GORDON Brown in his budget got rid of the lowest rate of tax, 10p in the pound, thereby setting out to further punish the poor.
He also promised a war on benefit ‘fraudsters’ of all kinds, and pledged that the drive to place the sick and the disabled into work would be stepped up.
Likewise he spelt out that the massive destruction of jobs in the civil service would continue, whilst tuition fees for students would be increased in the future.
The Prime Minister, then the chancellor, was stern and unbending after ten years of massively increasing the taxation on the working class and the middle class, making life difficult if not unbearable for a large number of families, who are now taxed to the hilt.
The Prime Minister has a reputation of being a bit of a roundhead killjoy, if not a puritan. The latter did agree that ‘only the rich are godly’, and true enough one of Brown’s favourite private equity capitalists, Buffini, the boss of the Permira group, that asset-stripped the AA before selling it on to Saga, is a regular churchgoer and part of a god- fearing gathering that meets in a church on Clapham Common.
Buffini, under the regime of Gordon Brown, is especially favoured. While the poor, the working class and the middle class are taxed to the hilt, Buffini and the equity capitalists pay a lesser rate of tax than their cleaners, and they pay no corporation taxes at all.
They are literally pocketing billions out of making huge borrowings from banks, then buying out businesses and loading them up with debt, and then sweating and sacking the working class to try to show massive profits on their deals, before they sell out and move on
These are the favoured men and women of the Labour government.
Latest reports suggest that the AA has paid no corporation tax since 2004.
The GMB is one of the trade unions that has said that MPs must stop borrowing for leverage buyouts being eligible for tax relief.
The GMB has also called for the withdrawing of the privilege of limited liability from capitalists profiting from leverage buyouts, and that they should personally be responsible for liabilities like the £2 billion in the 94 insolvent pensions schemes with links to private equity, and also when companies overloaded with debt go bust.
The GMB states that ‘The multi-millionaire elite plan to increase borrowings to £4.8 billion at SAGA/AA while they extract £2 billion of this debt to divide as ‘profits’ amongst themselves.
‘Of course the new organisation will pay no Corporation Tax for the foreseeable future as this debt has to be serviced. The scale of the debt will mean that for each of the 11,000 staff in SAGA/AA there are borrowings in excess of £400,000 per person and interest payments per head of £30,000 per year. This means that interest payments per person will be double the level of wages per person. This is not sustainable and if the company goes belly up under limited liability privileges those who have taken out the £2 billion are not liable for a penny.
‘In the same two year period in which the private equity owners of AA-SAGA – Permira, CVC and Charterhouse – paid no corporation taxes they generated profits for the group of £2.5 billion.
This is almost four times their initial investment.
Brown admires and cherishes these pirates and uses some of them as advisers.
His tax system was designed to leave them untouched and super rich while caning the poor, the working class and the middle class.
Under Blair-Brown, Britain has been a paradise for these profiteers and a hell for the poor. Labour, the Tories, the House of Commons or protests will not change this situation.
Only a socialist revolution that brings in a workers government, and expropriates the capitalists and bankers, can turn this topsy-turvy world the right way up.
