Scumbag of the week

I know this is hardly a controversial nomination, but this week's recipient is Bono. 

Not, this time, for the stupid glasses, the mullet (it may have gone but its spirit lingers on) or the appalling music, not for the sanctimony, nor for the cosying up to some of the vilest people on the planet. 

No, this week's prize is awarded for his statement, in the course of an incoherent and hypocritical interview, that people who criticise his band's tax affairs are terrorists. 

That's right. After claiming that moving his money to the Dutch Antilles to avoid paying any tax in his now bankrupt country actually helps the Irish economy, he made this observation:

 I think some of the people who criticise us in Ireland and America have a history that you can trace back to our opposition to Noraid.

Noraid was the IRA's fundraising-and-arms-buying organisation in the US: if anyone jangled a collecting tin under your nose in a proper Irish bar in Boston, it was probably them.  Personally, I can't see much clear blue water between misty-eyed Irish-Americans supporting physical-force republicanism from the safety of the US and misty-eyed rich jet-setting rock stars condemning it from the cosy seats of the Clarence or the Lear jet. 

I'm pretty certain, however, that almost everyone who thinks you don't end poverty by hiding your money offshore while your country's young emigrate at a rate of 100,000 per year is a terrorist. 

His alternative explanation is even more pathetic:

A lot of the others probably hate our music.

That's right. We all base our moral and political judgements on whether or not we think 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' is searing comment or empty bluster, Bono. I think what I find most objectionable about him is the sanctimonious hypocrisy. There are lots of very unpleasant rock stars out there, and a lot of them avoid paying their taxes. But only Bono has the sheer gall to avoid his taxes and lecture the rest of us about fairness, making poverty history and moral responsibility. I'd far rather listen to Ted Nugent ranting about his gun collection than endure another sermon by Mr Vox. 

Pay As You Go: for corporations

I've been reading over the last couple of years about massive global corporations playing the system to avoid paying any tax. Vodafone, for instance, hasn't paid any corporation tax despite making profits of billions. Apple, by dodging between jurisdictions with differing taxation principles, has built up $188 billion in its subsidiaries' offshore bank accounts, untouched. The list goes on and on and on.

Why should they pay tax? Because tax makes their profits possible. Taxes empty their bins. Taxes educate their workforces in schools and universities. Taxes pave the roads on which their products and executives travel. Taxes fund the research which makes innovation profitable. Taxes keep their private jets from hitting other tax avoiders' private jets. Taxes keep the lights on, the water running and the sewage drained. Taxes heal their sick and investigate shoplifting. Taxes pay for the courts they repeatedly run to when they think their copyrights have been infringed. Taxes pay to prosecute the illegal downloaders and taxes protect their patents. Taxes make up the gap between what these companies pay their poorest workers and what they need to live on (the biggest, sickest subsidy of all).

Apple, Google, Tesco, Amazon, Vodafone, the banks and a whole range of organisations need us – but they don't want to pay their share. They are stealing from us, building huge profits not from innovation or efficiency, but from ducking out of the agreement we all make to be part of a civilised society.

It's time to hit back. Cut off the water. Block their sewers. Stop the police from answering the phone when they call. Wipe Vodafone HQ off the ambulance service database. Block off their access roads. Withdraw their executives' passports. Cut off the power. When CEOs fly in, tell Air Traffic Control to close the airspace until a very large sum of money arrives in the state's bank account.

Seal off Canary Wharf and similar enclaves of capitalism, and see what happens without all the things we pay for and they sponge off. Don't let them withdraw from their social duties while continuing to enjoy the privileges of membership of developed societies. If they want to exist in a no-tax, no obligation polity, invite them to move their HQs to Somalia.

And then we start sending in bills. Work out how much each employee cost to educate and add it to local and property taxes that they can't avoid through transfer pricing and Double Irish manoeuvres. Bill them in A+E. Coin-operated courts, police cars and ambulances – or simply refuse to come out. Let the bins pile up outside Vodafone's offices unless they pay cash. If they decide to move their businesses offshore, we tax the imports until we think they've paid back what they owe. Most of them claim to be doing their business elsewhere anyway, like Google's London sales team which 'books' the actual sales in Ireland.

