Thanks To The Tories, UK Energy Companies Are Now In Foreign Hands

It’s All About Cheating The British Taxpayer.

So whaddya know?
The rich and powerful do all they can to avoid paying their taxes.
It seems the richer you get the less inclined you are to pay back to the country that made you successful.
But what’s less known is that we subsidise the very countries that steal that tax away from us.

The Panama Papers leak revealed almost half the offshore deals were done through the British Virgin Islands.
It’s one of the many British Overseas Territories from our colonial past that we the taxpayer still fund.
We provide them with diplomatic protection, Foreign Office services, defence and the use of our legal and courts system.
These territories don’t pay a penny for these privileges.

We’ve also learned these countries have their own Parliamentary protection unit of Tory politicians and millionaire party donors.
Even Cameron and his dad were filling their boots.
Maybe it helped to pay those Eton fees.
And when he grew up, Cameron Jnr held £30,000 of shares stashed abroad.
That must be what you call a toffshore fund!

The fact that it took the Prime Minister four days of media scrutiny, and four previous statements to finally admit it, shows how slippery and devious he really is.
The users of these offshore services defend it by saying that it is legal, but with so little transparency, how can we tell?
Or they say it’s part of a “competitive global financial structure”.

Rubbish. It’s all about cheating the British taxpayer out of billions that we desperately need for our NHS, our schools and our economy.
To me, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man and other British Overseas Territories that promote their aggressive offshore status are nothing but parasites.
( John Prescott, 10.04.2016 )

Cameron’s Broken Promises.

Making promises is one thing, but keeping them is another.
And when it comes to our prime minister he doesn’t even bother to do that.
The sheer number of his U-turns has left me dizzier than a trip on the waltzers!
Remember his claim that this would be the “greenest government in history”?
Now he’s selling off the Green Investment Bank, he’s axed the Green Deal to provide home insulation and there’s a big push to frack for gas.

Or how about “The NHS will be safer under the Tories”?
Waiting times at A&E are getting longer with only 88% of patients being seen within four hours, junior doctors are still threatening strike action and the National Audit Office warns that the NHS is heading towards a £2.2billion deficit.
And who can forget his pledge during the election not to cut tax credits of the poorest workers?
That promise lasted less than a month!
( John Prescott, 20.12.2015 )

Is Privatising Publicly-Run Industries The Worst Kind Of Economic Madness?

Anybody swallowing the myth that nationalising the steel industry would be economic madness should look at the plans in store for HS2.
The Commons has heard that when the high-speed railway is built, it will initially be run by the Government then handed over to the private sector.
In other words, we’ll spend £60-70billion of taxpayers’ money building it, then when it becomes profitable, and thus able to pay the country an income, we’ll flog it to the highest bidders.

Who will be foreign-owned multinationals whose only aim will be to make big profits for their shareholders who will pay tax in countries like France and Germany which go towards subsidising their own state-run railways.
Which is exactly what happened to the energy we used to own, when Thatcher and her lackeys lied about privatisation turning us into a nation of shareholders.
Will someone please explain how this privatising of publicly-run industries is not the worst kind of economic madness?
( Brian Reade, 09.04.2016 )

Tory Spin Doctors And Special Advisors.

Osborne is keen to say we’ve got to make “hard choices”.
But there have been no cuts to the amount his government spends on spin doctors and special advisors.
Instead, the annual cost of SpAds went up 10% to £9.2million.
Cameron has 32 and Osborne, who is also First Secretary of State, has 10.
When I was DPM and First Secretary of State I had two.
What’s more, Osborne’s given the woman responsible for his makeover a 42% pay rise.
They sneaked this out on the last day of Parliament.
How many SpAds does it take to bury bad news?
Too many!
( John Prescott, 20.12.2015 )

Outsiders Come To Panama To Bury Their Money.

