Mossack Fonseca

[Gaspode]

10 hours ago, GboroRam said:

We've proven that public sector organisations can perform equal if not better than the private sector. Usually in the run up to privatisations - prove it can be profitable and flog it off. I choose to believe it doesn't need someone fleecing the country to make an organisation work. That's just propaganda that they want you to believe. 

I've worked in both public and private sector organisations - alongside the vast bureaucracy (built up over many, many years) that gets in the way of efficiency, there is a wasteful culture in the public sector that is almost impossible to break - mainly due to the way funding is handed out ("we've got this much to spend during the current year, so we better use it all up or they'll cut the budget for next year" is typical).

As an example, I was talking recently to someone who works in a large government department - her manager appeared in February (as he does nearly every year) with the 'office supplies' book and told them to pick what they wanted for the office 'to use up the budget' - it marries up with the surge of orders my private-sector organisation sees from public sector bodies in the last months of the financial year. Another example: I once tried to arrange a meeting with someone in local government (not in Derby) - even though the proposed date was over 3 weeks away, he wouldn't be available 'because I'm due to have one of my sick days' - when questioned, he explained that they knew the average number of days lost due to illness, so they made sure that they each got their share - sounds ridiculous, but absolutely true.

Waste is inherent in the system - you may believe that they can perform as well as the private sector, but the existing culture means that making that actually happen is incredibly difficult (and that's before you factor in the outcry from the unions when there is a suggestion of changing working practices)

[jono]

11 hours ago, GboroRam said:

We've proven that public sector organisations can perform equal if not better than the private sector. Usually in the run up to privatisations - prove it can be profitable and flog it off. I choose to believe it doesn't need someone fleecing the country to make an organisation work. That's just propaganda that they want you to believe. 

I wasn't singling out public sector operations. Just saying that large top heavy organisations that have a near guaranteed income stream get complacent, inefficient and at times corrupt. They can be public or private. 

[Stive Pesley]

15 hours ago, jono said:

21 minutes ago, jono said:

I wasn't singling out public sector operations. Just saying that large top heavy organisations that have a near guaranteed income stream get complacent, inefficient and at times corrupt. They can be public or private. 

 

Absolutely. I worked for 10 years in the civil service and the past 20 years in a large private multi-national corporation.

They are both easily just as bad as each other. If I had to choose I'd say the public sector was the nicer place to work, because at the end of the day, everyone looked out for each other and you were treated as a person, rather than a number on a spreadsheet.

I realise that makes no odds to how the business is run, or how efficient/uncorrupt things are - just saying

[jono]

Like most things in life there is a balance. If you could get public organisation to be more responsible with other people's money, and private organisations to be more ethical, especially with its rank and file operators then there is room for both. The problems never get better when we build barriers around competing ideologies and assert that "we" have the only solution and everyone else is either a crook a taker or just bone idle. Making a profit from providing a service is not fleecing the nation.  

 

[LesterRam]

HMRC actually rents its offices from a company registered in a tax haven, I trust you Implicitly with the EU vote Dave, no honestly.

[PistoldPete2]

On 13/04/2016 at 08:36, Gaspode said:

I've worked in both public and private sector organisations - alongside the vast bureaucracy (built up over many, many years) that gets in the way of efficiency, there is a wasteful culture in the public sector that is almost impossible to break - mainly due to the way funding is handed out ("we've got this much to spend during the current year, so we better use it all up or they'll cut the budget for next year" is typical).

As an example, I was talking recently to someone who works in a large government department - her manager appeared in February (as he does nearly every year) with the 'office supplies' book and told them to pick what they wanted for the office 'to use up the budget' - it marries up with the surge of orders my private-sector organisation sees from public sector bodies in the last months of the financial year. Another example: I once tried to arrange a meeting with someone in local government (not in Derby) - even though the proposed date was over 3 weeks away, he wouldn't be available 'because I'm due to have one of my sick days' - when questioned, he explained that they knew the average number of days lost due to illness, so they made sure that they each got their share - sounds ridiculous, but absolutely true.

