tonestapler

Despite indicating a climb down on this issue and over 500,000 people signing a petition against the forestry sell off, sales of 15% of England's public forests will go ahead within the next four years, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said today. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/forests-sale-within-four-years-2257602.html

UK is going Dutch? http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/UKBANKRUN

The article was in The Business Telegraph, read by a wide range of business people, and aims to present an example of how paying decent basic pay produces better results than introducing a bonus culture. Teachers just happened to be the group of workers studied. Senior bankers are already more than handsomely remunerated. Although, calling them good business people might be stretching it given their recent record at running their industry efficiently.

An online campaign has overturned ING's executive pay policy, and the mood in Amsterdam is getting increasingly militant about bonuses at bailed-out banks. Your thoughts on why this is happening there rather than here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/27/dutch-bankers-bonuses-axed-by-people-power Some interesting reading on whether bonuses actually work or are needed here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/8407627/Think-tank-Overpaying-staff-can-reap-rewards-for-businesses.html

UKUncut's primary aim is to raise awareness over issues around tax avoidance and the banking industry. Most people I spoke to today were not aware of the situation with Boots. Although people have every right to feel angry about the situation we are not merely venting our anger. In order to muster a groundswell in public opinion, people have to know what the issues are; we could march on the corridors of power all we want and nothing would get done unless a critical mass of us were working together. In 2008 Boot's trading business was transferred to a Swiss GmbH, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of a British company, AB Acquisitions Holdings Limited, which is owned by New York City based private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and the Italian businessman Stefano Pessina, who built Alliance UniChem and is now the executive chairman of Alliance Boots. Therefore, the connection with Switzerland is extremely tenuous. Although Alliance Boots said that its new headquarters will better reflect the international nature of its wider group, this begs the question why they located in Zug, Switzerland rather than another European country such as the UK, France, etc, where they have a bigger presence. At the time of the move in 2008, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Matthew Oakeshott, feared that the full impact of such private equity deals has yet to be felt. "Private equity-owned businesses are a timebomb ticking under Britain's economy and banking system," he said. "In good times, deals like these pick the pockets of British taxpayers because taxable profits are washed out by loan interest. In bad times like today, they put jobs in jeopardy because they have stripped away the safety net of assets and reserves built up over many years." As for acting in the interests of shareholders, Boots has always been viewed as a 'Blue Chip' company returning stable profits and the robustness of a company's profits are usually judged on their value before tax. Following the argument to the logical conclusion, a company could make the biggest profit in human history and still pay zero, or next to zero, tax by registering in a tax haven. Is this legal? Yes. Is it moral? Most people would probably say not. Boots make their profit through the hard work of employees paying their due tax and from money obtained from customers who are also paying their due taxes. Why should Boots be exempt from paying their dues when other equally reputable companies still manage to pull in a healthy profit and remain registered in the UK? Although tax avoidance is legal remember this; child labour used to be legal in this country. And slavery. And denying ordinary working men and women the vote. And barring women from certain professions. And discriminating on grounds of sexuality and race… I could go on. If it wasn’t for people sticking their neck out and fighting against these things, we would be living in a far less civilised society.

If you'd walked past Boots on Fargate between 11 and 12 today you would have seen a small crowd of people handing out leaflets and flyers to passers by. I managed to sneak past security 3 times to place flyers and posters on display shelves around the two main city centre stores, Fargate and The Moor. A good day of awareness raising. A couple of coppers at the top of Fargate were interested enough to spend a few minutes talking about Boots and their tax dodging then took a couple of flyers too. Well done to all who turned up.

Thanks to all those who have pledged their support for tomorrow. Remember, this is a peaceful event aimed at raising awareness amongst the shopping public of the scale of tax avoidance in this country, a fact that isn't yet widely enough appreciated.

The Save the NHS petition is growing fast. Over 110,000 of us have signed in less than a week. That makes it the fastest growing 38 Degrees petition ever!

