Strip Greece

Privatisation of national assets. Deregulation – grotesquely, bakeries and milk are specifically mentioned as no longer to be subject to pesky government interference. Bread and milk. Removing workers’ rights to strike, to collective bargaining, to their legal rights in the wake of mass redundancies. No matter what the Greeks voted for, no matter what they wanted their government to do to help them: no democracy allowed.

This is a replay of another war: but not seventy-five years ago, only twelve.

One of the plans for the conquest and plundering of Iraq that went awry for the Bush administration was that all Iraqi nationalised assets were to be privatised. Saddam Hussein’s government had nationalised about 30% of Iraqi industries: the plan post-conquest was for the Coalition Provisional Authority to pursue policies that, as Donald Rumsfeld said in the Wall Street Journal in May 2003, ‘favour market systems’ and ‘encourage moves to privatise state-owned enterprises‘.

But, as the Bush administration discovered, their planned timetable of conquer, plunder, then hold elections, made the selling of the plunder unlawful: only a properly-elected government can lawfully sell national assets. A government established by foreign conquest explicitly can’t do so. Bush declared victory in Iraq on 2nd May 2003. The first post-conquest democratic elections were held 30th January 2005. One certain reason for the 18-month delay was that the Bush administration was trying to find some legal loophole that would let their planned mass privatisation go ahead.

Plain as parritch

Today is World Porridge Day – 10/10 every year.

Along at the east end of Princes Street this cold morning, determined to stay till the porridge runs out, were three volunteers for Mary’s Meals, celebrating World Porridge Day and collecting to feed children going to school in Malawi.

Porridge or parritch is a variant pronounciation of pottage – both soup and porridge are, in Scots, plural nouns. The porridge I ate (with raisins and guilt-free for-a-good-cause golden syrup) was probably not the halesome parritch of the Cottar’s Saturday Night. But it was tasty.

For Greece, the nightmare will never end

Thirty years ago, Greece joined the European Union. Fifteen years ago, at a science-fiction convention in Chicago, I was staying in a huge flat near the Loop which had been turned into a kind of dormitory for all three of the flatmate’s SFnal friends: I was the only Brit in the mix, and indeed the only European. A woman I knew came into the main living room and asked the room generally “Who on EARTH has Greek toothpaste?”

I waved my hand. (My toothpaste in fact had writing on the tube in all the languages of the European Union, but the Greek lettering was the most conspicuous.) Everyone looked at me.

“Why do you have Greek toothpaste?” she asked me.

“I am a citizen of Europe,” I told her happily, and that silenced all the North Americans in the room.

I have been seeing cheerful headlines around the news quite a lot, declaring that the Greek Parliament’s vote to accept the bailout means the “long nightmare is over”, that Greece is “rescued” at last. This is nonsense.

Helicopter Money and Stephen Hester

Bear Stearns was founded in 1923, but although Paula Daly’s Mouse to Minx sells vintage fashion of that era, quite probably when the 85-year-old bank went under on 6th March 2008, Paula Daly didn’t notice – between running her own small business and being a successful self-employed communications and marketing consultant, she says “Life was exhausting, and not without its stresses, but good.”

But in the US the collapse of Bear Stearns is seen as the beginning of the financial crisis of 2008, while in the UK, we date it from the collapse of Northern Rock, three weeks earlier. Both Northern Rock and Bear Stearns had become heavily involved in the sub-prime mortgages: Northern Rock’s business plan was to borrow heavily, extend mortgages based on the loans, and then re-sell these mortgages on international capital markets. This is known as “securitisation”.

Who got the idea for this risky business? In the UK, John Ritblat, former British Land chairman (described as “a charming old rogue, a bit of an old-fashioned spiv” by someone who likes him)

takes much of the credit for the revolution in property financing that has occurred over the past two decades. The industry used to be financed with fixed-rate borrowings secured on the property portfolio, but he pioneered techniques like securitisation of assets which, he believes, has transformed the industry into one financed by long-term, unsecured, borrowings. (The Observer, Sunday 16 July 2006)

Ritblat retired just over a year before August 2007, when Northern Rock first began to feel the chill. A self-confessed workaholic, he evidently knew the right time to retire from the “securitisation” business he pioneered – with an estimated net worth of £100m.

Once the fifth-largest investment bank in the United States, Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008 under the weight of toxic hedge fund accounts backed heavily by subprime mortgages. The company was quickly sold to J.P. MorganChase (another financial giant and OpenSecrets.org Heavy Hitter) but the bank’s spectacular fall — and the federal government’s failure to stop it — is now seen as the first wave of the epic financial meltdown that created the global recession of 2008 and 2009. (Open Secrets)

Never Doubt

Today, 20th December 2011, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail are both running front page stories about HMRC’s cosy relationship with big corporations – a cosiness that’s led to their getting to dodge paying at least £25 billion of owed tax. (They also don’t have to pay on time and don’t have to pay interest on the amount they owe – privileges not available to the 99%.)

Fourteen months ago

On October 27th 2010, just one week after George Osborne announced the deepest cuts to public services since the 1920s, around 70 people ran along Oxford Street, entered Vodafone’s flagship store and sat down. We had shut down tax-dodging Vodafone’s flagship store.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

That a Parliamentary committee finally sat down and looked at David Hartnett’s comfortable relationship with the companies he was supposed to be pursuing for billions in tax is greatly to the credit of UKUncut and Private Eye and 38Degrees and many another activist who wrote to their MP and the newspapers and protested. The report is expected to trigger the launch of the National Audit Office’s investigation of 10 particular tax disputes by the retired judge Sir Andrew Park.

But that force of public opinion made two iconic right-wing papers decide they were better siding with the 99% than the 1% – that, I believe, is purely down to those hundreds of people who over the past 14 months have walked into banks and businesses and declared that they wanted these corporations to pay their tax or get shut down.

Pursue benefit cheats – who cost the UK at most $4bn – you get a hotline. Pursue tax cheats, who cost the UK over $25 billion – you get arrested.

But things change:

The MPs found that owing to a “mistake”, admitted by HMRC, Goldman paid up to £20m less tax than had been due on its bonus payments. Vodafone settled a long dispute by paying £1.25bn, but the committee heard allegations that the tax bill should have been £6bn or more.

The committee hearings found that two undisclosed firms had struck similar deals, and suspect that there may be other questionable deals among £25bn of outstanding unresolved tax bills.

Hodge said: “You are left feeling that the sort of deals that are made with big business are different – sweetheart deals in some instances – from the sort of way in which corner shops are treated, small business are treated or hard-working families are treated.”

You can listen to UKUncut activists talking about their plans for legal action on 5 live Breakfast and Today on iPlayer.

Today UK Uncut Legal Action “an NGO inspired by the anti-cuts direct action group UK Uncut” announced that on Thursday 22nd December it will issue proceedings in the High Court on Thursday.

The campaigning group made the decision to go forward with the case after receiving what they term a ‘dismissive’ response from HMRC to letters from their lawyers demanding the alleged sweetheart deal agreed between David Hartnett and Goldman Sachs is quashed.

They’re asking for donations of £1 from each supporter – their lawyers are taking the case on a “no win no fee” basis, but if they lose, they may be liable for HMRC and Goldman Sachs legal costs. Goldman Sachs is the company that now runs the government in Italy and Greece. This is worth doing.

Never doubt it can be done.