The principle comes from a passage in Lewis Jones's 1937 novel Cwmardy, in which one sell-out miner refuses to join the union. He loads up his truck, down in the blackness, and it starts to slip down the incline. Desperate, he begs them to help before it rolls down over him. Grimly, they refuse: he's refused to share their load and in return they teach him a lesson in collective struggle. Eventually, they relent when he promises to join the union, suitably chastened.

What they did to one class traitor, we can do to any number of free-loading, thieving corporations. Vodafone has started 'rounding up' pay-as-you-go bills to squeeze even more money out of their customers. Fine: let's do the same to them. Pay As You Go services until they give in and cough up.

(This is, of course, pure fantasy. While the government talks big about corporate tax, the truth is that they're actually making it easier to avoid tax. They're cutting corporate tax rates to 20% and George Osborne has made it easier for companies to hide their money offshore. Of course he has: they're his friends. He'd rather they paid a few millions to his party than many millions to the state).

Ughpal

My least favourite MP and yours, Mr Paul Uppal, excelled himself in the smarm and self-interest stakes this week. Here he is, rooting for massive tax cuts for his corporate friends and grovelling to his Tory overseers:

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. On a confessional point, you were my mentor in the last general election and in no short part do I hold my presence in this Committee and in this august chamber down to your guidance. I am for ever in your debt.
On the specific point that my hon. Friend was making about the simplification of tax, does he welcome, as I do, the fact that reducing corporation tax to 20% will actually make corporation tax much more consistent? We currently have a top rate of tax for large companies, and for small companies there is an intermediate and marginal rate. The fact that we are reducing it to 20% in one swoop is, in essence, making the corporation tax system as a whole much simpler.

That's right: 'simpler'. So it's not a massive gift to companies which in any case avoid paying taxes on an industrial scale, it's just 'simpler'. Of course, you could have a 'simple' corporation tax of 30% or 40% too (like income tax), but that would be to breach the bounds of rightwing discourse. When they say 'simple',  they mean 'lower' for tax and 'none' for environmental, health, safety, equality, discrimination and employment law. 

What else has he been saying?

his debate reminds me of my time on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee, where there seemed to be a general consensus on both sides that whatever the nature of jobs, even part-time micro jobs, they are an essential step in getting people out of poverty and into the habit of work. Moreover, many part-time jobs lead on to full-time jobs, so it is a win-win situation for everybody.

Yes, he slaved for years on that Committee, and all he has to show for it is a belief in 'part-time micro job' and a completely unsupported assertion that 'many part-time jobs lead on to full-time jobs'. Which is almost certainly untrue: both here at the university and in the service sector as a whole, the new poison is 0-hours contracts, which leave you in limbo. You might be called in to work, but you might not. You can't get a second job because it might stop you doing random hours on your first one. Pizza Hut is one such disgusting exploiter. They're the kinds of jobs people are getting these days. As a nation, we should be proud. 

And finally:

I represent an urban west midlands seat, where I hold a weekly surgery. Something that comes up again and again for many of my constituents, who are in this age group, is the generational deficit. If we do not live prudently and within our means as a Government it is the younger generation, the children of those constituents, who will have to pay. Have the Opposition done an impact assessment on the people who will have to pay the bill? 

That's a weekly surgery 'by appointment', lasting 2 hours. When he talks of the generational deficit, he's quietly referring to the constituents he hopes will save him: the rich pensioners on the western edge of the city, people who like to think that they got rich entirely on their own. Paul, like them, got a free education, healthcare, and all the other advantages of the social-democratic state. Now they want to remove it for the younger generations while protecting their own non-means-tested TV licences and bus passes. 

If Paul wants to live 'within our means as a Government', why is he cutting corporate taxes, cutting high-earners' taxes, and voting to spend £80 billion on new nuclear weapons? Why did he connive in the sacking of thousands of tax collectors, while allowing the Big Four accountancy firms to write new legislation?

No, what Paul wants is a Dickensian society in which poverty is associated with personal failure. No safety net, no human rights (he's opposed to them too) and no society. All dressed up in the discourse of prudence. 

