one rule for one
Regular readers will already know this Government’s current doyen Sir Peter Green and I are not the best of friends. Not content with extracting obscene tax-efficient (aka tax-avoidance) dividends ‘to his family’ he’s now been caught with his hands in the company pension pot.
Upwards of 24,000 workers at Bhs have received a warning letter notifying that that, because of a £148m shortfall in the pension fund, they may not receive their full pensions. Now, I accept that’s nothing new in today’s day and age but if Sir Philip had made one or two more disciplined and less self-centred decisions then this would not be the case. In 2003, he took the (then) unusual step of extracting £214m in a giant debt-swapping dividend payment, enhancing the amount to a total of £423m paid over the last ten years. By contrast only £47m has been thrown into the pension fund. Do the math.
Quick to defend his honour, no doubt with Jonathan Aitken’s trusty sword of justice (I wonder if his daughter has forgiven him yet? But I digress), the off-shore billionaire (apologies, only his family live off-shore) and sometime coalition adviser, points out that the fund was in surplus when he took the FIRST dividend and that he has certainly not done anything illegal. Down boy, of course you haven’t. Illegal? No, you’re way too smart to cross that line. So maybe we just stay with immoral, undignified, disloyal, perverse, grabbing, greedy, peevish and selfish. For a start. Enjoy your gains whilst your own employees – mostly modestly paid shop assistants, as I was for three years in Preston’s branch – worry about not getting their promised and paid-for pensions. Robert Maxwell will never be dead with Sir Philip Green on this planet.
And whilst we’re on the subject…don’t forget that we’re all in this together, Mr Cameron. Oh, that is unless you want to get out of a £6hn tax bill. Read that again, £6bn. Consider the sorry tale of Vodafone, whose attempts to channel vast profits through wholly-owned Luxembourg-based firm were uncovered and shown to be shown in breach of the already lax ‘tax-avoidance’ rules. Even before ‘our George’ put on this spending review thinking-cap one of his first acts as Chancellor was to cancel the tax bill and decreed it could continue with its ruse. All in the best possible interests of Britain’s global trade with Asia and the East you understand.
Hats off to the protesters then who peacefully closed Vodafone’s flagship London store the other week and I urge two things – if you’re on Vodafone, change and if you’re on Vodafone’s board, appoint Sir Philip Green a non-executive. Birds of a feather should stick together.
NB I realise I’m in danger of going on and on and on about Cameron’s words and actions not necessarily adding up to the same thing but how can he possibly believe this to be the case whilst appointing not one (as was reported) but two ‘vanity staff’ (photographer Parsons and filmaker Woodhouse) to his (…er our) payroll? Exactly what planet must he be living on? Not surprisingly, on the return his jolly in the East, close allies briefed him on the controversy over the two ex-Tory staff being paid by taxpayers and he has decided to reverse the status and they will now continue to be paid for by central office. I grudgingly applaud his U-turn but what a scmuck for making such a crass decision in the first place.
