Now before you start getting all riled at me, just ponder that for a moment. There are few people out there that would question that this country is in a mess. Whether financial or social, most people would agree that something needs to be done and quite frankly most of us don’t have the faith in our present leaders to solve the crisis enveloping Britain.
Now fascism has never really held much sway in this country and has certainly not really seen the light of day since the 1940s. Every now and again the Far-Right pops up to win a few votes and people get worried.
Now I am not talking about this kind of racist based ideology. No I’m talking about a system that gets things done but doesn’t really care about the people at large.
Take Russia. When Putin took over from Yeltsin most people believed that the country was a bit of a joke. It had lost the Cold War and was now turning in on itself. A few people got very rich from the quick ‘democratisation’ but the mineral rich country was no longer held in high regard. Now look at Russia. In no uncertain terms would you say it is a weak country? Putin has ruled with an iron grip and has dismissed, sometimes brutally, anyone who has dared stand in his way on ‘modernising’ Russia. They are once again a global player whose opinion needs to be sought and any dissenters (be they oliagarchs who have got too powerful or protestors who dare to challenge the status quo) are punished severely. Essentially Putin has sent out a message and it is loud and clear. Don’t fuck with Russia!
Now take a look at Britain. Despite recent events we are still a relatively wealthy and successful country. Yet here we are seemingly embroiled in endless scandals after scandals. Whether they be power companies taking their customers for a ride, banks squeezing every penny from your pocket, politicians lining theirs or simply the inability of building a railway from one place to another. We like to think of ourselves as still a global player, when in fact most of the world probably see us as an irrelevance. We no longer have anything useful to sell, apart from those interesting financial schemes that seemed to get us into this mess in the first place.
Companies are perfectly legally avoiding paying their fair share of taxes by exploiting carefully crafted schemes which don’t seem fair to the rest of us who have our tax taken at source, not creatively calculated via this offshore scheme or that. Whichever way you look at it we are essentially being shafted. The 99% are being screwed on behalf of and to the adverse benefit of these companies who have very patriotic sounding names but actually are nothing of the sort.
Whilst I’m not totally happy about it, I perfectly respect the basic premise of capitalism. I have a good which I have put time, effort, resources into producing and you want to buy it. Depending on how much I have and how many want to buy, creates the price – ergo supply and demand. That makes perfect sense and helps to encourage creativity and individualism which in the cornerstone of democracy. But how do these schemes fit into that model? We are forever told by our illustrious leaders that these schemes are needed to secure investment and jobs. But as in the case of recent energy deals these ‘investors’ are often state financed companies. Which kind of begs the question why the British state can’t invest in the same way. Equally how can a government be so against domestic state ownership when they will run with open arms to foreign states? At the end of the day surely any profits made are going to have to come from the British consumer anyway?
If these Eurobond schemes are as prevalent as they seem then they pose several important questions. Firstly who actually owns these companies? If foreign companies aren’t actually buying shares but merely lending money to subsidiaries, then what kind of relationship is that? If they are charging exorbitant rates of interest on these ‘loans’ then why aren’t they forced to use usual banking rates which would be a lot cheaper? Are these schemes really in the best interest of capitalism in the long run? If only the 1 percenters benefit then this is not good for society.
It seems to me that if we truly want to sort this country out then we need to get tough. Not just on the benefit scroungers but on all those layers of society that are seemingly bent on screwing everyone else over for their bottom line. Essentially we need to Putin their ass. If they want to screw us then fine. But they better have a really good security service protecting them.
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