I have long thought, particularly since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), that we need a revolution in the UK and most other western countries to reset our priorities. The GFC is a clinical sounding rebrand for the world banking system gambling away money and having their debts forgiven by Governments, so that they can continue trading. We bailed them out.
Except it didn’t quite go like that. This wasn’t lovely Jimmy Stewart holding up the $1 note in Its A Wonderful Life – so that his bank could continue to trade solvently. They took the money and carried on regardless – in fact the usury and sophistry escalated. And with a straight face, Governments – held to ransom by the very banks they saved – look to the people to make sacrifices. We’re in this together, after all. Meanwhile, the largest companies in the world and the President Elect thoroughly endorse tax avoidance under the guise of financial acumen, or as Trump puts it “it makes me smart”. They now realise, with barely concealed glee, that you can actually rob people in broad daylight and they don’t mind. You don’t need smoke and mirrors anymore.
I find this injustice so obvious that it makes me despair that people aren’t more angry. But then I remember – we’re British! In a post on another thread far, far away, MC Escher makes the point that instead of abandoning Amazon for their unethical practices, we enjoy their services so much that we chuckle and call them “the tax dodgers” – those adorable little scamps!
So if we’re not going to be violent or go out on the streets – what are we gojng to do? In the style of Linked-in or Quora self improvement articles I am going to list suggestions that won’t frighten the horses (I’m on a very high one after all) but may, over time, help to cause system change. Quiet, non-violent ways to make a difference:
1. If you deal with a known tax-dodging company and they ask for your feedback about their service give them the lowest possible points. Why? Because they don’t pay their fair share of tax. Isolated examples of this are dismissed of course, but what if we all did it?
2. Be really, really stingy with the bank and don’t buy any new financial products from a bank unless you really have to. Do it by email or social media. They want you to be their mate and set up multiple credit cards and amass debt. Don’t interact with them in a matey way at all.
3. The recorded phrase “your call is important to us” means “your call is not important to us”. Oscar Wilde couldn’t have done it better. Avoid these companies, if you can.
4. This one is tricky – Lots of people work for banks and estate agents. If you meet them socially and they mention their job – treat the news as if they’re telling you about a recent bereavement. Don’t make them think they are contributing usefully to society.
Any more very British ways to make a stand
Hugely thoughtful post… Let me ponder
I think No. 4 is really unfair – the people on the front line of face-to-face banking do a necessary job and most of the time do it well and with a degree of grace. Like most workers in their position, they are under heavy pressure from above to meet targets and increase sales; so while their entreaties on customers to consider new ‘products’ may grate, you can always just say no. It’s the fuckers in the higher echelons of investment banking, the hucksters and midnight gamblers, that should attract your ire.
Well, I have tried that approach for many years and I don’t feel it gets us anywhere. The banks need the goodwill of the people working for them and if that, in some way, is eroded by wider society treating them with a touch less respect – then those good people may well choose to give banking a wide berth. Perhaps I went too far with my final words – but why not stop short of congratulating people who have just been made Northen Regional Sales Manager, which gets them to level 2A(B) and a slightly larger bonus. If we show absolutely no interest, they might draw their own conclusions.
I work for one of them BC, in a non-customer-facing role. The thing is, the people you might meet in general are happy to just have a job. The ones who make the decisions that fuck people & countries over are being driven home in large black cars and
a) don’t tend to mix with the plebs (you & me)
b) wouldn’t care about your opinion because in large part they don’t really care about people (and that’s precisely why they are in their lofty position in my opinion)
What will change things is shareholder opinion. Unfortunately most of those are held by other large financial institutions.
So while most of us are living mostly comfortably nothing will change. I have no answer.
Take this in a completely neutral fashion dude – it was written without rancour, promise.
You should add tabloid hacks to your list of people to cut dead socially.
Looks like we’re going to have two competing revolutions – the other one from Brexiters who are starting to get the feeling they’ve been sold down the river. They often talk of revolution.
