No Shock.

        Pandora's Papers, the media would have us all shocked and astounded at these revelations, but anybody who has an inkling to how this system of greed driven capitalism works, is well aware of the tax dodging, wealth concealment and corruption of the rich and powerful, they are the foundation stones of the exploitative system that grinds the ordinary people down. You don't accumulate millions and billions of pounds by simply working hard, you have to shaft the general public day and daily. If wealth accumulation was all due to hard work, I would be a very rich person, as my father was a miner all his life and I don't know of anyone who worked harder than he did. However we never got rich. I was born in the slum of Garngad and struggled all my life to keep a roof over my head and feed my family.
        The Pandora Papers are just a page from the diary of the normal workings of this capitalist system, a system to all who open their eyes, that is rotten to the core, stinks of greed and corruption from top to bottom, it is insanity accepted as normal. However it is only those ordinary people who are shafted on a daily basis that can pull it down and rebuild a society that sees to the needs of all our people. We need to pull the plug and flush all these stinking parasites down the toilet, where they belong. 

Nicked this image from a Facebook page.

 The capitalist trickle down system explained.

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Doing Well.

       During this pandemic we continually hear that we are all in this together, a wonderful illusion to get a submissive population. Let's not rock the boat, let's all pull together and get back to "normal". However during this pandemic one group has done very well indeed, our parasite class of millionaires and billionaires. The extract below is on American parasite billionaires, but I doubt that research in other developed countries would come up with a different result, different amounts but the same process. It's the system buddie.

The following from Mint Press News:

 Are they clapping frontline workers, are after looking at the bank balance.

       A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that, while tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, America’s ultra-wealthy elite have seen their net worth surge by $282 billion in just 23 days. This is despite the fact that the economy is expected to contract by 40 percent this quarter. The report also noted that between 1980 and 2020 the tax obligations of America’s billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, decreased by 79 percent. In the last 30 years, U.S. billionaire wealth soared by over 1100 percent while median household wealth increased by barely five percent. In 1990, the total wealth held by America’s billionaire class was $240 billion; today that number stands at $2.95 trillion. Thus, America’s billionaires accrued more wealth in just the past three weeks than they made in total prior to 1980. As a result, just three people ­– Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet – own as much wealth as the bottom half of all U.S. households combined.
     The Institute for Policy Studies’ report paints a picture of a modern day oligarchy, where the super-rich have captured legislative and executive power, controlling what laws are passed. The report discusses what it labels a new “wealth defense industry” – where “billionaires are paying millions to dodge billions in taxes,” with teams of accountants, lawyers, lobbyists and asset managers helping them conceal their vast fortunes in tax havens and so-called charitable trusts. The result has been crippled social programs and a decrease in living standards and even a sustained drop in life expectancy – something rarely seen in history outside of major wars or famines. Few Americans believe their children will be better off than they were. Statistics suggest they are right.

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UK, A World Leader!!

      The UK, mother of parliaments, defender of freedom and justice, and now it can claim to be a world leader, top dog, away out in front of any other country in the world. What is is that the UK can claim to be the big boss in, the number one, the master in the field? Well in is a field in which no other country comes near to the UK, it is of course in facilitating tax dodging.

From The Independent:

       But an index published today by the Tax Justice Network found that the UK has “single-handedly” done the most to break down the global corporate tax system which loses an estimated $500bn (£395bn) to avoidance.
The amount dodged globally each year is more than three times the NHS budget or roughly equivalent to the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Belgium. Tax haven territories linked to Britain are responsible for around a third of the world’s corporate tax avoidance risk – more than four times the next greatest contributor, the Netherlands.

      While you and I get our tax whipped of before we get our hands on our cash, big business is granted the privilege of avoiding paying their taxes. We can't really expect our prancing political ballerinas to do anything about that matter, after all some of them use that facility, or have friends that do so. They will waffle and babble on about this disgraceful situation, set up committees to look at it, speak about it on tele. Then in the next year or two another "revelation" about this "flaw" in the system will hit the headlines and then the  pontificating will start all over again.
      Mean while we will be told that there is no money tree and the NHS will have to be more efficient, the education system will need to get smarter in the way it does things, social services will be told to be more joined up with other services. Libraries will close, other services will handed to the private sector, the same sector that is stuffing its profits in some tax haven to avoid paying anything into the public purse.
      WE are being shafted on a daily basis, yet most people still seem to think the answer is in doing what they have done for countless years with no effect, appealing to those who legislate so that their friends can continue to shaft the public. When will we ever learn---

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Employers' Grand Theft.