Thankfully, Paul won't be an MP much longer. He has a majority of 691, acquired running against Gordon Brown's unpopularity. If that's the best he could do in 2010, I don't think he'll be troubling the public after 2015. 

Talking of revolting Tory hypocrites, guess who I spotted at the train station yesterday? Camera crew, sneer, revolting pink blazer?

Don't know who took the picture: nicked from a local Facebook site. 

Yes, Michael Portillo, making another of his programmes about how great railways were until his government sold them off. Was he in town to apologise for the destruction wrought on the city by his neoliberal economics? Don't hold your breath.

Vodafone: they literally don't get the message.

Receiving an unwanted promotional text from Vodafone today, I thought I'd respond with an equally unwelcome message:

'Not delivered': that'd be right.

Vodafone, in case you missed it, is one of the world's most egregious tax avoiders. Any trick they can think off, they pull. In the end, a private deal with the head of HMRC (of very dubious legality, let alone morality) let them off a £6 billion bill.

We're also used to the idea (other than in the banking sector) that CEOs of global companies are very clever men (they are all men). Perhaps this is erroneous. I watched an interview on Channel 4 News yesterday in which Eric Schmidt said two interesting things.



He said that Google wouldn't be paying any more taxes than required (carefully not mentioning that his entire global corporate structure is set up to move profits to no-tax centres through chicanery) because Google does lots of 'philanthropic work' (tossing a few crumbs rather than being a responsible corporate citizen) and that the UK government had to get the economy going through a much greater financial stimulus (5.33 onwards).

Where does Eric think governments get their money from? He's a very clever man. Surely he knows that money comes from taxes. So basically he's saying that those of us who can't hide our money offshore should bail out those – like him – who can.

There's a word for people like Eric, but this is a family blog. But here's a thought: if Google paid local full corporate taxes in the countries where profits are made, perhaps our libraries wouldn't be closing, our hospitals sold off and our infrastructure failing. Increasing your profit margins by deceiving the taxman isn't innovation or any of the things business textbooks talk about. It's just parasitism.

Osborne's warning from history

Back when he was young and didn't have so many media advisors, George Osborne said what he thought. In particular, he encouraged people to avoid paying tax.

Warning: contains creepy and sinister facial expressions.

Ambush of the week

Dave Hartnett was until a few days ago the head of HRMC, the government's tax collectors. Creatively - thinking outside the box, one might say - he saw it as his job not to collect tax, but to allow major corporations such as Vodafone and Goldman Sachs to avoid paying tax. Illegally, as Private Eye's long-running investigation shows.

Dave's corporate mates wanted to thank him for his long years of service, with a slap-up feed at an Oxford college (they're for hire): bow ties, candles, champers. Cue UK Uncut with a lovely ambush and some delightful replies from the assorted tycoons ('we'll set the dogs on you', 'scum').

Enjoy.

Hail Shining Morn!

Listing my desires for remakes yesterday, I entirely forgot to mention this one: Sunset Boulevard, starring Jordan and Russell Kane (if I'm thinking of the right one - blond, giggles on Mock the Weak a lot). Think of it: blowsy publicity hound desperate for the attention in a post-Leveson world hooks up with pushy naïf. Starts and ends with him face down in the pool while Jordan prepares for the role of her life… as the defendant on Judge Judy or Jeremy Kyle. It writes itself, and I reckon she's got the swimming pool (if not, she can borrow Barrymore's), the creepy ex-husband butler (Alex Reid) and the cash. Adds new meaning to the line 'I am big. It's the movies that got small').



Anyway, what a day. The sun's shining and the Tories are in trouble again. To divert attention from the various scandals befalling them (including their Trade Minister Lord Green being unmasked as the linchpin of the international drugs trade), they sent out David Gauke MP to attack people who pay tradesmen in cash. It's immoral, he said, because it's tax evasion.

Fair enough. But I bet it doesn't avoid as much tax as David Cameron's family business, which existed only to collect tax breaks, Jeremy Hunt's £100,000 tax evasion, Tory adviser Philip Green's £1.3 bn tax-free trick and all their other friends like Vodafone, which was let off an £8bn bill and then didn't pay a single penny of corporation tax last year.