I once visited a tax haven and spoke to someone about Panama.
It was the late 90s, in the Seychelles and I was doing a mickey-taking piece on the Miss World contest.
When I interviewed the lovely Miss Panama (hobbies – surfing the internet and knee-boarding) she told me her ambition was “to be realised like a person”.
Anything more specific, I asked?
“To present to the world the tropical exuberance of my country”.
That was before the contest.
Afterwards, when she came nowhere and was wiping away the runny mascara, I asked, off-the-record, what she had meant by her country’s tropical exuberance.
“That was just bullshit. Outsiders only come to Panama to bury their money, but I couldn’t say that, could I?”
And they say these Miss World contestants are dated, braindead bimbos.
( Brian Reade, 09.04.2016 )

Thanks To The Tories, UK Energy Companies Are Now In Foreign Hands.

Under the Tories, providing energy became a licence to print money.
From privatising gas and electricity to selling off our North Sea oil assets, speculators and investors celebrated for decades on the profits.
All funded by the poor British public which saw prices sky rocket.
This week, the hangover kicked in.
And the companies which plundered our resources to maximise their profits want to be bailed out.
Sounds familiar?

The energy fat-cats are just like the greedy bankers who brought the world to its knees.
Former Tory MP Harold Macmillan described Thatcher’s privatisations as “selling the family silver”.
Now we’re having to mortgage UK PLC to keep the lights on and energy company shareholders happy.
And for a government that’s always been suspicious of Europe, it’s remarkable how much of our energy companies are now in foreign hands.

Npower, which this week axed 2,500 staff in the wake of a £26million fine for billing inaccuracies, is owned by Germany’s RWE.
EDF, whose finance chief resigned over the rising costs of funding the proposed Hinkley Point nuclear power station, is French and part-owned by France’s government.
And Hinkley’s other funder, CGN, is actually run by the Chinese Government.
So in spite of being offered a guaranteed production rate twice as much as their normal rate, the numbers man at EDF still couldn’t make it add up.

Britain’s energy future is in the hands of foreign governments, not our own.
It’s the biggest outsourcing scandal this country has ever seen.
The current problem is all George Osborne’s fault, a man far too clever for his own good.
His actions made this Tory mess so much worse.
Thanks to Thatcher closing our viable mining industry out of sheer bloody spite, we’re now reliant on dirtier coal from abroad.

And Boy George’s decision to axe subsidies for solar and onshore wind generation has not only caused job losses, it makes cutting carbon emissions and meeting renewable energy targets even harder.
Now offshore oil chiefs want Osborne to slash their taxes, amid threats of more redundancies.
The price of oil has collapsed because of over-supply of energy.

The Tories destroyed our mining industry and whole communities on the basis the international price of coal was low.
But they’re happy to let taxpayers subsidise an industry hit because the price of oil has crashed.
North Sea oil was always a huge cash cow for governments.

The Government and oil and gas companies always make money.
But still the producers want subsidies.
And who will pay?
Those in the greatest need.
This week Tory MPs voted through a £30 a-week cut to people claiming disability benefit.
( John Prescott. 13.03.2016 )

The Man Who Took Benefits From The Poor And The Disabled.

Iain Duncan Smith broke down during a TV interview with Ian Hislop for a documentary about the benefits system.
It came when he described meeting a 19 year-old on a sink estate who had nothing going for her.
This is so incredible coming from a man who set up test after test for the poor and disabled to fail so he could take benefits from them.
I’d like to suggest a new test.
One that detects if a wet-eyed politician is crying or laughing.
( Brian Reade, 09.04.2016 )

Cameron Is An Environmental Hooligan.

The Paris Agreement on climate change was a remarkable achievement.
So it was particularly galling to see our prime minister trying to claim credit for his government.
It’s a bit like a football fan thinking their team won because he turned up to watch the game.
And that’s all the Tories did.

Watch as the rest of the world pulled off a staggering deal.
But as the deal was done, like John Terry on steroids, the Tories ran on to the pitch, pulling on a green shirt for the cameras.
They even released parliamentary statements praising their own success!
But the key thing for all governments is to deliver their commitment to keep reducing carbon emissions to limit temperature increases by 2degC, the tipping point where global warming may be irreversible.

