Who is exploiting us? Large companies, banks, and landlords are, and not the people our politicians love to blame.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Who is really screwing us? That's an important question to ask because if you believe Reform, it is migrants who are destroying the well-being of the UK at present.
The Tories clearly agree with them, and Labour is getting on that bandwagon.
And I'm going to put a simple and straightforward idea to you, which is that they are all failing to tell the truth.
There is a group in society who are screwing us good and proper, and they must be laughing themselves silly about the fact that the politicians who they fund are persuading us that migrants are the problem in this country, when in fact the problems in this country are being created by large companies, the wealthy, the banks, and the hierarchies of power. They are the people who are really taking us for a ride and who are destroying the well-being of the people in this country.
We know that life is hard. We know that someone has to be to blame, but it isn't migrants. It is those companies who are extracting more profit from us.
Over the last 45 or so years of neoliberalism, there has been a massive increase in productivity in the UK, as there has been also in the USA and other countries where markets have been allowed to grow rampantly. But the benefits of that trade have not gone to labour. The share of profits within the economy over that period has grown dramatically. The share of labour has fallen dramatically. Broadly speaking, 10% of GDP has moved from rewarding labour to rewarding profits, and the consequence is that people do not feel the benefit of the growth that has supposedly happened inside the economies, which politicians are always talking about, because they didn't get it.
That money is going to the owners of capital, and those owners of capital are the wealthiest people in the UK. They're not just people who are obviously wealthy and driving around in Ferraris and God knows what else, but they're also those people who are in very well-paid jobs who have well-funded pensions as well.
And I know that they will deny that they're seeing the benefits of all this, but the reality is they are. That lifestyle is being funded out of this exploitation of workers, and let's not pretend otherwise.
Those people are also, of course, by and large conservatives who subscribe to the idea that migrants are to blame without ever accepting any responsibility for the fact that it is the structures of power that they support, which are exploiting most people in the UK.
How do they support them? Well, let's be clear.
They allow tax havens to take place.
They demand that large companies have low tax rates - and they do have low tax rates. The highest tax rate for a large company in the UK at present is 25%. A student repaying their student loan will be paying something over 40% by the time you take into account their basic rate of income tax, the pension contribution that they're obliged to pay, which is in effect a tax because it will one day replace the old age pension, the national insurance charge, plus their loan repayment. Large companies are laughing themselves all the way to the bank.
The banks, of course, have been reformed so that although they were meant to have to suffer penalties for their failure in 2008, not only did they not do so, but they do not now even suffer the restrictions that were put in place at that time.
Lawyers and accountants work in the UK with those who are based in tax havens to shift profits around the world still. Not as much as they once did, but it still happens.
They are screwing us, as are dodgy landlords, and there are vast numbers of dodgy landlords in the UK. Not all of them. I make clear there are good and honest ones, but there are also a great many who are screwing the people of this country, not only individually, but also through the way that they supply properties for the use by councils and others, for the provision of social care and social facilities and so on.
Then there are the politicians who pander to this lot. They are also deliberately screwing us by not telling us the truth about who it is who is exploiting us.
They are also failing to take action about the consequences of the wealthy and the powerful, deliberately manipulating the economy to ensure that the majority of people in this country do not see the benefits.
They're keeping interest rates high.
They're keeping our tax rates high, whilst the wealthy's tax rates are quite often no more or very often are less, taking into consideration all the taxes that we pay.
They're keeping us in debt.
They are ensuring that rents are kept up.
They are making sure that mortgages are virtually unaffordable for many people so that the 'bank of mum and dad', funded by people who are very often not in the highest echelons of wealth, are forced to support their children to buy properties.
They've destroyed trade unions.
The wealthy have bought politicians.
They've controlled the media.
They've exploited austerity, and at the same time have bought into the idea that public services should be opted out of the state and be provided by private companies, therefore boosting profit, yet again.
There is in all of this a narrative which is clear, and the narrative is undoubtedly there and even seen in places such as schools, where we have, of course, got the majority of schools in England now being run by trusts, which are very often closely associated with private companies.