And there's more: it turns out that Gauke's wife is a leading tax-avoidance lawyer. And that naughty David 'flipped' his main and secondary homes during the Parliamentary expenses scandal to… avoid paying stamp duty and tax. Presumably there's some clause that defines that as 'moral'. And - David himself worked for a leading firm of 'tax advisor' lawyers.

Poachers and gamekeepers?

And if that's not all - the CPS decided to charge a pile of scumbag News International (alleged) phone hackers: Coulson, Brooks, Mulcaire and several others for - among other charges - hacking the phone of dead teen Milly Dowler.

Obviously they're innocent until/if/when convicted. So the following Doonesbury cartoon from the Nixon era has no connection with their case at all. (Click to enlarge). The same cartoon certainly has no relevance to events in Ireland yesterday either: the Quinns found guilty of plotting to hide €500m from the state they owe €3bn to, with one in prison and another on the run, and Sean FitzPatrick and a couple of his cronies arrested too for running a massively indebted bank for the benefit of his social circle. Where will the joy end?

Prepare the tumbrils

This is Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. You may have heard of the company.

In this interview, he reveals two interesting things. The first is that despite the business's motto being 'Don't Be Evil', he's simply an old-fashioned vicious capitalist bastard - check the joy with which he espouses 'brutal' structural changes to European economies, particularly slashing wages. 

The second is his smug - and entirely correct - assumption that CEOs should be treated as oracles who should never be questioned. The interviewer raises Google's sponsorship of 100 science teachers under the Teach First scheme, which provides highly-qualified new graduates to schools for low wages. Schmidt describes it as Google doing their bit. 

This is a direct lie. According to a Conservative MP, Google made £700m profit on £2.15bn sales in the UK in the last financial year. It paid no taxes at all. 

Taxes pay for schools, and schoolteachers and healthcare and defence and transport and libraries and social workers and clean air and pensions and all the other things that Google's customers and employees need. 

Teach First personnel earn between £17,500 and £21,000 (for London-based staff). So Google are handing over between £1.75m and £2.1m. If Google paid corporation tax at the full rate of 24% (i.e. 16% less than individuals earning over £42,000), it would pay £168m in tax. 

So rather than Google 'doing its bit', it is in fact saving £166 million which could be spent providing schools with science teachers and other public goods. 

Which means that Mr Schmidt is a lying barefaced thief who thinks that dropping a few coins in the begging bowl is somehow a form of corporate social responsibility. 

Two Cheers for George Osborne

He's got a bum for a nose, got £3m from a family tax-avoiding trust fund for his 21st birthday, has made me and everybody else poorer, thicker and sicker… and yet I feel compelled to shout it from the rooftops:

GEORGE OSBORNE IS RIGHT

He remains the worst chancellor in living memory, a walking talking throwback to the 18th-century, a hypocrite and a liar, but when it comes down to limiting untaxed charitable donations, he's spot on.

Firstly, many of these charities are simply fronts, convenient vehicles for hiding wealth. Remember Northern Rock? Advised by Barclays Capital, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, it used some very dubious shells which technically nominated charities as the ultimate beneficiaries, to avoid tax. The charities were never informed and never received any money.

Other charities are simply hobbies for the plutocratic elite. I like donkeys and opera as much as anybody else - maybe more - but I'd rather an elected government decided where cash needs to be directed than the whim of a fat cat who'd rather fund a polo team or Charity X6839, than a primary school.

X6839 explains here how the UK taxpayer (average salary £26,000) can donate to David Cameron's old school (annual fees: £31,000, music and sport extra), get the government to fork out more and even - if you earn over £42,000 - give you some tax back too! Everyone's a winner!

Net payment to Eton: £100,000
Tax reclaimed by Eton (basic rate plus transitional relief): £28,205
Value to Eton (gross donation): £128,205
Higher rate relief to you: £25,000
Your net cost as a higher rate taxpayer: £75,000

(Example from the Eton website linked to above)

Think of it as 'cashback' for toffs. If you think Lord Fink and his friends are relieving poverty or saving the environment, you're a fool.

However, this is all by-the-bye. The fact is that Osborne's limp little crackdown is simply an attempt to make the rich behave a little more like us.