Demo with an NHS theme - wounds, the sick, nurses and doctors, bandages, etc. Treatment available at Boots on the bottom of Fargate, 11am Saturday March 19th. Songs etc welcome as ever, bring along your have-a-pop hits. Why? ... The headquarters of Boots the Chemist is a P.O. box in Switzerland. No staff, no building, just a small post box. They do this to dodge £86 million in tax. Last year they made £600 million in profit. The money they owe could pay for 1300 NHS doctors. At the same time as making massive cuts to public services, this government is letting rich individuals and corporations avoid billions of pounds of tax. According to a HMRC estimate around £42 billion was avoided in 2008-2009. Many big companies use tax havens to avoid hundreds of millions in tax, including AstraZenaca, Barclays, Boots, Diego, Lloyds TSB, Shell, and Tesco. In the case of Boots, the private Equity firm that took it over also got a Government tax break on loans, encouraging the buy up of British businesses. Since the takeover the company has increased profits, broken with ethical employment standards and attacked the working conditions of Boots employees. MPs need to tighten up tax laws and get more of the £12 billion a year avoided by big business. The government is talking about cuts. We think it’s time to talk tough to greedy bosses. http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/452 http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=201065863255190

Many apologies. I hadn't seen that this thread had previously been created. Also, what I meant to say is that over 100,000 38 Degrees members emailed or called their MPs urging them to stop the forest sell off. As pointed out by steveh the actual petition gained well over 500,000 signatures. Let's show the government that we hold our future health as a nation in at least as much esteem as our forests.

This petition has now been signed by over 100,000 people, more than signed the petition to halt the coalition's planned forestry sell-off. http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/Protect_our_NHS_Petition#petition

Hi Staunton. Have you considered organising this via the UKUncut site? You may get a better response than just trying to do the rounds here on SF. http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/list

UKUncut have made wide use of Facebook and Twitter to organise their protests with good results so far, attracting protestors from all walks of life to highlight the situation with bank bonuses and tax avoidance. Some people use placards but the recent bank bail-ins have shown people using highly innovative forms of awareness raising. The ITV programme, 'Tonight: The Great Tax Gap' shown last night, 3 March 2011, is worth a look: There are always those who will sneer at those who use their right to peaceful protest and to contradict the views of those in power. Many people in the North African states demanding regime change have sneered at and poured scorned on protestors there (Colonel Gadaffi being the most prominent and drastic example, going to the extent of murdering thousands of citizens. That is the nature of some people.)

Thanks! Well done to all those people that turned up to the action yesterday. We didn't get drenched as the sun shone on us for a change. Great to see a good mix of people there, and barely a tree hugger or Levellers fan in sight, just decent people who have sense of fairness. We managed to slip past security (despite the guard given us the evils ) and turned the branch into a respite care centre for weary shoppers, to highlight one of the effects of the budget cuts to Sheffield City Council, where respite care budgets are being slashed and much needed centres closed. We spent quite a lot of time handing out leaflets to customers to raise awareness of our campaign and talking to staff about our reasons for taking action.

Hester didn't screw up RBS. That was down to Fred Goodwin. However, RBS are still in the red to the tune of £1.13bn. They have not paid back the money that you and I gave them for the bailout. Therefore, as RBS isn't in profit the money for the bonus pot must be coming from somewhere. So as stakeholders, we should surely have some say in how money is shared out at RBS. But we don't because that is still down to the board and shareholders. The UK banking sector would not exist in any workable or competitive form at all if hadn't been for our bailout money. They owe the UK public a huge debt of gratitude; we're not seeing much gratitude when the banks continue to pay out excessive bonuses on top of seven figure salaries for their chiefs (over at Barclays even the shareholders are angry as the size of their bonus pot exceeds the dividend payout this year). Meanwhile, the public who have helped them out suffer drastic drops in public service provision and the threat of redundancy and economic hardship to pay for a situation that wasn't their fault and whose culprits they have helped out with public money that most people could well afford not to lose in that way. Tony Erikson suggests that UKUncut are acting like 'mardy' children. Well, maybe they are; I think they're probably justified in being just a little angry, when we see a botched Strategic Defence Review putting servicemen's lives at risk, Home Office reductions in police numbers when relations between police and many communities are at a very low point, huge cuts to front line council service delivery such as respite care causing a knock effect in the shape of hospital bed blocking plus a plethora of other examples. A huge amount of pain could be spared if the government put in place banking regulation with teeth instead of the almost universally panned Project Merlin. And these are only the start of the government's planned cuts. But I feel the banks have also acted like spoilt brats who want the rules of the party games constantly changed so that they can win all the prizes all the time. After all, they've had things their own way for such a long time. This issue is always going to divide opinion. The arguments have been repeated ad nauseum. I think it's clear that many if not most people are angry with the bankers and find their actions reprehensible and are loathe to support them. There are those who disagree with that view. What remains is that UKUncut have a right to peaceful protest, which they will use. If those with an opposing argument wish to put as much voluntary time and effort into mobilising similar action then that would also be good.