{"id":16038,"date":"2012-06-18T09:39:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T08:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=16038"},"modified":"2012-06-18T09:39:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T08:39:00","slug":"hold-us-to-account-for-dodgy-deals-no-thanks-says-big-business-bosses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/06\/18\/hold-us-to-account-for-dodgy-deals-no-thanks-says-big-business-bosses\/","title":{"rendered":"Hold us to account for dodgy deals? No thanks says big business bosses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2012\/jun\/17\/arms-oil-bosses-corporate-responsibility\" target=\"_blank\">Guardian notes this morning<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The bosses of some of Britain's biggest arms and\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Oil\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/oil\">oil<\/a>\u00a0companies have refused to attend a parliamentary inquiry into the use of hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to help dictators build arsenals and facilitate environmental and human rights abuses.<\/p>\n<p>The businessmen, including Ian King, chief executive of\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on BAE Systems\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/baesystems\">BAE Systems<\/a>, had been invited to an all-party investigation into the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD)'s underwriting of loans, including \u00a335m to Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe\u00a0<a title=\"Guardian: MPs to ask firms to explain how UK taxes helped dictators build arsenals\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2012\/may\/07\/mps-bae-uk-taxes-dictators-arsenals\">to buy five Hawk fighter jets<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good heavens! How\u00a0impertinent\u00a0of the committee. Fancy wanting to hold business to account for the funding it uses and the dodgy deals it does with it. Now that would never do, would it?<\/p>\n<p>Odd how the boys (bound to be boys) closed ranks.\u00a0Remember\u00a0what Adam Smith said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Do you think there might have been such a meeting to\u00a0result\u00a0in this blanket refusal? Maybe?\u00a0No, of course not: silly me, that could not be true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the Guardian notes this morning: The bosses of some of Britain&#8217;s biggest arms and\u00a0oil\u00a0companies have refused to attend a parliamentary inquiry into the use<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/06\/18\/hold-us-to-account-for-dodgy-deals-no-thanks-says-big-business-bosses\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}