There are occasional moments of pleasure in a campaigners life, not least when your achievements are acknowledged. That is especially sweet when it is your opponents who acknowledge it, as has happened to me in the case of the Isle of Man today:
A representative of an organisation that successfully campaigned for the Isle of Man to get less income from the VAT sharing agreement with the UK is to speak in the island next week.
The Tax Justice Network lobbied for the agreement to be changed and its founder Richard Murphy was a thorn in the side of the Manx government.
There's quite a lot of detail wrong in those two paragraphs. I actually ran the campaign on this issue from this blog as Tax Research UK and I was not the founder of the TJN - but just one those who were founders. John Christensen, who is visiting the Isle of Man next week, has always played a much more important role there and I am no longer formally involved.
But what the heck with the detail? The substance is what matters, and yes, I did from 2007 onwards run a campaign to remove the UK's VAT subsidy to the Isle of Man that I estimated to be as much as £233 million a year. And the fact is that the campaign worked: the subsidy was removed in stages from 2009 onwards. I am quite sure that would not have happened without my work, and the Isle of Man press is acknowledging that fact.
That did not make me popular in the Isle of Man but I have no regrets about this campaign. It was absurd that the UK subsidised a place to be a tax haven that then meant it stole the UK's tax revenue. In this case that subsidy no longer exists, and rightly so. If I had to be a thorn in the side to achieve that, so be it. I'll take it as a compliment.
PS. For all those who like to criticise my work on the tax gap and my calculation methods based on VAT please note the same criticisms were levied in this case involving the Isle of Man, until it was accepted that I was right.
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The huge subsidies were the equivalent of a good lottery win each and every week landing on the Island for many years. A double week lottery win in a small town such as Stevenage or Surrey Heath would have made national headlines. The Isle of Man received the equivalent such weekly fortunes for over a decade and stayed under the radar.
The money hasn’t helped the Isle of Man. It has bred greed and injustice.
I guess you won’t be planning to retire there then! Good work Sir.
You say “stole”. It takes two sides to reach an agreement, which is what this was. We do not steal. Will be interesting to see results of Vat survey finally being correctly carried out by HMC. “Whichever way you through us”… Look it up. Please don’t bother us again. Just why is Mr Christensen even coming here? Or indeed bothering? MANX
The agreement was drawn up in 1911
I pointed out it needed replacement when no one else had
John is coming as a result of an invitation
Presumably you “do not steal” in the same way as if someone dropped a £10 note in front of you, you would pick it up and pocket it instead of returning it. That must be some of those English Values that Cameron and Gove love so much and have in common with you.
As one of an increasingly rare breed, a Manxman living on the island, I wholeheartedly support your work.
From a residents point of view however the downside has been that it’s allowed the hard line right wing neo-liberals in government (most of them) to pursue their ideology of ‘ austerity ‘. For no good reason other than dogma, working/pay/pensions conditions for the average person are being relentlessly driven down here. There’s talk of the NHS being unaffordable and means testing all benefits etc.. The usual thin end of the wedge tactics.
Naturally the tax dodgers and their shills remain sitting pretty, totally unconcerned about the attacks on the working class. Most of them will most likely support it too.
I accept that is an unfortunate outcome
Customs and Excise Agreement 1979
Which replaced earlier agreements
I know the history
I am well aware you know the history! Just drop it all now. You won!
Your ‘achievement’ as a member of the middle class elite is simply to hit working and middle class people and their children. Your equivalent kind will and have shovelled the problem down the line in order to maintain power and wealth.
In seeking to make a name for yourself you have merely addressed a symptom of a much wider problem which will never be addressed. You claim to have followed this cause in the name of justice for ordinary people, yet have only succeeded in making thousands of ordinary peoples lives poorer.
But really you know that already.
That is only from your very narrow perspective
Those people now have to vote for change in the IoM
For those elsewhere – many, many more in number, this was a big win
Your reply betrays your narrow perspective.
Voting for change is not an option. You know that if you ‘know the history’.
What you should have campaigned for (if anything) is constitutional change rather than financial.
But that would have been harder to achieve. Impossible.
The number is irrelevant. Your organisation speaks of values such as justice and fairness. The justice of the majority does not outweigh the justice of the few. You have recognised this when discussing Hillsborough.
So your achievement is to miss the point.
I have sought constitutional change – by demanding a change in relationships with other countries
I do not presume a right to change your domestic affairs – only your international ones
Of course you can stand for election
Please do not tell me that is not possible