Insurance companies in need of a painkiller

Chris, Fee and KJ discuss the eye-watering cost of false personal injury claims

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Debt debate

Discussing austerity Britain, Chris and his wife inadvertently fan the flame of protest in their daughter

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Neither admit nor deny wrongdoing - when nobody is responsible, anything is acceptable

One of the stellar successes of the internet has been the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG). Improved internet line speeds, enhanced graphics, thick clients, multiprocessors, and games like “World of Warcraft” have contributed to multiverses of fantasy and mayhem that suck millions of people and billions of productive hours out of the real world. The great attraction of these virtual worlds is that you can take on a new incarnation. You can be what you’re not, dare what you don’t, and smoke in public places. In these worlds you are Super Sized in every way – weapons, skills, appendages - and create the sort of mayhem you only see in the movies. Perhaps the greatest attraction of these virtual worlds is that you take no responsibility for what you do. You can be reckless, you can be stupid, you can be really really bad (the sort of thing even your own mum wouldn’t forgive), and there is no comeback. Burn a village or two; kick a goblin when he is down; type really rude words that you saw someone else type. You are immortal – get “killed”, and you are back in action within seconds. And when you’ve had enough for the day, you just brush your teeth (unless you’re really pumped up with adrenalised recklessness), rub on your creams, and snuggle up in bed to dream about tomorrow’s mayhem.

A world where you can get away with what you like, destroy, lie, cheat, steal, and have to take no responsibility. Who would have thought it could be possible!

“Bank of America Corp., the No. 3 U.S. bank, was fined a record $10 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission because it lied to the regulator during a probe into trading by the bank and a former employee…….[Bank of America] neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, and neither the bank nor the SEC named the employee whose records were at issue.”

“Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $102 million to end an investigation in Massachusetts into unfair lending practices….Under the terms of the settlement, Morgan Stanley admitted to no wrongdoing.”

“JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay US$153.6 million (£95 million) to settle civil fraud charges that it misled buyers of complex mortgage investments just as the housing market was collapsing. JP Morgan did not admit any wrongdoing.”

“Goldman Sachs to Pay Record $550 Million to Settle SEC Charges Related to Subprime Mortgage CDO…Goldman agreed to settle the SEC's charges without admitting or denying the allegations.”

Britain has always relied on the US to impose penalties on companies. FSA fines over the last 10 years have been such a piddling amount that placed on a graph next to bonuses paid to bankers you can hardly see them. (Use the zoom on your browser – at least in 2009 and 2010 they are just about visible). As a cost and deterrent to banks these amounts are less than irrelevant.

The USA is much more into headline grabbing fines, running into hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars. Forbes Magazine’s report in 2004 lists billions of dollars in penalties on Wall Street firms over successive years, with most of the culprits allowed to leave the court without any admission of wrongdoing. The same firms subsequently led the world into the dodgy deals and misselling that landed us in the financial crises of today.

Taking money from a Wall Street firm is like taking a cup of water from a river. The river has plenty of water, and flows on regardless. The big names dip into their pockets several times a year to pay fines for their misbehaviour, regarding it as just another overhead like their electricity bill. They see regulatory fines as no more reason to stop thieving than the electricity bill is a reason to switch off the lights.

Nobody would know this better than an accountant, as was stated by a senior KPMG executive in evidence to the US Senate:

“Based upon our analysis of the applicable penalty sections, we conclude that the penalties would be no greater than $14,000 per $100,000 in KPMG fees”… “For example, our average [OPIS] deal would result in KPMG fees of $360,000 with a maximum penalty exposure of only $31,000.”

Commenting on a deal done by the SEC with Barclays involving a US$298 million fine with no admission of wrongdoing, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan said:

“The public has very little confidence in white-collar crime prosecutions. It’s proceedings like these [that raise questions about] fairness and justice. Why are the financial institutions being treated like this? People plead guilty to criminal conduct. This bank isn’t being asked to do that,” …..“If other banks saw that the government was being rough and tough and that bank executives had to stand before a judge and plead guilty, it might be a powerful deterrent,” 
US District Judge Emmet Sullivan, August 2010.

Punishment is only effective if it deprives the offender of something to the point of discomfort. Depriving Wall Street and the City of London financial firms of money is no deterrent. The overly endowed Masters of the Universe have only one thing of the same quantity as everyone else. Time. The only thing that can be taken from them that they would miss is their time – spent in jail.

