Tax avoidance among the 'bruvvers'

ACCORDING TO Conservative research, the Unite union paid no taxes for the year 2011-2012 because they found what the Daily Telegraph described as an 'obscure accounting loophole' that allowed them to avoid paying. It was all quite legal, and, if there are legal ways of avoiding tax then good luck to those who find them. It is up to the government to make tax payments water tight, and not for the public to volunteer them. If those PAYE taxpayers had the same recourse to the same form of accountancy as the Great and Good then they would avoid taxes in the same way.

            

             However the General Secretary of the Unite union, Len McCluskey seems, like his Labour Party 'colleagues' to be behaving hypocritically. It was Labour, you may remember, who accepted John Mills' (owner of JML) contribution of £1.65 million to the party's coffers  in the form of shares, thus reducing the amount of tax payable. Once again perfectly legal, and innovative - but was it not also Labour who, you may also remember, that launched an attack of such bile on Amazon, Google, and Starbucks for their own creative behaviour regarding tax avoidance?

            

             If Ed Miliband's distancing of his party from the  unions come to fruition, then the Labour party will find its finances depleted - so the party may need more private donors like John Mills armed with his same tax avoiding novelties. So if in the future, when Ed's union reform has bedded in;  the Labour Party wishes to avoid going cap in hand to the taxpayer to finance them; then they had better get used to the creative measures adopted by the likes of Unite, JML, Amazon, Google, and Starbucks.

LABOUR ARE NO LONGER the party of the working class. They need no longer seek to justify themselves using old fashioned class politics. Yet, although they realise the one time socialist dream has long since been abandoned; the Labour Party still uses its class based rhetoric to turn people away from the  'Tories'. Such rhetoric keeps the Labour hard core vote on board - but then, they would vote for a chimpanzee if it wore a red rosette.

            

             Even Unite turns to this country's financial centre, the City, to protect its £51.6 million portfolio and freely use socialism's antithesis to stay solvent and wealthy: only to then behave toward the hand that feeds them like a pauperised 19^th century factory worker would behave toward a 19^th century top-hated, paunch-bellied cigar smoking capitalist.        

            

             Tony Blair, for all his many sins, realised Labour's socialist days were numbered and sought a new beginning. It was first attempted, somewhat prematurely, in the 1980's by the SDP. Blair knew that socialism's days were long over - debunked by history and finally brought to book with the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

THE UNITE union is not the only union that profits by its relationship with the City. The many funds harvested by its other union brethren, also seek financial security, and will indeed profit from the financial markets. Soon also will the Labour Party, if it seeks to remain solvent. Capitalism works. Socialism stagnates, declines, and eventually rots the society it is master of. Capitalism will, from time to time flounder , but the very same forces that caused it to do so will eventually lead to its recovery, if politicians keep their distance.

           

             It never ceases to amaze me how the Left falls silent when some of their own kind practice what their class enemies preach. Has Margaret Hodge, for instance, railed against comrade McCluskey, as she did Amazon, Google, and Starbucks? And I have yet to hear any complaint about the six figure salaries and bourgeois social lives of many of the unions general secretaries - yet those working in the City are pounced on without a moment's reflection by such hypocrites.   

           

             There is little, ideologically speaking, to divide the three main parties. The Conservatives are no longer conservative; the Labour Party are no longer socialist; the Liberal Democrats, however, remain liberal. But all this means is that the three main parties are all social democrats; as the unions are about to find out.

            

             The trade unions are about to give Ed his Clause IV moment, as they did Tony Blair, and helped give birth to New Labour, and 13 years in power. The union's only playable hand is that Ed Miliband is no Tony Blair.