When you give to charity you're giving from your own income, on which you've already paid tax. If you tick the 'gift-aid' box, the government gives a little bit of that tax to the charity.

The rich don't do it like this. They give to charity, then claim some tax back: they get a cheque from us which goes into their pockets - not to the charity.

Osborne's change is to say that they can only do that with a proportion of their incomes: some of them hide 100% of their cash in offshore charities which don't actually do anything charitable, avoiding all taxation. If they give to a real charity, the donor gets money back from the government. If they give to a shell charity, they rip us off and get paid from the money meant to educate, heal and defend us.

You'll be hearing a lot from various good charities and the posh universities about this. Oxford, Cambridge and so spend an awful lot of time beguiling the rich. Well, I don't care. This university is cramped, understaffed and under-resourced. We don't have a fleet of punts to maintain, and no billionaires are queuing up to endow us with funds. I'm quite happy for Oxbridge donors to shell out for research or the college wine cellars - but they should pay their taxes first, just like the rest of us. If they won't give without a tax break, they're giving for the wrong reasons.

So: Two Cheers For George Osborne.

Your tax dollars at work?

The government's announced that we're all going to get a detailed breakdown of what our taxes are being spent on. Brilliant. Radical openness. Just what government needs to end the days of paternalism and secrecy.

Or is it? I can't help noticing that the government wouldn't release its own 'risk report' into what will happen to the NHS when their reforms go through - despite the House of Commons and House of Lords voting on the bill. Would you jump out of a plane without checking the parachute? It seems fundamentally undemocratic to pass laws while refusing to allow legislators to consider the most important piece of evidence available.

So clearly openness is a weapon to be wielded rather than a general principle. The tax statement stinks, quite frankly, of the kind of thing the Taxpayers' Alliance (a Tory front group, many of whom are actually tax evaders) propose. Firstly, let's not forget that many people in this country aren't taxpayers, at least of the direct taxes covered by this statement. The young, the unemployed, the poor, the old and the sick. By focussing on taxpayers, the government is implying that they are first-class citizens, whereas the non-taxpayers are freeloaders. Secondly, how the statements are constructed will be of prime importance. I have a very strong hunch that social security will be in massive type so that Daily Mail readers will be encouraged to see said poor/young/old/sick/unemployed as disgusting scroungers beggaring us all, whereas the £80bn to be spent on new nuclear missiles (while benefits for disabled children are cut) won't make it onto the sums at all.

It's a strategy using selective openness to move the political debate onto American terms. Over there, 'small government' activists lobby for less education, less environmental and work protection, no minimum wage or healthcare funding, fewer public services, except for more war and more legislation involving women's vaginas and homosexual gentlemen's bottoms. We're being softened up for a campaign against government as a public good - something to which we NHS fans are fairly resistant. It's not that the Tories want less government per se: like their American friends, they like governments which give them tax breaks and buy big guns - they just don't want us to see government as a service to the masses.

I pay a fair amount of tax. After next week's budget, I'll be paying a lot more, to fund Osborne's reduction in the top rate for those on £150,000. I don't resent paying taxes at all. But I do resent paying for nuclear weapons, pollution, more roads etc. when child benefit's being cut, universities privatised and libraries closed. However, that's how democracy works: you bastards voted Lib Dem and Tory, so I have to accept for now that your leaders prefer war to books. When the tax statements come, millions of people will be looking at the bits they don't like and getting angry - sundering society even further.

I know these tax statements sound like a nice idea, but I'm saying right now: they'll be designed to stir up resentment and mean spirits. Don't be fooled.

Tax the Rich, Says David Cameron

No, you're not dreaming, and neither am I. He really did say it, and point out that the tax base shouldn't be the ordinary citizen without the means to avoid paying his or her fair share.

The Pakistani fiscal position was a serious one because "too few people pay tax. Too many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all – and that's not fair".

Unfortunately, he said it in Pakistan, about Pakistan. Back at home, his brutal assault on the Inland Revenue's corporate and High-Earner units, his obsession with beggaring the poor and grovelling to the rich continues. He's even employing the worst tax avoiders: such as Philip Green, who paid his Monaco-dwelling wife £1,500,000,000 tax-free!