Humanity has tended to follow its worst tendencies, and use the justification that “everyone else is doing it” to make it acceptable. The way we explain away the monstrous things that were done by our ancestors is that they were par for the course in those days. By the codes and morals of the time, such things were “not wrong”, therefore we should not condemn those people. Until 1865, “Liberty or Death!” Americans singing about the “land of the free” thought it reasonable to kidnap, buy and sell fellow humans. Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1865, but it took another hundred years until 1965 for the “Jim Crow equal but separate” laws to be struck down. Laws by which racism such as segregation in public places could be made a legal requirement in the USA.

History will say that the codes and morals of our times meant it was quite acceptable to rip off ordinary people. After all, acceptable behaviour is acceptable because it is accepted, not because it is right. Allowing the big financial companies to get away without accepting guilt shows a doorway to many other industries. Engineers know they are smarter and more deserving of reward than bankers, and saw that bankers got away scot-free with their rip-offs. Betting that the profits they could make by some well targeted mischief would richly outweigh the penalties  – confident that they would never have to admit wrongdoing and serve jailtime – corporate executives from all industries ripped-off, paid-up, and ripped again.

We see it again and again. Software, pharmaceuticals, aerospace. Suppressed competition; overcharging; cartels; bribery. Retribution is limited to cash fines, paid by the company from profits ripped out of us.

In the words of the US Judge, complaining to a government prosecuting lawyer who was complicit in keeping named individuals out of a case: “You agree there must have been some human being who violated U.S. laws?”

Polonius’ advice to Laertes (Shakespeare’s Hamlet): 

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; 

For loan oft loses both itself and friend, 

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

Justice system’s advice to corporate swindlers:

Neither admit nor deny doing wrong;

For admission may require us to take unpleasant action,

And denial would leave a rather strong pong.

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Glastonbury braced for U2 tax protests

U2 'tax dodge' is not pro bono … neither are the Glastonbury protesters

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Numeracy skills a challenge for universities

Only the numerate among us go to university … or is that the other way round?

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Gove's Law

All politicians pretend they have more knowledge on a subject than they actually do, but one man trumps them all

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Benefits Fraud: would the taxpayer save money by giving every citizen their due, not a penny more, not a penny less? Actually, it would cost £12.7 billion EXTRA!

Moral outrage is about something that doesn’t affect you personally. If someone pulls the leg off your teddy bear, it’s not moral outrage you are feeling – just rage. (No, really, I forgave you years ago. You know who you are!)

Moral outrage is all about the principal. And is magnified more by how close the offender is to you than by the magnitude of the offence.

• Morally Outrageous:            Someone who is about the same as us, same habits, same social group, doing something naughty. Outrageous because they are getting away with something we could get away with, if only we could be a bit more immoral:
• Jumping the queue
• Driving like an idiot
• Benefits fraud

  

• Just Damn Annoying:            Someone very different to us: e.g. a celebrity, top company executive, or banker. Less outrageous, because their naughtiness is something we could only aspire to in our dreams/nightmares:
• Getting let off by the police for extreme bad behaviour, including assault and substance abuse
• Taking multi-million bonuses while wrecking the world economy
• Asset stripping companies, and throwing pensioners onto the streets

When Ed Miliband, the leader of the UK Labour Party, wanted to give his outraged morals an airing in a speech earlier this month, he picked on two sets of bogeymen.

1)      A man he had met who “hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing his job. It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his children. But I was convinced that there were other jobs he could do.”

2)      The executives of “Southern Cross care homes - where millions were plundered over the years leaving the business vulnerable, the elderly people in their care at risk and their families feeling betrayed.”

Miliband went on to say “We must be once again the party of the grafters” rather than, as before, of grifters. And continued “..there is a link between the man on incapacity benefit and those executives at Southern Cross. What is that link? That these are people who are just not taking responsibility - and the rest of us are left picking up the pieces.”

How did a “good man who cared for his children”, claiming £71.10 a week in incapacity benefit while looking pretty fit to Miliband, find himself in the whiffy company of unashamed slash-and-burn executives who pocketed an estimated £500million at the expense of pensioners?

The sad truth is the thought of some individual scamming us taxpayers out of £71.10 per week in incapacity benefit while actually being capable of flipping hamburgers for minimum wage is enough to blow all our other troubles away. We will soon forget about Southern Cross, but the bitterness for benefits cheats will stay with us.