All of this suggests that there is a conspiracy against the people of the UK, aided and abetted by the politicians in both Labour and the Tories, to whom we should now add Reform, to create a narrative about who is screwing the UK, which they claim to be a relatively modest number of migrants arriving in boats each year when in practice we are being well and truly screwed, but not by migrants. We are being screwed by the wealthy, their companies, and the way in which they exploit us through overcharging for the things that we need to basically make ends meet.
That is the conspiracy that we should be angry about.
So, as I said at the start of this video, what we should be annoyed about is the fact that our politicians, whether they be Tory or Labour or Reform, are putting together a narrative that blames migrants for the state that we are in, when in fact the problems that we face are not in any way created by migrants. The exploitation that we are suffering, the shortages of housing that we are suffering, the high costs of buying housing as a result of high interest rates that we are suffering, the high rents that we are suffering, the high food prices that we are suffering, the exploitation of things like international crises to increase the price of electricity, gas, and fuel for our cars; all of those things are put in place by the companies that are owned and controlled by the wealthy, and our politicians are pandering to them.
Those are the people that we should be angry with. They are the people that I am angry with.
I'm not saying there is no problem with migration in this country. There is. It needs to be properly controlled, but to blame migrants for the crisis that we have is utterly absurd. We have a crisis in this country, and the crisis has been created by neoliberalism and the concentration of wealth, and not by people who are arriving in this country with the desire to work for a living.
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This cannot be said enough in my view.
In my personal view, the rich are saving up for the end of the world and are grabbing what they can in the hope that their wealth means that they are more likely to survive. It’s a sort of death wish really.
[…] it be that they are so determined to vilify the refugee to suit their own warped, domestic political agenda that they cannot even see the plight of the human beings who flee in this world, driven by […]
“Careful mate,that foreigner wants your cookie.”
https://x.com/roydanroy/status/1218197470695641098
Or, more realistically,
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/s12qo2/i_fixed_that_famous_cartoon_to_show_a_more/
We need only look at our salary, and the share that goes towards our outgoings.
50 years ago, I would bet that housing, energy, water, rail and healthcare were all a significantly smaller share than today.
Increased productivity and economies of scale should have reduced all these outgoings further, but the exact opposite has happened. That is due to neoliberal classic economics, which aims to maximise profits, unlike the public sector that aims to minimise costs.
This. Absolutely this. It makes me so angry that there is so much rampant inequality in this country and that there isn’t a credible political party that wants to do anything about it.
There is literally money sloshing about in the hands of a few people while the many are left to struggle. When a leader of the Labour Party came along who might have at least tried to change that, he was comprehensively vilified and is no longer even allowed in the party. It absolutely beggars belief.
Investment recommendation from Hargreaves Lansdown: –
” Primary Health Properties – invests in purpose-built doctors’ surgeries ….it owns the real estate in which they’re located.
PHP is doing a good job of maximising value from its existing properties. Elevated costs and limited new supply are giving landlords like PHP more leverage, enabling them to negotiate better rental terms. ”
And all at the expense of the NHS.
Agreed
‘Markets’, so admired by neoliberals, can work well where buyers and sellers have fair knowledge of relevant information. ‘Loyalty cards’, aided by the electronic media, now ensure that the sellers run rings round a mostly unsuspecting public.
As one example, it is not just that Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs) turn out to be addictive. They are often designed to be so. There is an epidemic of obesity among British people – including children – that is costing the NHS billions to treat.
The Guardian (28 April 25) reported “Ultra-processed food increases risk of early death”. One conclusion of a survey was that “While 4%, 5% and 6% of premature deaths in Colombia, Brazil and Chile respectively are “attributable to UPF consumption”, the equivalent percentage is 10.9% in Canada, 13.7% in the US and 13.8% in England – the highest proportion among the eight countries [surveyed]. Food advertising needs much greater restraint.
