On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 15:09 +0100, Raul Guiu wrote: […] > understand Brits, but if you choose a Chancellor who is a tax evader > himself (or at least someone who is skilful finding loopholes), what do you > expect? […]
This isn't particularly British, it's about politicians in a democracy. Politicians con voters in order to get elected. Once in power they are nice to their friends and to themselves. The borders between tax avoidance and tax evasion generally favour the rich and powerful, whilst the voters get shafted en bloc. The last four years have been an object lesson: the voters have been battered into depression and/or poverty, whilst the rich have been getting very nicely richer. And British electorate didn't choose the Chancellor. Voters are given a selection of people to choose amongst, all of whom come from the ruling elite. Choosing "no victor" is not an option, so one of them gets elected. Since only people from within political parties ever have a chance of getting elected, this means parliament is composed of parties that profess policies that people have to choose as a block, they are not permitted to select which policies they wish to vote for. In the end the leader of the party with the majority chooses the Chancellor and he does what the party leader says. Basically the system sucks, but sadly all other systems suck worse. Thus it is important for there to be a strong investigative media in order to bring the worst excesses of power and cheating, to some form of book. Hence the importance of the expenses scandal a year or so ago. MPs were cheating the tax payers quite widely. No investigative media and they would have got away with it. Politician tax evasion comes in the same boat. The sadness of the moment is that the BBC made a couple of small lapses of journalistic judgement recently and now the politicians are baying for blood and trying to decimate the BBC, principally to stop it being a strong investigative media entity, prying into their cheating of voters and tax payers. It's is basically the same story everywhere one way or another. On the other hand, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Starbucks could, by paying their taxes clear the entire UK national debt that is crippling the voters and tax payers of this country. Google may have the slogan "Do no evil", but that doesn't mean they believe in doing any good, they are there to make a profit. It is just a pity that these four are not concerned with the fact that the UK will stop being a cash-cow for them. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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