No matter that we can’t afford a proper armed forces or a health service, we need to hand our schools to private companies, have to work until we are older and get less pension. Misfortunes caused by avaricious bankers who were let off the leash, self-serving politicians who got rid of the leash, and incompetent regulators who wouldn’t know how to use that tricky-dicky catch on the leash even if they had a leash and the inclination to use it.

What we need to do, we are told by politicians to the left and to the right, is tighten up on the benefits system. Make sure that everyone gets just what they are entitled to, not a penny more and not a penny less.

But would tightening up save us any money? The figures show that it would actually cost us billions.

In these straitened times, saving money is what it’s all about. After all, did we scrap HMS Ark Royal because we didn’t need it? If so, why did we have it?  By taking out the Ark Royal, bankers did something last achieved by a German U-Boat in 1941. 

All that bad banking is overlooked, but benefits fraud is not. So let's take a closer look at those benefits fraud figures:

In 2009-10

• £3.1 billion was overpaid, of which £1 billion was fraudulently taken in benefits. The rest was due to errors by the DWP and by the customers.
• £1.3 billion was underpaid, all of which was due to DWP and customer errors.
• NET Overpayment = £1.8 billion

On the other hand, the amount that was simply not claimed at all is many times this.

The fact is, if everyone got what they were entitled to, nothing more and nothing less, then Department of Works and Pensions figures show it would all cost us £billions MORE!

The last thing governments want is to be clear about the uncomfortable truths. So, here are the meanings of key bits of official-ese you will need for the next bit:

Caseload take-up compares the number of benefit recipients - averaged over the year - with the number who would be receiving [benefits] if everyone took up their entitlement for the full period of their entitlement.

Expenditure take-up compares the total amount of benefit received - averaged over the year - with the total amount that would be received if everyone took up their entitlement for the full period of their entitlement.

Income Support & Employment and Support Allowance

• Take-up between 78% and 90% by caseload.
• Take-up between 85% and 94% by expenditure.

Pension Credit

• Take-up between 62% and 73% by caseload.
• Take-up between 71% and 81% by expenditure.

Housing Benefit

• Take-up between 77% and 86% by caseload.
• Take-up between 82% and 90% by expenditure.

Council Tax Benefit

• Take-up between 63% and 70% by caseload.
• Take-up between 65% and 73% by expenditure.

Jobseeker’s Allowance (Income-Based)

• Take-up between 47% and 59% by caseload.
• Take-up between 49% and 63% by expenditure.

And here are the totals in folding money:

“Taking all six income-related benefits together, [Income Support, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Jobseeker’s Allowance (Income-Based) and Employment and Support Allowance (Income-Related)] there was between £6,930 million and £12,700 million left unclaimed in 2008-09; this compared to £38,110 million that was claimed and represents take-up by expenditure of between about 75 per cent and 85 per cent.”

Department of Works and Pensions, research published in June 2010.

Fraud in 2009/10 cost £1billion, which was less than 1% of total benefits payments. The reality is that if the government ran a campaign to ensure everyone took only what was coming to them, it would cost up to an extra £12.7 billion. How likely are they to do that at a time like this?

Politicians are overwhelmingly from the comfortable middle classes. Brought up traditionally, they will have all watched all those optimistic Hollywood musicals repeated over the years at Christmas. Few were repeated more often during the childhoods of this current generation of politicians than this song from “The King and I”.

Whenever I feel afraid

I hold my head erect

And whistle a happy tune

So no one will suspect

I'm afraid.

While shivering in my shoes

I strike a careless pose

And whistle a happy tune

And no one ever knows

I'm afraid.

The result of this deception

Is very strange to tell

For when I fool the people

I fear I fool myself as well!

Singing the song of benefits fraud finds plenty joining in from the broadcast, online, and print media. Politicians, always afraid of being found out, are happy to take cover and comfort wherever they can find it. 

Benefits fraud, certainly a problem in itself, has proved successful in diverting Ripped-Off Britons from the much bigger problems in their lives. Politicians hope that by making ordinary Britons suspicious of and annoyed with their neighbours, they will forget they are getting ripped-off far far more by utility companies, banks, insurers, the taxman, and the government itself. Bigger problems that the politicians are too afraid, or too complicit in, to deal with.

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Liebrary: Financial Services corporation tax makes a major contribution to overall UK tax

Financial services companies and their bag-carriers warn of dire consequences if they were regulated and taxed more. They threaten to leave the UK, and move to more accommodating countries, and take all their corporation tax with them.


Reality: Financial services corporation tax only contributes 2% of UK tax revenues.