As you were.

Sod off, oiks

We're in the deepest recession since the 1930s. School funding has been cut. The national health service is being dismantled. Social services are being outsourced. Libraries are being closed. Environmental protection is being abandoned.

But there's always room for tax cuts: and the rich are having their taxes cut.

That's what you get when you elect a government of multimillionaires. It's not just that they don't give a shit about you (which they don't): they want to smear it in your face.

Will the cut help the economy? No: they'll keep their cash overseas anyway. Angry now.

Eat the rich…

This is Greg Philo: leading lefty professor. Enjoy.

"Haven't the rich suffered enough?"

Astonishingly, that's a quote from Peter Mandelson, supposedly a Labour politician, in negotiations with the Liberal Democrats before they decided to go with the Tories: the Lib Dems toyed with an extra tax for those who owned houses worth more than £2 million.

The simple answer from those of us who don't habitually hob-nob with the super-rich is that they appear not to have suffered at all. Bankers' bonuses are going to be around £7 billion pounds this year. On the other hand, the poor are going to suffer an awful lot.

This is why Mandelson's hated in the Labour Party.

Meanwhile, the National Union of Students has come up with a cunning wheeze. The Lib Dems proposed a recall election if 10% of a constituency signed a petition, so the NUS are planning to recall all the Lib Dems who lied about tuition fees. If the government doesn't bring in the law, they'll look like cowards. If they do, many Lib Dems might lose their seats and the government may fall. Excellent.

Also: support the national day of action on campuses, 24th November.

People = gits

If you don't believe me, try the polling evidence:

59% of voters back cuts even if they lead to worse public services. Although 63% agree that the poor will suffer the most from the budget, only 22% think that people should be asked to pay more in tax.

I earn a good wage, probably the most I'll ever earn. If pain is to be inflicted by these Tory scum, I'd rather take it by paying more tax than cut public services, whether I use them or not.  I do object hugely to being taxed when speculators pay very little in capital gains, and to paying for the banking bailout, but I should pay more than the poor.

The prediction is that today's budget will increase VAT (sales tax, to you Americans) from 17.5% to 20%. This really is loading the misery onto the poor, because it's applied to most items, and so they will pay the same tax as the rich on things they really need. Income tax, on the other hand, is much more progressive: if you've got more, you pay more. 1% extra income tax on someone earning £75,000 won't hurt their lifestyle at all. A 2.5% VAT increase on virtually everything you buy will really hurt those on low incomes.

I'll be protected from the VAT rise to some extent: it's not (currently) levied on books or newspapers!

More Tory Evil

I know you're all bored by politics (despite the fact that some of you clearly need to know more), and I promise to talk about kittens and things soon, but there was a big story last week which absolutely nobody followed up, and I think it's important.

The Conservative Party announced plans to allow local government to vary the benefits given to the jobless in their area: the idea is to force the unemployed to take work by paying less if there are more jobs available.

Fine, you might say: everyone should take whatever work is out there, whether it fits their skills or not. Work is, as Marx knew, good for self-esteem.

However, it's far more likely that councils will use this power for evil, and with no consequences at all. The money for unemployment benefit doesn't come from your council tax, it comes from income tax, via central government - but most people neither know nor care. So parties can run nasty-minded campaigns locally promising 'lower benefits for dole scroungers' and win big - the poor don't vote and the middle-classes fear and loathe the poor (hence the existence of the Daily Mail).

What we'll get is a beggar-thy-neighbour routine which takes us back to the system of Parish Relief, when the Parish had to pay for gruel and workhouse accommodation for the poor: the result was that the workless were ruthlessly forced to move on to the next parish. It's not difficult to imagine Tory (or even Labour/Lib Dem) councils reducing benefits for local people so much that these unfortunate people move on to another, perhaps more caring council, which will then have to pay their housing benefit (which is a locally-controlled fund). This will lead to rich areas attracting rich people who vote with a combination of low taxes and minimal public services (the rich don't use libraries, Meals on Wheels, lollipop men, environmental health operatives etc.), while other areas will become single-class ghettos of deprivation, in which council money will have to be diverted from quality services to housing benefit for people who don't vote, forced out of their own localities to the detriment of community in every way.

