Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[rainbow]

[pErvinalia]

I wish they'd make up their mind!

[rainbow]

Mr Costa said Portuguese voters had shown they wanted his party to continue its pact with two far-left parties - the Left Bloc and the Communists.

He said he would govern with determination and responsibility.

He also mentioned negotiations with the People-Animals-Nature party (PAN) party, Reuters reported.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49955686

[pErvinalia]

Mr Costa said Portuguese voters had shown they wanted his party to continue its pact with two far-leftcentrist parties - the Left Bloc and the Communists.

He said he would govern with determination and responsibility.

He also mentioned negotiations with the People-Animals-Nature party (PAN) party, Reuters reported.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49955686

[rainbow]

Mr Costa said Portuguese voters had shown they wanted his party to continue its pact with two far-leftcentrist parties - the Left Bloc and the Communists.

He said he would govern with determination and responsibility.

He also mentioned negotiations with the People-Animals-Nature party (PAN) party, Reuters reported.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49955686

PAN Party should be popular in OZ.

[Brian Peacock]

Ah, I see pErvin the literalist has overdosed his literal medication again today. Dr Peacock prescribes a half-an-hour of poetry followed a little lie down.

[Brian Peacock]

UK government pays millions to firms that use tax havens

Almost three-quarters of companies who have been given major government contracts have operations based in tax havens, according to a new report.

Value Added, published on Sunday by the thinktank Demos, reveals that 25 of the government’s 34 strategic suppliers – organisations that receive £100m or more in revenue from the government – operate in offshore centres.

According to estimates, they account for about a fifth of total central government procurement spend. Of these, 19 had operations in jurisdictions included on the EU’s “blacklist” or “greylist” of countries that are considered to be non-compliant with EU international standards for “good tax behaviour”, according to the report.

...

Procurement is the UK government’s largest expenditure, valued at £284bn. Of the 25 organisations with links to tax havens, 20 benefited from contracts worth a combined £41bn awarded between 2011 and 2017.

“Government procurement could be an incredible force for good in the UK, beyond the public sector and in the economy more broadly,” said Rose Lasko-Skinner, researcher at Demos and co-author of Value Added.

“Public procurement is pretty much the best opportunity the government has to demonstrate what a good British business looks like, and this purchasing power should not be underestimated,” added Lasko-Skinner.

...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... -suppliers

Liberal economics in action.

[Brian Peacock]

A capitalist speaks...

[Scot Dutchy]

Being the 1% in the UK is not bad. Does anybody wonder why anymore that Brexiteers want to get away from the incorruptible EU tax people?

Superyachts and private jets: spending of corrupt super-rich revealed

Groundbreaking analysis finds £300bn of suspect funds funnelled through the UK

The multimillion pound spending habits of corrupt members of the global super-rich – including 421 luxury homes, three superyachts, seven private jets as well as elite private school fees and even hovercraft – have been revealed in a groundbreaking analysis of more than 400 money laundering and corruption cases.

Research by Transparency International, an anti-corruption campaign group, found more than £300bn of suspect funds have been funnelled through the UK banks, law firms and accountants before being spent on a £1m Cartier diamond ring, masterpiece art works from Sotheby’s, and a £50,000 Tom Ford crocodile-skin jacket with matching crocodile-skin handbag from Harrods.

[Scot Dutchy]

A nice long read about it:

How Britain can help you get away with stealing millions: a five-step guide

Dirty money needs laundering if it’s to be of any use – and the UK is the best place in the world to do it. By Oliver Bullough

Kleptocrats, fraudsters and crooks steal hundreds of billions of pounds, dollars and euros from the rest of us every year, but that gives them a problem: how can they stop the rest of us knowing what they’ve done with the proceeds? They have to stop their haul looking suspicious, to cleanse it of any criminal taint, or face losing their hard-stolen cash.

Money laundering, as this process is known, is notoriously difficult to uncover, investigate and prosecute. Occasionally, however, an insider breaks cover – someone such as Howard Wilkinson, who blew the whistle on perhaps the largest money-laundering scheme in history, the movement of €200bn of suspect funds through the Estonian branch of Denmark’s biggest bank between 2007 and 2015, most of it earned in the dodgier corners of the former Soviet Union, some perhaps belonging to Vladimir Putin himself.

“No one really knows where this money went,” Wilkinson, a former Danske Bank employee, told Denmark’s parliament last year. Once the money had got into the global financial system, “it was clean, it was free.”
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So where is? This is where the UK comes in. When it comes to financial crime, Britain is your best friend.

[pErvinalia]

This must make you happy.

[Scot Dutchy]

It is a great read but I found this last paragraph telling. This man Brewster was a whistle blower but is the only person to be prosecuted for supplying false information to Companies House.

Following his conviction, Brewer’s company National Business Register was removed from the list that Companies House publishes of company formation agents, which had been a key source of new business for him. “There are company formation agents on that list who have permitted huge amounts of fraud, and I’ve been excluded for trying to expose it. I find it incredible that they should turn a blind eye,” he told me. “Is it deliberate? Are they actually trying to get this money into the UK? I don’t want to believe it, but I can’t explain it any other way.”

We don’t know the answer to that, but it does give us lesson number five: don’t worry about it. Commit as much fraud as you like, fill your boots, the only reason anyone would care is if you kick up a fuss. And what sensible fraudster is going to do that?

It makes you

[Brian Peacock]

For context, Mr Brewer blew the whistle and demonstrated to regulators how easy it is to file a false company statement in the UK. Along with showing regulators how trivially easy it was to fake a company he also provided them with a list of suspect companies and company officers. For his trouble he was taken to court and currently remains the only person ever to be convicted of filing false company documents.

[Scot Dutchy]

Strange that? No wonder the Brexiteers are so keen to get out of the EU.

[JimC]

In reality, the little boy who pointed out that the emperor has no clothes would be whisked away to a gulag by his goons...