So how did Cameron start?
Four days after Paris he pushed through a law to allow fracking for shale gas under national parks, with no debate!
Next day he cut subsidies for homeowners wanting to install solar panels by 65%.
So the Tories don’t want removable wind turbines in their constituencies but they’re more than happy to frack for gas under our green and pleasant land.

They don’t want to subsidise our solar industry but they’re happy to give subsidies to oil and gas.
That’s on top of scrapping the zero carbon content for new houses, undermining the green climate fund and axing carbon capture storage.
Cameron may have got misty-eyed in front of the cameras in Paris saying he wanted to protect the planet for his grandchildren.
But his actions prove he is nothing but an environmental hooligan.
( John Prescott, 20.12.2015 )

The Panama Papers Show Cameron’s Father Avoided Paying British Taxes.

Do you remember the attack on Ed Miliband over the alleged sins of his father?
How a right-wing paper claimed academic Ralf Miliband “hated Britain” because his politics were too left-wing for their taste.
The implication being that his son was a chip off the old red block and thus unfit to lead the country.

His mother got it too.
From George Osborne in last year’s Budget, when he implied she’d used a deed of variation on a property to reduce her sons’ inheritance tax liability (even though it was proved no tax was avoided).

So, excuse me if I don’t buy into David Cameron’s belief that his father’s tax affairs (and it turns out, his own) are “a private matter”.
Because these Tories have made the alleged sins of the family fair game.
The Panama Papers show Cameron Snr avoided paying British taxes by siphoning his cash offshore.

The PM knew about it and directly benefited from it.
Ah, he says, it’s legal.
But how moral?
How patriotic?

Isn’t it a sign that you “hate Britain” if you go out of your way to deprive our armed forces the funds to defend us, and schools the cash to educate our children?
Or doesn’t the last point count if daddy’s tax-free fortune puts you through an elite private school like Eton, giving you a free ride to the top?
( Brian Reade, 09.04.2016 )

All Legal, But How Moral? How Patriotic?

What of Osborne?
The baronet’s son sheepishly side-stepped a question about whether he had any offshore interests.
So we don’t know.

But we do know that thanks to clever accountancy, his father’s wallpaper firm paid no corporation tax for seven years, despite making £722,200 profits in the year to March 2015.
All legal, but how moral?
How patriotic?

Four years ago, Jeremy Hunt avoided a £100,000 tax bill by transferring ownership of his educational company’s office to his name.
It was legal, but could he see no immorality in depriving the NHS he now runs, of vital money?

Staying with the terminally gormless, Sir Mark Thatcher was unmasked in the Panama Papers as the beneficiary of an off-shore trust.
The leaks also showed that five Tory donors, who had given £16million to the party, held their fortunes in tax-free havens.

That’s the super-rich bankrolling their chosen stooges to win power and make them even richer by keeping their financial affairs “a private matter”.
Hence Cameron personally lobbying the EU in 2013 to water down rules on tax haven trusts.
( Brian Reade, 09.04.2016 )

Who Knows What Further Secrets The PM Has In His Treasure Chest?

A week of evasiveness and half-truths has ended with David Cameron releasing details of his past six years’ income.
It can’t be something the Prime Minister wanted to do, but his attempts to cover up the truth about the money he inherited from his father’s Panamanian offshore funds have made it inevitable.

The figures don’t tell us much about Mr Cameron’s finances that we didn’t know already.
He and his wife are very rich, like most Cabinet members, and rent out their house in Notting Hill for more than £1,800 a week.
It has emerged a £200,000 gift from his mother Mary will potentially save him £80,000 in inheritance tax.

And who knows what further secrets the PM has in his treasure chest?
Since he became Tory leader more than a decade ago, there has been an increasing gulf between this country’s rulers and ruled.

The rich get richer and richer but aren’t content with that.
The more they have, the more they want to keep, so they employ every trick to avoid paying their rightful share of taxes.
Meanwhile, the rest of us pay what is due and woe betide those who try not to.
( Sunday Mirror, 10.04.2016 )