What a nasty, cheap piece of electoral trickery. They're still scum.

How to do real populism

The UK government announced that it would tax the pool of bankers' bonuses above £25,000 at a rate of 50%, a sensible move and one I'd like to see extended past this year. But in political terms, they downplayed it - even suggesting that it would raise only £500m, when it appears that around £2bn will result.

Over in the US, where Obama hasn't even got an election to fight (unlike here), the President is instituting another tax on bankers, but he's taking a very different approach, and one which Brown might learn from if he wants to win power. This is how to do real hardball politics.

He:

told Americans that he was determined to recover "every single dime" of the scheme unveiled in the dying days of the Bush administration.

"My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people, who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession," Obama said.

Instead of setting a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal or employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee, I'd suggest you might want to consider simply meeting your responsibility."

"If these companies are in good enough shape to afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to afford paying back every penny to taxpayers". 

Do not pass go. Do not collect £200

The government here placed a temporary 50% tax on financial bonuses above £25,000 to encourage responsible behaviour: the signs are that banks are either going to carry on regardless, or find ways to avoid it, but it's a good start. The investment banks and their friends have bankrupted the country and yet seem totally reluctant to make amends or change their behaviour, despite us saving them at huge cost to ourselves.

Over in the US, the Americans are facing similar problems: the taxpayer saved the banks, yet the economy is unreformed and bonuses are back. However, Obama seems to have decided that a bonus tax is just too easily avoided, and plans to introduce some other form of charge which can't be easily passed on, while rejecting a transactions tax. It'll be interesting to see if he can come up with something that the world's tax lawyers can't get round, but I'd support a transaction charge (a 'Tobin tax') - 0.005% of the value of each transaction would raise massive amounts of money (hundreds of billions) without limiting the bankers' freedom to conduct their business. It would be complicated, but it would be just and lucrative.

No, Peter, of course it isn't.

Peter Mandelson, silky sinister unelected eminence grise of New Labour turned silky sinister unelected eminence grise of Labour, has announced that today's supertax on bankers' bonuses isn't a punishment for their greed, hypocrisy, destruction of the economy, arrogance and failure to acknowledge that we've saved their skins.

He's right in a way: it's also a cheap and easy way to make New Labour look like it's on the side of the people for a change (it was Mandelson who said that he was 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes' in response to a question about the ever-widening gap between rich and poor - despite leaving massive gaps in the tax regulations and selling the Inland Revenue's offices to a company based in a tax haven!).

It's a cynical piece of electoral politics which won't make much of a dent in the national debt. I still support it though. Many of the banks are state-owned and almost all of them are propped up by state guarantees and asset swapped. The bankers need punishing. They mentally decoupled the real economy from the financial services sector. They've bankrupted their institutions and nearly bankrupted the country, evade tax, award themselves massive bonuses and are generally partying like it's 1928.

This 50% tax on bonuses is nothing: supertax on the very highest sums once reached somewhere in the 90%+ range in the late 70s, and Thatcher only gradually reduced it.

The bankers will no doubt redouble their efforts to get the Tories re-elected. Cameron will make tutting noises about bankers until he's elected (because the Daily Mail isn't happy with them either), then resume his position (kneeling before a pinstriped crotch, mouth open). Will some bankers leave the country? Maybe. Where will they go? Somewhere the banking system's in rude health, with no angry citizens protesting over their continued beggary at the hands of financial whizzkids.

Oh dear. There's no such place. Poor bankers.

Astroturf of the week

Astroturfing, in PR, is the practice of creating fake grassroots (get it?) pressure groups to alter the public debate on a given topic. One of the groups I've long suspected is the Taxpayers' Alliance, which is always popping up on serious news, critiquing the government (never the Tories). They've always stunk of low membership, lots of money and a dedication to no tax, rather than efficient government spending.

The Guardian has run a small and useful investigation: one of its directors harasses the UK government despite being resident in France, all its funding is from seriously rich Tory donors, and there basically isn't a membership. Instead, it's a particularly selfish Tory front. When you see them on screen, remember that they're just sock puppets for the worst Tory elements.