I think we are developing 2 different types of journalist – those who write to share truth (and are frequently on the breadline) and those who write propaganda for tabloids and other billionaire media (who may also be on the breadline but are not journalists).
Brexiters are already talking of Betrayal, and Treason, and Traitors. I said it would take till Christmas before they were calling for the stringing up of those who “Betrayed Brexit”. Theresa May must check every night that those are really Christmas lights and not a mob with pitchforks and torches. Whatever she decides half of the Leavers will scream “Traitor”. Its already starting.
Apart from in a historical sense (and possibly in the case of footballers who have made the wrong transfer choices), I don’t think I’ve heard the words treason and traitor used seriously once in my entire life. Until last June. I don’t take comfort from this.
Good post BC. I’ve been having similar thoughts, based around the idea that we are fast losing our collective moral compass.
To your point, it’s true as Brits we shy away from confrontation, and I think this extends to other nations too. But the shock of Trump’s winning the presidency is actually mobilising the silent majority, which is at least encouraging for the fightback.
We’ve always believed that you shouldn’t feed the trolls, but then someone like Trump can literally troll his way to the White House. Were we mistaken in not taking him on via Twitter? If everyone who disagreed with his tweets had shouted him down, he may have been discouraged from using that medium. Look at how well Daniele Muscato’s takedown went viral. What if we had all done that.
So yes, we all need to confront these crooks and charlatans and plant a big flag in the moral ground.
There’s quite a significant counter-factual to all this, which has as its main bad guys Bill Clinton, David Bowie and Gordon Brown. But I’m fairly sure you don’t want to hear that!
For what its worth, while retail bankers work for a fairly rancid set of companies, it was the almost entirely separate investment banks which played pass the parcel with Bill Clinton’s NINJA debt. And within the investment banks, it was largely one particular group – tolerated by greedy and ineffective management – that were culpable, dragging down the reputations of many actually quite good and effective people in the process.
@bartleby – I fully expect Clinton and Brown to be involved – you’re not bursting any bubbles. Except for Bowie, who’s ace and beyond reproach.
The honest and noble side of the banking fraternity have had 9 years to express some form of collective remorse and/or take meaningful remedial action.
We all have our different ways.
I’ve been to one Premier League game in 20 years (Rooney played, it was lousy), don’t go to McDonalds/Burger King etc, and never buy anything with the Rolling Stones’ tongue logo on it.
Expensive box sets are, often with regret, ignored; the vast majority of books/CDs I buy are from Charity Shops.
I’m easily persuaded to believe Bowie is culpable (probably 100%) but how?
Good man. Seriously. It really is the only method that works. Enough people do it and the shareholders eventually react.
Re Bowie: I’m guessing it was something to do with those trousers he wore in “Labyrinth” (a film from the wonderful 80’s *winky face*).
Bowie Bonds.
From what I’ve just been reading, the Bowie Bond issue was liquidated without default in 2007, as planned, despite being downgraded by Moodys rating agency in 2004 to only just above Junk status.
He got what he wanted from the deal (the cash to buy out Tony DeFries and get ownership of all his back catalogue) and the investors got their annual return of 7.9% over 10 years. Job done.
Some of the similar bond issues from other artists didn’t fare as well. Not his fault.
No indeed. As an investment, it worked fine for those involved. As a precedent for securitization of supposed future income, it was one of a handful of deals that changed the face of City finance and led to the idea of packaging up future mortgage payments into tradeable bonds.
Surely it was only a matter of time before the CDOs burst forth? The actuaries have been talking about PVFP for decades; trading in it was just the next card in the house, precariously balanced on the edges of the cards below just before someone coughed.
Well, next week on “How To Do It” we’ll be showing you how black and white people can live together in peace and harmony, and Alan will be over in Moscow showing you how to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese. Til then, cheerio.
