Thursday 7 September 2017

Richard Murphy wants to use natural disasters as left-wing leverage, nice

How about this corker from Richard Murphy today:


"Hurricane Irma is continuing to batter the Caribbean. At a human level there can only be concern for tall those affected, and a desire that all that can be done to restore normal life in the places impacted will happen.
But the Caribbean is not a politics free zone, and nor is Hurricane Irma. I will leave aside the obvious global warming issues and the politics of that. I will mention instead that many of the places affected are tax havens. And many of them are British.
I sincerely hope that the UK government does supply all the assistance required to these places, as they will also do to those other places without such support. But I make the point that if we are to honour our responsibilities, then so should they. The British Caribbean tax havens can only exist because of the guarantee that the UK supplies, the legal system that the UK supplies and the regulation that we support. There is a cost to that. We will bear ours, but it’s not unreasonable to expect that those places who need us to do so respond in kind. That means they deliver accounts on public record, registers of beneficial ownership of companies and trusts for all to inspect and new regimes of transparency in all that they do.
And for those who think this isn’t the time to ask I would point out that even neoliberals think that the role of government is to act as a back stop. When the governments of the UK’s Caribbean tax havens rely on us to take that role then now is precisely the time to remind them of their reciprocal responsibilities, whilst continuing to supply all the support that is needed."


http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/09/07/hurricane-irma-and-the-uks-caribbean-tax-havens/


This is some effort, it shows up some classic left-wing authoritarian thinking:


- Everything must be viewed through the prism of politics, even natural disasters.


- The UK is at fault and is the evil player here, supporting the poor colonials to become victims.


- Help should only be forthcoming to those who follow a particular political agenda or point of view.


It is a deeply depressing summary of the weltanshauung that has evolved on the left over the past few years; a huge intolerance of anyone or thing that is different - notably those of right-wing political views. It is an amazing outcome of a focus on identity politics that it turns into such a divisive monster, with the added  the zest of moral hatred for those who do not conform - and as shown here, a desire to use force to abuse those who do not choose the path of the Left.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The timing might be off but it's about time the cess pits of tax evasion and avoidance were tackled. Quite frankly it's shocking it has not been done already until you realise just how many of the great and good rely on these places. Let us hope that the hurricane does enough damage to the infrastructure to inconvenience these parasites who use them. We should make it part of Brexit, we shut down our havens if you close Luxembourg, sounds good to me.

The existence of these places is indefensible, that is not to say that the hurricane is not a tragedy, but the connection between the two is irrelevant. I now ice that Gordon son of the manse and Theresa daughter of the vicar are united in being free of a moral compass, incapable of relating to people, personally cowards and totally devoid of any moral purpose what so ever. You would have thought that instead of bleating on about corporate governance a move to crack down on tax evasion would have gone down well with the public, even if it terrified 60% of parliament and the city.

James Higham said...

"there can only be concern for tall those affected,"

Only the tall - yes I see that.

Anonymous said...

When formal religious observance declines (with some help from media), the religious instinct doesn't go away. People need a narrative, and they need an enemy to hate, as Genghis Khan righly observed.

The official multicult narrative isn't very satisfying (you can tell by the revealed preference of where people want to live) but all the more then do we cling to the hate objects laid down for us. Orwell knew of which he wrote.

My auntie is 82, and a pretty low information voter, but she knows all about what a Bad Man Trump is.

Bill Quango MP said...

Julia Hartley-Brewer, journalist and Talkradio presenter tweeted "Just interviewed a guest on @talkRADIO who claimed the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma is due to inequality. Not the wind then. Sigh."

She kicked him off. After he kept on about how American inequality caused corruption in the rebuilding companies, owned by multi-nationals..something..something..it's all Trump's fault.
This was a booked guest. Supposed to be an expert in foreign aid reconstruction and how and where to start such efforts.
But he was just an idiot. Which she called him. Before kicking him out of the studio.
She said she wasn't interested in s load of corbynistas clap-trap.

If only she wasn't the only one prepared to do that.

Electro-Kevin said...

I like the 'we' bit.

Now hold on a minute.

Tax havens, for rich people to avoid paying tax to support our own schools 'n' hospitals here at home.

So now ordinary British taxpayers - denied revenues by rich people based in tax havens - have to pay over and above because *we* (the British) are guilty of setting up and exploiting tax havens...

I think Mr Murphy would find that we're the victims of wrong doing here. The Caribbs are suffering from an 'Act of God'.

Anonymous said...

On a more practical level, if you want a tax haven to continue to exist it makes sense to ensure the infrastructure can withstand such once in a lifetime events. So "cui bono" suggests the great and the good ought to cough up.