Corporation tax contributes less than 10% of tax revenues. 

The Financial Sector, the greatest of the rippers-off of us Britons from cradle to grave, is lionised for paying 20% of all corporation tax. But 20% of 10% is a measly 2% of all tax revenues.

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Beating the baggage allowance

Fee considers extreme measures to increase her baggage allowance on budget flights

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Googling an economic recovery

Chris and KJ wonder if the Bank of England's plan to study Google searches will yield results

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A tale of two knights

The gang compare Sir Bruce Forsyth's contribution to society with Sir Mervyn King's

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Inflation: How "the price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it"

Getting ripped-off is not just a question of companies and governments grabbing a chunk of your assets. There is another more insidious way to make you worse off.  A common thief (mugger, burglar) or a respectable company (bank, energy company, supermarket) robs you by taking your money. All very crude stuff. On the other hand, the government can rob you without laying a finger on you or on what you own.

The government is currently pulling off a massive heist on ordinary Britons using inflation:

a)      changing the indexation of payments to certain categories of people including pensioners and those on benefits. Up until now, these payments have risen with the Retail Price Index. This is being changed to link to the Consumer Price Index, which will result is lower increases.

b)      Putting a pay-freeze on public sector workers, who comprise just over 20% of UK workers (6.195 million people in the 4Q 2010, compared to 22.962 million in the private sector).

The cruelty of this inflation heist is that it will leave a permanent scar on its victims. Losing a few percentage points from a pension builds the growing loss into the future value of that pension forever. In contrast to this inflationary scar on ordinary Britons, the £2.5billion super-tax on the banks is more like a haircut. It grows back. And in any case, it:

a)     doesn't affect the bankers, as the tax is on the bank and not on the staff

b)     has to be paid by shareholders (in lower dividends) and customers (in higher charges)

c)     will inevitably be stopped.

As Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, stated:

“The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it.”

Inflation is just one of the ways Ripped-off Britons are being made to bear the cost of the crisis. It is the power and it is the weakness of money that it is nothing more than a token. You can do a lot of things with money. In fact, that is the entire point of money – you can do a lot of things with it. Money, after all, is the lifeblood of liquidity. The economy is ultimately based on people exchanging goods and services produced by their own labour and assets for goods and services produced by other people’s labour and assets. Money is nothing more than the token used to conduct this exchange. Nothing more, and nothing less.

If money didn’t exist, the only way a carpenter could get his teeth fixed would be by finding a dentist who happened to need some carpentering. The carpenter would build the dentist some shelves, and in return, the dentist would fix the carpenter’s teeth. The dentist too would only be able to employ those tradesmen who happened to have a toothache. All our skilled carpenters, bakers, butchers, doctors, dentists, computer programmers, and everyone else would spend virtually all their time finding a counter-party who not only needed their particular skill but could also provide the particular skill they needed in exchange.  And have very little time left to use their actual skills. Imagine, if the dentist’s house was burning down and the fire truck arrived, only those firemen with bad teeth would take the trouble to fight the flames!

Under these circumstances, the only way to have a Rapid Response fire brigade would be to have literally thousands of firemen waiting at the station. When there is a fire at, say, a butcher’s shop, it would require a show of hands of those fancying a pork chop for dinner to raise a crew.

Money is the token that enables people to offer their skills and products to anyone with money. The dentist pays the fireman, through his taxes, with money – so even those fire fighters with good teeth will save his house, chattels, and loved ones. The dentist fixes the teeth of tradesmen he has no need of, providing his dentistry skills in exchange for their money. And he uses that money to pay for, among other things, his taxes which makes sure firemen are available regardless of the state of their molars.

And therein lies the danger of money. Governments don’t need to take your money to make you poorer – they can simply reduce the value of your money. They do this by stoking inflation, by printing new money, for instance by Quantitative Easing.

The government protects from inflation those they want to protect by

• Allowing rises in pay to certain individuals and sectors.
• Making higher payments to certain suppliers.
• Allowing regulated corporations put their prices up, such as the energy companies and the transport companies.

If there is more money printed, and the amount of goods and services stays the same, then the share of stuff each pound can buy will fall. The value of the pound drops. Those without protection, whose incomes are not effectively indexed, are poorer.

Indexation is supposed to provide protection by creating a link to prices. Broadly speaking wage, pension and benefits increases should at least ensure people are not worse off as time goes by. While freezing public sector salaries, the Government intends to change indexation of pensions and benefits from RPI to CPI. So is CPI or RPI a better representation of the cost of living?

