agree with the salient points you raise, I find it a little ironic that it is The Guardian that you quote.
Having read some of the other articles in their “Offshore Series” (which I would agree show some shocking avoidance at times) I find their hypocrisy in doing so a little nauseating! After all they are guilty of doing the same/similar avoidence themselves (owned by a company in the Caymen Islands I believe).
Have you no other sources?
I think you show the fallacy in your argument
You know exactly what the Giardina is doing offshore – so it’s not secret
But I make clear I do not condone their usage of offshore in saying that
Not much of a fan but when Michael Heseltine walked out of govt. over Westland we got a sense of someone with a principle in a pretty unprincipled govt. Vince Cable, if his heart beats truly on the left, should stop posing around in his stupid black hat as if he’s Bill Hicks and make a principled stand against a govt. that tells blatant lies about extra funding for HMRC. However anyone who’s ever paid attention to a LibDem by-election leaflet knows how devious this party can be. They’re no different and Vince is just another example of someone getting comfy in his ministerial car. Don’t expect anything radical. I mean if the LibDems are unable to say anything about the govt’s attack on the poor and disabled and the dismantling and running down of the NHS then do NOT expect anything from this dead parrot of a party.
If the LibDems had any sense of honour they would pull out of the coalition next year, trigger a general election, know that they will lose most of their seats and be in disgrace, but could recover for the next election. (Whether Labour will be in a fit state by then is unlikely, though – they’re all over the shop at the moment.)
But what will most probably happen to them is that the Tories will break the coalition the following year and trigger a general election to coincide with the Euro elections, which, with a bit of fixing with UKIP they will hope to win outright.
I first read that as ;if the liberals had any sense of humour…..
How anyone can continue to place any hope in this shameless political nomad is beyond me.
However, you can’t deny his yoeman service to the neo liberal counter reformation, leaving labour for the SDP (whose founders have persisted enough to aid the destruction of the english NHS), fatally infecting the liberal party with its economic reactionary outlook to for the husk that is the lib dems decapitating its only electoral asset (Kennedy – drunk or sober was a better man) and triumphantly collaborating to create this current no nation conservative government.
I still maintain his artful recusing from conflict with R. Murdoch was the mark of the man.