A snag is that the food manufacturers currently dominate the bodies set up to be the regulators
Add in disclosure, retro engineering projects and the amount the scientific community has been held back mostly again by wealth and businesses. Not to mention the pharmaceutical companies and food companies. It’s just too much mass control and really makes you wonder what is the other side of the wall. It all is starting to feel like one being Truman show type bubble that we live in and I want out!
Two items that have come my way over the past couple of days may well be relevant to this powerful argument, Richard.
Firstly, this recent article on the generally excellent Naked Capitalism website reminded me of recent pictures of Starmer and Reeves sitting across the table from Larry Fink and his Blackrock team in the Cabinet Room of Number 10, as they set about selling out the country to even more financial interests that themselves seem to have hit turbulent times. If this is the case, we truly are governed by the clueless and hapless.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/05/billionaire-blasts-private-equitys-continued-grifting-as-performance-falls-further.html
Secondly, this book leaves us in no doubt about the serious situation we are in politically, as you rightly draw to our attention:
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745346854/alt-finance/
Thanks
Thank you, Karl.
There were other photos which are even more disgusting.
So, having read the naked capitalism article, where KKR is explicitly named as one of the private equity ‘villains’, we see Thames Water being acquired by these shysters because the government are so desperate to avoid renationalisation, presumably in the basis that there’s ‘no money ‘.
Starmer and Reeves are so lacking in any ability to challenge the tax and spend narrative or the markets always know best narrative that we continue to be screwed by these finance criminals no matter how much proof reality provides of how crap (both Thames and KKR) they are.
But never mind, Starmer will be at Westminster Abbey as part of the totally over the top celebrations around VE day. Pathetic, laughable and utterly depressing.
Agreed
As one who has just retired after a lifetime working in the legal profession I did chuckle (in agreement I add) with your comments regarding the role of lawyers and accountants. I could give you quite a few examples that I personally witnessed in my work to back up your comments. However, your comments reminded me of what one of my heroes (William Morris) described in his 1884 speech “Misery and the Way Out”: “Street after street you may go through London where there are no houses but those of the rich, even of the very rich: here dwell those who do no work at all, or who work excitedly, if not for very long hours, at fleecing their fellow citizens; while in homes more modest, yet still supplied with every desirable luxury and many undesirable ones, live the professional men, or hangers-on of the rich, who minister to their caprices. Hardly any of these well-housed people, even those of the latter group of this rich class, produce any real wealth for the service of the community”.
As they say across the Channel, Plus ca change………
Thanks, Martin. A good quote.
I sense, certainly from my children’s generation (in their 20s), a kind of unspoken fightback against all of this. This https://chattingaboutlocalism.wordpress.com/2025/05/06/how-the-evolution-to-the-new-economy-works/ is a decent read.
Noted
The landlordism and unaffordable rents feed off each other and result from the ‘liberation’ of the housing markets and pensions markets etc
Many small landlords invested to have a secure pension which had been lost following the change to ‘defined contribution’ from ‘defined benefits’.
Presumably no party is prepared to face up to how our economy and society wors becasue they are funded by those who are running the system.
Do you think it is some kind of illuminati pushing neoliberalism so they can become wealthier and more powerful?
No
They don’t need anything so absurd
They just do it
so who are “they” then?
I named them
Migrants (or the majority) are only taking advantage of the opportunities provide to them, they do not determine policy. Also, alot of these migrants (to some degree) are actually being exploited. I have walked away from a number of jobs in the last few years, where the targets enforced can only be achieved by a) alot of experience, b) cheating or c) actively encouraging a repetitive strain injury (HSAWA anyone?). For people with historical roots here, it’s relatively easy to walk away. For people that have invested money in trying to build a new life here, it is not – and the employers know this! Why do you think there is this sudden interest in allowing Indian citizens to by pass N.I contributions. Yet again the Capitalists win.
David Byrne says:
Don’t forget the mass media that supports the abuse of power and wealth by failing to inform critically to provide a balanced viewpoint.
News items, in general, do not provide necessary facts and statistics that allow consumers of media output to judge for themselves.
I now read this blog and Private Eye, and watch YouTube for MSNBC, Chris Hedges and other competent academics, bloggers and correspondents.
Thanks, David