The last 70 years has been a remarkably peaceful time in Western Europe (apart from the civil war in former Yugoslavia), and you know I rather liked that. Peace is the exception. But you know Johnny, I think I prefer it to the alternative and I think it is worthwhile actually trying to stop it before the bombing starts (bit late if you are in Ukraine). The past 70 years shows it is actually possible, at least for a while. So if you don’t think anything is actually worth the effort of trying to have civilisation rather than savagery, why not recognise that you will suffer the consequences too – as Tom Lehrer said “we shall all go together when we go”.
Er, yeah. Righto.
(Pssst, it was a Monty Python quote)
Super!
You liked a civil war with tens of thousands of deaths?
I think you win a prize for that particular misreading, old boy. I’m pretty sure yer man was saying he liked the 70 years of peace.
Ah, bangs head on desk
Don’t mourn – Organize!
Bowie Bonds were only groundbreaking in the sense that it was a pop artist making a financial product out of expected future earnings. Corporates and Governments do it all the time – it was a well-established concept, which is why ratings agencies could assess it. The secondary market this produces where spread bets are made on future pricing points, is where we start to get the problems. They do this with currency and share prices too.
I worked at one of the biggest banks in the city at the time. I have to say, that was not our take. The Bowie bonds were revolutionary in creating asset-backed debt from non-traditional assets, specifically intellectual property. Our brightest and best were instantly tasked with seeing what other non-traditional assets could be packaged and sub-prime was one of those asset classes.
I think Bowie Bonds were a symptom of a new largely unregulated market where the scope of financial trading became wider. You’re right, CDOs and sub prime mortgage packages were all in there – but I think this would have come to pass, Bowie or no Bowie.
The innovation behind the Bowie bonds – something that hit us like Sgt Pepper must have done in 1967 – combined with Bill Clinton trashing the Glass Steagall Act’s separation of investment and retail banking, further stoked by his pressure on banks to start lending in low-income neighbourhoods… Banks were being forced to lend to bad credit risks. And jumped at any chance to off-load that risk. Welcome sub-prime meltdown!
Thanks – I was trying to recall Glass Steagall but my brain has too much shit in it about 70s TV and Depeche Mode. I accept your point re Bowie Bonds.
The bonds were wonderful. I totally salute the team that came up with them. But that innovation, combined with the political pressure Bill Clinton applied to lend to poor income neighbourhoods, his dismantling of an act that made sense and kept investment banking risk away from retail banking balance sheets (which I accept would have been done after strong advocacy from the banks) – combined in the UK with Gordon Brown’s championing of tick box regulation, a Scottish banking empire and dismantling of Bank of England banking regulation led, in my view, directly to the sub-prime meltdown. Bankers gonna do what they can to make money and spread risks. Regulators and politicians however should think twice before intervening in things they don’t understand.
‘If you deal with a known tax-dodging company…’ I assume you’re referring to BP, GSK, Lloyds, BAT, Shell, SABMiller and/or AstraZeneca? According to the Indy none of them paid any UK corporation tax or refused to reveal how much.
Or is it the piss-facile big three of Amazon/Google/Starbucks you’re referring to? Michael Hesletine, a number of years ago when the Tories were still in power (the last time), encouraged companies to pay their invoices as absolutely late as possible. Good Tory policy, that. And he practiced what he preached. I know, I dealt professionally with a couple of his interests back in the day.
Do you think if we all gave them poor feedback they’d start paying corptax? Right. How about we stop using them? There’s this acceptable level of blinkerism here. Call them ‘tax dodgers’ but continue to trade with them and your cred is intact? Doesn’t work that way. Why not instead lobby the governments that create the laws that none of the above companies are breaking to change those laws? Too much like hard work? Don’t want to pay more for your CDs? One star feedback, I guess that’s the answer.
Thanks @MyAmericanMate – reading between the lines, I get the feeling you might not be fully behind my plan. You describe the futility here… “Why not instead lobby the governments that create the laws that none of the above companies are breaking to change those laws?”.