The Bank of England publishes a survey of the public’s experience of inflation. The public was asked how they felt the cost of living was changing. The graph shows the average (median) of the public experience, plotted against CPI and RPI between 1999 and 2010. Experience is clearly aligned with RPI and not CPI.

To show the figures in cash, the inflated value of £100 using each measure of inflation over this period or time reveals that RPI is the best representation of reality:

• Public Experience:        £100 cost grew to £139.85
• RPI:                             £100 cost grew to £137.96
• CPI:                             £100 cost grew to £125.93

A Treasury report shows retail price inflation currently within a whisker of 5% and forecast to remain above 3% for the next few years. The Public Sector wage bill, about £182 billion in 2009, by being frozen will contribute billions more than George Osborne’s £2.5 billion tax on the banks.

The change linking indexation of pensions to CPI instead of RPI is clear from the graph below. This shows that, assuming the next 22 years of inflation is like the last 22 years, a pension linked to CPI would be worth 16% less than a pension linked to RPI.

Why is the Government moving indexation of salaries, pensions, and benefits from RPI to CPI? While leaving something like the interest rate charged on student loans by the Government’s Students Loan Company linked to RPI? The Student Loan Company's website states the following:

Interest rates for income based [student] loans

The rate will be the lower of the Retail Price Index (RPI) in March 2010, or 1% above the highest base rate of a nominated group of banks. The maximum rate of interest that may be charged between 1 September 2010 and 31 August 2011 is 4.4%; this was the RPI in March 2010.

Interest rates for fixed term [student] loans

Fixed term loans were taken out before 1998. They do not attract the same rate of interest as income based loans. They are repaid over a fixed term (also known as 'mortgage-style') and the interest is linked solely to the RPI.

The interest rate from 1 September 2010 - 31 August 2011 will be 4.4%.

I think the name of this blog, Ripped-Off Britons, gives you a clue.

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Liebrary: Are bonuses only paid for excellent performance? Find out about boardroom dumbing-down

We are told that the multi-million pound payments to bosses are rewards for excellence. But read the rules for the bonuses set by the remuneration committees, and you will see that many are paid for performance that is no more than better than average for their peer group. If the Olympics were run this way, the medal podium would need twenty five separate platforms.


Reality: Forget "excellence", the Lloyds Banking Group and the RBS remuneration strategy pays bonuses for better than average.

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Liebrary: Massive bonuses incentivise fund managers to perform consistently well

Reality: According to the quarterly survey of funds for "Quarter 1 2011" by Thames River Multi Capital (TRMC) only 1.3% of funds (16 out of 1,188 funds with a three year track record) made it into the top 25% 3 years in succession.


More tragically, only 8.6% of funds did better than average three years in succession.

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Price comparison sites: you pay your money ...

But are you actually covered? Fee and Chris enlighten KJ

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Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift the poor possess

They might be poor, but at least they're able to measure whether they're happy with Cameron's happiness index...

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Care for the elderly

The gang discuss whether we must pay privately for our own care, in the wake of the Southern Cross crisis

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The Ripped-Off Britons Liebrary - lies and how to fight them

“Die Engländer gehen nach dem Prinzip vor, wenn du lügst, dann lüge gründlich, und vor allem bleibe bei dem, was du gelogen hast! Sie bleiben also bei ihren Schwindeleien, selbst auf die Gefahr hin, sich damit lächerlich zu machen.”

Joseph Goebbels, 1941

Goebbels, the World War 2 Nazi propaganda chief, knew something about lying having put in a lot of practice himself. He put it pithily: “The English follow the principal, when you lie then lie grandly, and stick to your lies! Thus they stick by their swindles even when it makes them ridiculous.” The “Big Lie”. Say it often enough, with sufficient conviction and obstinacy, and the big lie will become accepted as the truth. 

Why are some lies so powerful? The reason is simple:

• People who make a living from a lie choose it carefully, practice it diligently, and work very hard at repeating it. They repeat it with a smooth unembarrassed confidence that comes from the desperate knowledge that they depend on it for their living. They hide their few lies among many truths. They despise liars, and shun them – not wanting to be judged by the company they keep. For them, it is vital that their own special lie is believed, but are otherwise honest. They are focussed on it.

• Most people who show a lie to be what it is make their point and move on. They have no long term interest in dwelling on the lie. Their triumph comes from scoring a point, rather than from suppressing the lie. For them, the lie is just something to be shot at before moving on to a fresh target.

