As Caroline Lucas
called for yesterday a windfall tax on energy companies is both necessary and fair. The fact is that since the privatisations and laughably named “competitive tendering” revolutions in the 80s and the opening up of London to dodgy foreign money the U.K. is now one of the most corrupt nations in the developed world and both the poor and increasingly the middle class are the most fleeced.
This is not what neoliberalism was meant to deliver although obviously many an opportunistic billionaire Tory donor merely saw it as lowering tax on them purely out of greed. That Thatcher refused to redecorate the no.10 kitchen during her tenure highlights that despite the unintended consequences of a woman who believed in living within our means leaving personal debt at its highest as her legacy she was a very different animal to the current greedy and grasping occupant of no.10.
But over four decades of asset stripping and an imbalanced tax system favouring those who can either divert their wealth to a considerably lower corporate tax (than income) or even worse squirrel away offshore via an ill regulated Companies House has left is where we are. And the British people have taken their eye off the ball as Ian Hislop and two
Private Eye journalists’ evidence to the the House of Commons' Standards Committee underlined a couple of weeks ago.
Like children the British people are distracted by Covid, Brexit, Royal Weddings and who knows what while their country is turned into a Kleptocracy overseen by a corrupt elite of politicians and civil servants who hand out concessions and contracts to companies they often go onto to work for while of course having compromising financial interests in themselves in various forms. With less working MPs than there were in the 1980s it is obvious that we are not governed by the people for the people.
And laughably the corruption political class rewards both themselves and their partners in asset stripping and financial feather bedding with (dis)honours! If you are a knight of the realm you are either a sports star, actor, tv personality or far more commonly a corrupt businessman or politician. The world of entertainment partially aside only the most venal, shallow and self serving sociopath would see having a knighthood before their name as evidence of anything other than being a corrupt and utterly untrustworthy charlatan!
Yet these people fall over themselves to lobby for either themselves or their mates to have these three letters of shame as a prefix. From Anglo-Saxon times a knight (old English
cniht) was associated with bravery and martial prowess. What a pathetic caricature it has become! This is symptomatic of how British culture rewards the greedy and self serving without any apprenticeship sense of irony or self awareness! In many ways Boris Johnson personifies this shallow venality and disregards or either genuine honour, integrity or humility.
We are ruled by men who are proud of screwing both the rules and the people for their own self aggrandisement and we are reaching a breaking point now the imminent cost of living crisis looms over these septic Isles.
www.theguardian.com