      We are always hearing our UK lords and masters, the millionaire cabal, spouting about being tough on crime. Top of their list are “benefit cheats”, though when it comes to fraud ,this group is small-fry. Benefit fraud compared to tax avoidance, is just a fraction. According to the DWP the amount lost through benefit fraud is £1.2 billion a year, but according to HMRC, the amount lost to the treasury through tax avoidance is approximately £30 billion a year, though other experts put the figure much higher. However, the smaller of the two gets pursued through the courts, while regards the larger one, we are told that the government is looking at ways of dealing with that. Benefit fraud is actually much smaller than errors in the system. The amount over paid by the DWP department errors is £2.2 billion, and the amount under paid by department errors, £1.3 billion. So what this means is that if they eradicated errors and benefit fraud tomorrow, and paid people what they were due, the benefit bill would rise. Therefore, economics would suggest that we let the "benefit cheats" carry on as usual and concentrate on the big boys, the tax avoidance mob.

        Another form of fraud that doesn't get much coverage from the powers that be, is wage theft. Figures released in the USA show that 64% of low wage workers have cash stolen from their pay packets by their employers every week. This figure includes 26% who are paid less than the minimum wage, approximately 75% of workers due overtime rates have part or all of that stolen by their employers. The figures also show that the average low wage worker is robbed by their employer of a staggering $2,634 per year in unpaid wages, which works out at about 15% of their salary. Remember, if you're a low paid worker, you are probably on or near the breadline, yet these greedy bastards steal from you.

      Although these figures are for the USA, I have no reason to believe that our UK employers are any less unscrupulous than their American counterparts. It is par for the course, exploit the employee, cheat them of as much of their agreed pittance and maximise your profit. It's called capitalism.

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How To Get Rid Of Taxes.

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      If your one of the ordinary citizen of your country, and one of that dwindling band who still have a job, you'll have no option but to pay your taxes. Even if you are not working, you are still taxed via VAT, you pay tax on practically everything you buy, you are even taxed when you cook and heat your house. We are told that we pay taxes to make society a better place, our taxes pay for social services hospitals and such. There is probably enough taxes paid by you and me to end poverty in our country and see to the needs of the vulnerable. However, our taxes also pay for the state to arm itself to the teeth and send armies across the globe to kill other ordinary people who pay their taxes, and that's a big slice of our money. So we put up with poverty allowing the state to rob us so that it can play its game of power and control.

      There are however, those in this society that don't bother with that crap of paying taxes, they just keep their money and spend it on themselves, I'm talking about corporations, that band of greed merchants that at the moment control our world. Apple, just one of those corporations, in recent years paid practically no tax on $78 billion simply by setting up shell corporations in low-tax countries and posting profits abroad. It is considered that across the globe, the corporate world avoid paying taxes to the tune of $1 trillion every year. That's a fair slice of money, it is reckoned that it could end poverty, it's enough to give every family on the planet $1,000 every year, or put every child on the planet in school, it is almost as much as the military budget for every country on the planet, and bigger than the total budget of 176 nations. But instead, it goes into expanding corporate power and keeping an army of parasites in unimaginable luxury.

      We know that those duplicitous suits, the political class, will not do much, if anything, to prevent this bonanza for the rich, as they are part and parcel of the same corporate world, they are the puppets of their corporate masters. The only real answer is for the people to take control of those corporations, change the production from crap trivia for fashionistas, to producing what the people of the world actually need. In one fell swoop we would end poverty and deprivation, get rid of that army of parasites and the need to bother trying to get them to pay their taxes.

 

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GREAT BRITAIN -- FOR WHO??

         

             Millionaire Cameron wants to put the”GREAT” back into Great Britain. Well, Britain is "GREAT", it just depends on which side of the financial apathied wall you sit. It is “GREAT” if your are Sir Philip Green, owner of Arcadia/Topshop/Burtons/BHS, you earn all that money from that group of companies and you don't pay tax, a nice wee fiddle, you see the company is in his wife's name and surprise, surprise, she doesn't live in Britain, she is a resident of Monaco!! It is “GREAT” if your are one of Britain's too many millionaires. Since the “financial crisis” of 2008 the number of millionaires in Britain has grown from 528,000 to 619,000 an increase of 17%., Britain has the fourth most registered millionaires in the world coming in after USA, Japan and China. So millionaire Cameron has no worries there, Britain is “GREAT” for this bunch of parasites.

It's a GREAT country.