Which is why the great lies thrive. Great lies that are used to justify greater rip-offs of us Britons.


Every now and then, there is a cheer around Britain as one of the professional fibbers is caught out red handed and sometimes red faced. To paraphrase Cole Porter's song about love: Politicians do it, bankers do it, lawyers and accountants are paid handsomely to do it on others’ behalves, even educated professors do it.

Our heroes on the Radio4 Today programme, Channel4 News, and some other worthy media outlets, chalk up a victory when they catch out and humiliate this minister, or that director, and then they move on to the sport and the weather. For the heroes, it’s a case of “so many lies to swat, so little time”. The ultimate prize for the very best of them being a gig as host on a top television quiz show. No knighthoods for the likes of the excellent John Humphrys (Mastermind) and Jeremy Paxman (University Challenge). And who even remembers that Anne Robinson (The Weakest Link) was once a fearless television and newspaper journalist.

For the villains, each has their own exceedingly small collection of fibs, which they tend and protect and put on display like the finest amateur gardeners with their prize pumpkins at a village fair.

The same ministers, directors, professors, make the same deceitful claims that they have already been caught out on. Content in the knowledge that the next interviewer probably won’t catch them out again, that most of the audience won't remember the last time they were caught out, and careless whether any of them do catch them fibbing so long as most of them don't. 

Some examples of the Great Lies:

Massive pay packages reward CEOs for success

Reality: In the last ten years, the performance of companies has stagnated, while the pay of CEOs has rocketed. Graph from the High Pay Commission report:

Financial Services corporation tax makes a major contribution to overall UK tax.

Reality: Financial services corporation tax contributes only 2% of UK tax revenues.

Massive pay packages are needed to hold onto the best CEOs

Reality: CEO’s are hardly ever poached. According to the High Pay Commission, "..in the last five years only one FTSE100 company has had its CEO poached by a rival, and that rival was also British.... The chance of having your CEO poached by a competitor in any one year would be 0.2%.""

Massive pay packages compensate CEOs for the high price for failure

Reality: CEO’s get fired no more often than other staff. "In a survey conducted by the High Pay Commission of CEOs in the current FTSE 100 between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2009....only one CEO experienced involuntary redundancy in the period….This is equivalent to a rate of involuntary turnover of 1%; the national average for the same period was 0.9%."

Massive bonuses incentivise fund managers to perform consistently well

Reality: Only 1.3% of funds (16 out of 1,188 funds with a three year track record) made it into the top 25% 3 years in succession.

Bonuses are only paid for excellent performance

Reality: Forget "excellence", the Lloyds Banking Group and the RBS remuneration strategy pays bonuses for better than average performance. Bonuses are paid for being in the top 50% of their peer group. Handing out prizes as though it were a politically correct school sports day aiming to ensure few of the kiddies go home empty handed.

If bank regulation were anything other than 'light touch' then companies would move to other jurisdictions. Their departure would have a catastrophic impact on taxes:

Reality: Barclays admitted that of the £2billion taxes they proudly took credit for, only £113m was corporation tax. Most of the rest was payroll taxes paid by their staff - the vast majority of whom would remain in the UK even if Barclays shifted its HQ overseas. The Independent Banking Commission's interim report, in April 2011, stated that only £3billion of financial services tax contribution can easily be moved out of the UK.  That is less than 1% of UK tax takings.

For the Great Lies to be suppressed, the truths need to be told with matching frequency, persistence and confidence.

Trade associations and political parties write scripts. The scripts are memorised and spouted by their members at the various interviews: in parliament, in the press, in their annual reports. No matter how ridiculous, their positions are repeated until they become the accepted ‘truth’.

To help redress this balance, Ripped-Off Britons will build a collection of the “Great Lies” in our Liebrary.

For this to work more effectively we invite you, our readers, to contribute examples and evidence. We aim for this to be a resource that will be continuously available next time you are preparing to meet or write about or shout at one of those damn liars. Please do this by adding your comments to the posts in our Liebrary.


If you have suggestions for new "Lies", please add them to our "Liebrary Suggestions", with your reasons why you think it should be added to the Liebrary.

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Liebrary Suggestions For New Topics

Add a comment to this post, if you have a suggestion for a new topic in the Liebrary.


Alternatively, email us your ideas:  liebrarySuggestion@rippedoffbritons.com


Please include your reasons, and any links to supporting evidence.

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