I was struck by the article on the BBC about the tourist industry in Zambia. Fearful their investment may be worthless without tourists, they dug deep into their own pockets to fund road improvements and policing. Tourism picked up.

No politics, no shouting, just practicalities.

Now if we could only find a caribbean island somewhere to send all these talking heads so the practical amongst us could get on with living our lives without interference or opinion.

Demetrius said...

Re Branson and The Virgin Islands. I put a comment on that post here "Interesting question. Were all that money not going into the islands they would have a small population living at or near subsistence level. Moreover, anyone building high expense property there must know that there is a hurricane season every year and therefore the risks entailed. Add to that is how and where the money comes from. Ofcom would do well to take a good look at the way Virgin Mobile treats its customers at their expense. But I suspect that with friends like his the chances are that government money will be coming his way, if only by a circuitous route less predictable than those of the hurricanes."

dustybloke said...

You see, if I said "Let them rot" I'd be jailed for a hate crime.

The left suggest the same thing and their followers cheer them on.

PC trumps humanity, as it does in so many cases.

Charlie said...

I have to confess to simply not understanding HTF anyone can be proud to identify themselves as being of the left in its current state. Both history and the present day give us myriad examples where the implementation of a socialism/communism (I don't really see the difference) has resulted in millions of needless deaths. Why the fuck would anyone who is a member of The Real World want to visit that on your fellow countrymen? Particularly when screaming loudly about the "thousands of deaths caused by Tory cuts", or the "Grenfell murders" or whatever else they're trying to pin on the right at any given moment.

Logic, reason, evidence are all abandoned because capitalism/rich people/white people are evil. It's as though they're mentally ill - in fact, it's the only thing that can explain it. Their own self-loathing drives everything they do. What better way to distract from one's own hatred for oneself than by inventing a world composed entirely of hatred, so malevolent that it must be criminalised?

Leaders on the right should be ashamed that they find themselves unable to articulate why the left are loons. There are plenty of YouTubers and Twitter users who are able to do this - why can't our political leaders? The Tory leadership needs to realise that most of the country are sick of the leftie lunacy, find their purpose and start leading from the front, calling people out on this nonsense, not running scared of Gary Lineker's twitter feed. Corbyn deserves to be mocked loudly. The Blairites who are currently rolling over for Corbyn need to be mocked. They're a shambles and the electorate should be reminded of that at every opportunity.

Electro-Kevin said...

Charlie - If only that self loathing lead to self flagellation. The Left always use whipping boys instead. Latterly it is the white, over 40s, working class who live beyond their own privileged and segregated communities.

(Though I'm not sure if my previous comment supports Murphy)

Replace Brexiters with 'white, over 40s, working class' (WOWCs) and the picture becomes clearer as to who the target of the Left have been for many years now.

The WOWCs became Brexiters precisely because they were targetted.

Rubbing noses in diversity and political correctness had to have consequences and here they are. I'm proud that it took the form of an orderly, patient and lawful use of due democratic process.

Now they try to nullify the democratic choice by calling us stupid, nasty and (above all) racist. Patently untrue. We are a fair, sensible and hospitable people - attested to by ever increasing levels of mass immigration. Foreign people wouldn't come here to join us if we were horrible to them and 'racism' is a wicked slur designed to subvert democracy.

I avoid Walker's Crisps like the plague.

Electro-Kevin said...

"Woman wan troway poo-poo, come trap for window"

BBC Pidgin English headline.

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-41171196

This is a seriously funny website. Worth putting on your daily read list.

Sobers said...

"Logic, reason, evidence are all abandoned because capitalism/rich people/white people are evil. It's as though they're mentally ill - in fact, it's the only thing that can explain it."

I have said for many years that Left nowadays consists of a combination of leaders who are downright nasty bits of work (for whom the politics is just a cover for a power grab - they want power over people, spouting boilerplate leftist b*llocks is the way to achieve that power, regardless of an principles, if yesterdays favoured section of society is no longer considered useful they're jettisoned for the flavour du jour, hence the party of the 'working man' now doesn't give a fig for the working man, and has moved on to Islamists, benefits claimants, immigrants and the sexually confused) and the rank and file left leaning voters who are perpetual children - they have never moved from being a child to being an autonomous adult - demanding life's necessities be provided by an all powerful but benevolent overlord (Mum and Dad morphing in the State), having an overwhelming self obsession and demand for 'fairness', resorting to tantrums when prevented from getting what they want.

The former spout any old sh*t that they know will resonate with the latter, purely as a means to an end, power. None of it has to make any sense, because its irrelevant, once they have the power they crave, everyone will be made to suffer, regardless of whether they were one of the favoured groups or not.

Electro-Kevin said...

Sobers - Stop eating Walker's Crisps.

An easy political protest though it probably won't hit sales as Wayne Rooney keeps going for the Grab Bag.