             However, what if you happen to be on the other side of that financial apathied wall? Well millionaire Cameron has a wee problem there. There is nothing “GREAT” about Britain if you are among the 4 million children growing up in poverty, more than 1 in 3, a figure that is amongst the worst in Europe. Nothing “GREAT” if you happen to be one of the 2 million pensioners living below the breadline and facing winter in fuel poverty. Again we are amongst the worst rates of pensioner poverty in Europe. I wonder if millionaire Cameron and his millionaire cabal, can even grasp an inkling of how “UN-GREAT” Britain is for the 20.2% of our young people who live a life on the dole? How “GREAT” is that, a fifth of all our young people unemployed, a waste of talent and resources, a destruction of the future.

          Sorry Mr. millionaire Cameron, you and your corporate cronies with policies of profit before people can never make Britain "GREAT" for the people of this country. You and the system you fight so viciously for, has to go, your greed driven corporate fascism has to be flushed down the toilet before this country can be "GREAT" for all of the people who live and work here.

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THE BROADEST SHOULDERS!!!

“it's fair that those with broader shoulders should bear a greater load” (David Cameron, justifying the cuts, Conservative party conference 6 Oct 2010)

'The Broadest Shoulders?'
By Camcorder Guerillas - Scotland 2011 - 4 mins.

They gambled an' lost, an' we've to pay??

         How cuts in benefits will affect disabled people “we are not cheats… we are not scroungers… it’s us who need supporting not the banks” In October 2010 the coalition Government announced public sector cuts of £81 billion, including £18 billion cuts to benefits. Whilst the rich avoid £120 billion of taxes and bankers continue to award themselves huge bonuses, “disabled people are facing the biggest attack on their rights since the 1930s”.

Join us in speaking out against the cuts.

        Share the film with others, Post the film to your facebook, twitter or myspace site. Click on the “Share” Icon. More info on how to share the film vimeo.com/​275807
        Embed the film in your website or blog. Click on the “Embed” icon. More info on how to embed the film vimeo.com/​help/​faq#what_is_embedding

      Distribute our poster at your workplace, college, union and neighbourhood. Get in touch info@camcorderguerillas.net to discuss organising a screening event.

          

The Broadest Shoulders? from Camcorder Guerillas on Vimeo.

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WHY BOOTS ARE WALKING RIGHT OVER ALL OF US!

      Recently we have seen angry groups of ordinary people across the country occupy banks and Vodafone. These people have been disgusted by greedy bonuses and massive tax theft while they are being hit with all sorts of "austerity cuts" and are calling for real change in the way our society functions. It is not just the odd bank and Vodafone, they are all at it, the list reads like a "who's who" of the business world. There is Mr Green, government advisor and owner of BHS, which is conveniently registered in his wife's name and she happens to live in a tax haven, so that saves him a few million quid a year that should go to the tax man. Then we have Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation, he knows a few wee tricks on how to avoid, (fiddle) tax. Then there is Google, dodging tax the way a LibDem dodges manifesto promises. All across the globe big business is ripping off the public, and millionaire governments are giving a nod and a wink, as they belong to the same club.

     The following is a leaflet drawn up to highlight another "friend" of the high street who has indulged in a nifty piece of accounting to avoid paying its fair share of tax. 

      DID you know that Boots The Chemist, that High Street shop with which we are all so familiar, is stealing £86 million a year from the British public thanks to a tax dodge?

      That's right! As exposed recently on BBC radio's File on 4, it sneakily changed its HQ to a post office office box in Switzerland to avoid paying proper UK taxes and is now handing over only £14m a year instead of more than £100m.

     Meanwhile, Boots boss Andy Hornby - the former chief of failed bank HBOS, walked away with more than £2m in his own pocket for his first nine months' work. It's the same picture everywhere - Big Business is being allowed to get away without paying its fair share of taxes that the rest of us have to cough up. And the Fat Cat bosses are laughing in our faces with their massive pay cheques and luxury lifestyles.

     This comes at a time when the Tory/Lib Dem government is telling us the country is broke and weve all got to make sacrifices. Thousands of people will be losing their jobs. Vital public services will be cut. Those who cannot find work are to be punished with what amounts to slave labour or the threat of starvation.

     Only the rich are to be allowed a proper education with the massive hike in student fees. The NHS is coming under attack from privatisation. We are all going to have to work until we drop dead because the state doesn't want to pay us the pension we've earned.

       This is not a coincidence! What we are seeing is a deliberate attack on the majority of the population by greedy global Big Business and its friends in the deeply unpleasant Conservative and Lib Dem parties. We say we have to fight back! The students in London have shown us the way - we have to make it quite clear to the ruling elite that we will not put up with DAYLIGHT ROBBERY from Boots or any other Fat Cat criminals!

JOIN THE RESISTANCE!!

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