Mr Green sick with worry about the pensions crisis in BHS

WHERE'S JACKIE?

Jackie Baillie has gone against Labour's line on nuclear weapons on the basis that jobs in her constituency will be lost should the facilities at Faslane be closed down, or should they move to England or Wales.

Ms Baillie has put the number of jobs at risk variously at 13,000 and 11,000. The actual employers, the MoD put the number at 520. A small difference of no great import if you have a political agenda.

Ms Baillie has defied the party leadership over this and yet is standing for Labour at the election as a constituency member for Dumbarton,and a regional member for the West of Scotland. Of course as a constituency member it's not unreasonable for her to differ from the party line from time to time. Less so, perhaps, as a list member.

Co-incidentally, the number of job losses from the collapse of BHS is estimated to be around  11,000 across Ms Baillie's beloved united kingdom. And we all know that Labour espouses solidarity with the working classes all over England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. (Anyone know why not across the world?)

So will we see Jackie campaigning hard for the retention of British Home Stores across her united kingdom? Or are 11,000 workers (or 520 depending on your source) only worth her effort when they are tending the weapons of mass destruction that make Jackie Baillie's Britain great?

Aside from that, I think there are questions to answer. What do you think?

Philip Green, that great Monegasque tax payer, owned BHS until 1 year ago. 

I can safely say I've never bought anything (except breakfast) from them in my life, despite there being a huge store in Dundee. The reason? They are the kind of store your granddad might buy stuff from.

Given that he was a great entrepreneur with his finger on the pulse of retail in Britain, could he not see that the store was losing its place in the retail world? Why did he run the business into the ground?

He sold it to a group of financiers for £1 last year. They took money out of the business and failed to invest as they had promised.

Are they culpable? Did they never have any intention of making a go of the brand?

There is a massive black hole in the pensions fund. Should the tax payer         pick up this shortfall? Should the financiers? Given that Green owned the company so recently, should he be held partly responsible?

And, given that we have a Tory government, who will end up paying for this mess?

TAKE THAT PRIME MINISTER

Further to the last post.... not not The Last Post, just the last post... and Danny Alexander's comments on Jimmy Carr, no less an exulted figure than the prime minister himself (everybody stand in hushed and awed respect) has weighed in with his 1/2p worth in the debate on moral repugnance.


It seems Camernob also feels a revulsion at the LEFT-WING entertainer's tax regime (a tax regime which, the moment he thought it looked like costing him ticket sales, or tv gigs, he appears to have abandoned with left-wing fervour, agonising over the error of his ways). 


However, when asked by ITN’s Tom Bradby how he felt about Gary Barlow, another entertainer, but this time a RIGHT-WING one, and whether Mr Barlow should now return the OBE he got for his part in organising the Queen's Jubilee concert, Camergit passed up the chance to comment on his fellow Tory, saying he "would not give a running commentary on different people’s tax affairs” as “that would not be right”.  

It shouldn't be any surprise to those of us who know and loathe the schoolboy prime minister's ability to U-turn on a U-turn, and simultaneously feel two different things about the same thing, that he could actually believe that it is wrong for him to comment on people's tax affairs, except in the case of people who make a living out of making a fool of him. So watch out Mr Hislop and Ms Toksvig, and a cast of thousands... 


Amazingly, or not, the idiot that plays the part of the prime minister had nothing to say about Philip Green, one of his advisors, who is doing nothing wrong by transferring the ownership of his company to his Monegasque wife, knowing that she will not be obliged to pay a €cent in tax, based as she is in her home country of Monaco. 


Nor was he prepared to talk about Ashcroft, Goldman-Sacks or Vodafone. Well of course he couldn't. It wouldn't be right for him to give a running commentary, blah, blah, blah.

He also strangely appears to be prepared to give succour to French tax dodgers, no matter how morally repugnant they are. Indeed he said he will roll out the red carpet for them, if they wish to come to England to escape the new and very popular French president's proposed 75% tax on the highest earners. (So is it now 'British jobs for British people, and morally repugnant French tax evaders'...?). 


The wine must have been flowing and he must have had rather too much of it... or maybe he really is just that stupid and naive about the way that so called allies behave.


One of the candidate's for the presiding officer's position in the new parliament, Claude Bartelon, implied that he thought that Mr C had imbibed a little, and pointed out that there were already many French people who lived in England, but that most had to have their children educated in France, and all their medical needs catered for in France, because the quality of all public service was so low in England. 


Oh well... as my granny would say...'whit's gaed tae gie's no ull tae tak', or as they might say in France :Ce qui on est content à donner, on ne doit pas être mécontent à recevoir.

TELL YOU WHAT TOM, WE'LL ASK THE TORIES NICELY TO SORT IT OUT FAIRLY

Tom Harris makes me laugh.

He was on the Today Programme this morning waxing lyrical about how diabolical it was that protesters shut down the “flagship” Topshop store in the London’s Oxford Street because he has a little tax wrinkle which, rather conveniently, involves him not paying any...

Our Tom was puffing and blowing with indignation. It was unjust to target Mr Green who provides jobs for thousands of people and clothes for millions more in his (Tom’s) beloved United Kingdom. If we were to blame anyone for Phil’s tax avoidance it should be the government, and he happily conceded that that mean the Labour government too! (Well he would, I suppose. I’ve wondered why Tom doesn’t cross the floor and join the Tories, and the only answer I can come up with is that they are too left wing for him.) Tom, the government won't begin to listen and you know it. So people either take this action or do what MPs would love them to do, and go back and watch Coronation Street and Brucie and his dancing Widdecombe. Or maybe you think we should picket MPs' houses as we can't protest outside your parliament?

UK Uncut the pressure group organizing the protest that shut Topshop, says that Green, who is a government advisor with the task of helping the government make economies in public services, allegedly avoids tax by having his companies which include Burton, BHS and Dorothy Perkins, registered in Mrs Green’s name. She is Monegasque and pays no tax here (or in Monaco, where the Casinos provide the money to keep the microstate going).

Activists from UK Uncut also picketed other shops from the Green Empire and warned of a list of hundreds of other companies which can expect the same treatment.

Figures vary, but at a conservative estimate tax avoidance and evasion cost the Treasury between £70 and £100 billion a year. If everyone paid their taxes there would be no need for the draconian cuts in public service spending announced by the government. And indeed we might be able to pay our senior citizens a living pension... Huh, fat chance.

The Tories come to power with big plans to wipe out malfeasance at the lower end of the social scale vis a vis benefit cheating and no plans at all for tax cheats. The Liberals have managed to convince them to do a little but at best we shall see up to £7 billion recovered.... A drop in the ocean.

More power to UK Uncut’s elbow. It’s time to stand up for ourselves. I’ll gladly join a protest in Dundee if there are any to be joined.

If anyone has any suggestions as to an appropriate home for Tom Harris’s views, please don’t hesitate to let the rest of us know.

Pics: (1) Tom, who, it seems, doesn’t use Topman himself; (2) Topshop’s no stranger to controversy. This protest in Edinburgh is about the use of “slaves” picking cotton in Uzbekistan for Topshop garments; (3) Saturday’s protest at London’s Oxford Street. Pay your taxes Green, or we’ll shut you down.