Waste is inherent in the system - you may believe that they can perform as well as the private sector, but the existing culture means that making that actually happen is incredibly difficult (and that's before you factor in the outcry from the unions when there is a suggestion of changing working practices)

Private sector bosses tend to get measured on how much profit their business unit  makes. Public sector bosses dont. In fact they seem to think they are successful if their department has a big budget and they manage a load of workers. Both these measures mean they are very costly and inefficient ie the opposite of success when measured in the private sector.

 

 

[LesterRam]

just expand on my last post..

HMRC pays rent on its 600 regional offices from a company called Mapeley Steps Limited, which is registered in the tax haven Bermuda, as the result of a private finance initiative (PFI).

[Stive Pesley]

The landlord of the HMRC office in Derby on Agard St is not Mapely Steps, it's a totally different company but it is similarly registered in a tax haven (British Virgin Isles). So the HMRC is a customer of the same tax avoiders it is meant to be clamping down on.

The Derby Telegraph were offered this information, and chose not to run a story on it.

That's if anyone still doubts that the media is in anyway impartial or unbiased

NB it's not exactly uncommon for large office space/real estate in City Centres to be owned by off-shored companies. There is a list of others, but obviously the HMRC is the newsworthy one (or not if you are the DET!)

[GboroRam]

41 minutes ago, StivePesley said:

The landlord of the HMRC office in Derby on Agard St is not Mapely Steps, it's a totally different company but it is similarly registered in a tax haven (British Virgin Isles). So the HMRC is a customer of the same tax avoiders it is meant to be clamping down on.

The Derby Telegraph were offered this information, and chose not to run a story on it.

That's if anyone still doubts that the media is in anyway impartial or unbiased

NB it's not exactly uncommon for large office space/real estate in City Centres to be owned by off-shored companies. There is a list of others, but obviously the HMRC is the newsworthy one (or not if you are the DET!)

Private Eye exposed it. The press wasn't interested. But then again, who thinks Murdoch, Lord Black, the Barclays,  the Russian bloke etc. don't use tax havens? Reporting it might draw some unwanted attention. 

[eddie]

1 hour ago, GboroRam said:

Private Eye exposed it. The press wasn't interested. But then again, who thinks Murdoch, Lord Black, the Barclays,  the Russian bloke etc. don't use tax havens? Reporting it might draw some unwanted attention. 

They probably own the tax havens.

[Wolfie]

How the tax system works.....

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100...
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this...
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7..
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.
So, that's what they decided to do..

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.
"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected.
They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?
The paying customers?
How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

 So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

 And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a pound out of the £20 saving," declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man,"but he got £10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a pound too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

 The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

 And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

 

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics.

[Stive Pesley]

I like that analogy - it makes sense in some situations, but in this case it would be more that the tenth guy has so much money that he doesn't have to drink with blokes 1 to 9. He sits on a desert island lying on a bed made of pure cash drinking champagne out of a golden chalice - paying no tax at all and then rings up the others and tells them that they should be working harder and paying more tax for less public services.

I know some say it's the politics of envy but I prefer to think of it as the politics of not being a complete cnut

 

[jono]

All true Stive .. But the thing is it isn't one man out of 10 on the desert island .. It's one in a  few hundred thousand. Yes there are some scandalously wealthy people who have milked the system, very much like that repugnant Hemsley woman many years back, say "taxes are only for poor people" but they really are few ( and I'd join you in hunting them down ) In the scale of things that genuinely matter .. There are rich and poor and we have a tax system that accounts for that in a decent and rational way. We should be aiming our criticism at the law makers and driving them create good law with fewer loopholes and at the law enforcers to nail the cheats. The vast majority of prosperous people pay a LOT of tax which is then distributed by an elected government to the less fortunate, less gifted and sometimes (politely put ) less motivated. Moaning at those prosperous folk and saying "we want more, or it's not fair" IS the politics of envy. 

It is reasonable to arrange your tax affairs within the law to minimise your liability. As with anything in life, most people DO work within the rules. So instead of blaming the guy who went down in the box because "there was legitimate contact" we should be discussing what "contact" really means and defining it in a proper fair and enforceable way. 

[LesterRam]

My wife who is a teacher earns less money than her brother who is permanently stoned on benefits, if this is a fair system than I would rather disagree.