You can almost hear the words “my hands are tied” from the dry lips of the politician (whose hands probably *are* actually tied to a farmyard animal’s genitals, supplied by AstraZeneca).
You correctly assume that I am referring to Amazon, Google and Starbucks – because they’re the most well known examples. No more than that. I quoted Trump because he is the most flagrant tax dodger. Interestingly, Hestletine hired assistants to read all of his paperwork and just tell him what the documents say, while he lay on his office couch. I bet Trump will do that too. And they both have mad hair.
I’d gladly stop using Amazon for all the usual reasons. The main reason I use them though is convenience, being able to order in the evening and collect from a local shop over the next few days when I choose. The one time I tried an alternative collection locker service, UPS IIRC, they screwed it up. Amazon do this stuff really well and is surely a big part of their success.
Is it a bit obvious to say that trying to stick to what you believe is right takes some effort and might involve some sacrifice, up to and including having to wait a couple of days before you receive your product?
I’m really not trying to take the moral high ground, I just can’t believe that in the case of Amazon it is something so easy to do – wait a day or two – that seem to be resisted by so many people.
Never mind wait a day or two, all I have to do is click the “Buy now with One Click” button, never mind any of this exhausting Register, choose a user name, invent a Password, (another one! write it on a Post-It quick), wait for the confirmation email, accept the terms and conditions, type in the delivery address, wonder what the feck it was I decided to buy online in the first place, so, so long ago before this process started malarkey. Christ, do you think I have time for all of that crap? I’m too busy SHOPPING!
I know it sounds feeble but here’s an example: I needed some 10m ratchet straps recently. I can’t buy them in Halfords, Screwfix didn’t have enough in any local branch and if I order them from a specialist supplier then someone has to be in to receive them or I can order from Amazon and collect them from the local newsagent the next morning without losing a day waiting for a courier. It’s not all about CDs and books, I order work related stuff from Amazon and this genuinely makes my life a lot easier. OOAA.
I’ll be honest, I think talk of boycotts and poor feedback is silly. If you want Amazon to pay more tax and treat their employees better, insist on political parties that will enforce tighter regulation, surely?
Amazon are really great at what they do and don’t break any laws. If you’ve got a problem with their practices, the law is the issue, not the company. This solution is like those bloody stupid studenty 38 Degrees petitions: produces a glow of pleasure at being and looking noble but achieves absolutely nothing. Sorry if that’s an unpopular view. But you’ll never persuade users of a company as competent as Amazon to damage them with something as weak as this: people don’t care about the “dodging” and they’re right not to. Amazon are doing what you and I do every day: operating inside the law and not paying more tax than anyone is making them. If you’ve ever given your cleaner or plumber cash, you’re at least as bad.
I wish there was more civil disobedience. We all know we are being stiffed and, yes, it is too hard to join a political party, agitate for change and lobby MPs. Like most people, I spend all of my waking hours smearing my door with wolf repellant. Perhaps we are kept busy to stop us having enough time to organise ourselves? Or to even think – properly think – about what we are doing and how we are treating each other.
And the argument that paying cash for a plumber to avoid VAT is the same as Amazon keeping the billions they should be paying in tax – well, that is bollocks. If I am caught evading tax, I’m prosecuted and a pound of flesh will verily be enripped from my breast quicker than you can say Robert Robinson. If I was Amazon, I would have organised my legal team to exchange documentation with the plumbers’ legal team in order to deem that our financial transaction for services rendered should be via our two global head offices based in the Cayman Islands. This would make things ” not illegal” – which is not the same as “the right way to be”. Let’s stop protecting these bastards. Wp
edit, I’m not a regular poster I don’t want to be disagreeable but just wanted to point out that the cash economy loses the taxman about £2bn a year. There’s more I could say but I’m not going there!
Fair enough @friar. Thanks for coming forward – much appreciated.