Private firms are running frontline NHS services by stealth

But how come KJ is a lot more disappointed than Fee and Chris?

SOURCE MIRROR: Private firms are running frontline NHS services by stealth
David Cameron’s election campaign promised the NHS was safe in his hands, and that frontline services would not be touched. But Virgin Care’s interests include sexual health services, children’s services, radiology departments, diagnostic and urgent care centres and even entire GP practices. More than 100 NHS services are now run by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Health reforms have already handed £7bn in contracts to private firms such as Virgin, Care UK, Serco and Circle, with a further £20bn predicted. Virgin is notorious for getting its brand name in front of everything it does, including planes, trains, TV, mobile phones and internet. But there is little or no sign of the Virgin brand, just the usual NHS logos. The accusation is that the private companies prefer to conceal their involvement. 

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 30th May)

Private firms are running frontline NHS services by stealth

David Cameron’s election campaign promised the NHS was safe in his hands, and that frontline services would not be touched. But Virgin Care’s interests include sexual health services, children’s services, radiology departments, diagnostic and urgent care centres and even entire GP practices. More than 100 NHS services are now run by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Health reforms have already handed £7bn in contracts to private firms such as Virgin, Care UK, Serco and Circle, with a further £20bn predicted. Virgin is notorious for getting its brand name in front of everything it does, including planes, trains, TV, mobile phones and internet. But there is little or no sign of the Virgin brand, just the usual NHS logos. The accusation is that the private companies prefer to conceal their involvement. MIRROR

(Ever wondered why you haven’t seen Branson prancing round in a nurse’s uniform? Now you know.)

Energy suppliers held back gas during UK shortage, doubling prices

Terminals near London and in Wales were 40% and 52% full on the day it was claimed the UK had six hours' worth of gas left. Some of Britain's biggest energy suppliers were holding back gas in storage tanks at a time when the market ran into an acute shortage two months ago, triggering a doubling of wholesale prices.  GUARDIAN

(The energy firms responded: “There’s loads of gas where? Oh, you mean *those* gas terminals. The massive ones with the billions of cubic metres of gas in them... sorry. Mmmm... better hike your prices again...”)

Former HMRC boss Hartnett gets tax-advice job at Deloitte

The job opens Deloitte to accusations that it is rewarding Dave Hartnett for being soft on tax dodging corporates. Deloitte is one of the world’s largest accountancy firms with services including tax advice. The firm said he would not work with UK companies or HMRC but will advise foreign governments primarily in the developing world. Hartnett will work one day a week. Earlier this year he also took a part-time role as an adviser to banking giant HSBC. Deloitte and the other "big four" accountancy firms – KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young – have all been criticised for using knowledge gained from staff seconded to the Treasury to help wealthy clients avoid paying UK taxes.  TELEGRAPH

(We all know official regulators have a revolving door between them and the fat cat corporates. Looks like HMRC and the Treasury have a waxed chute…)

'Out of control' payday lenders are giving loans to the mentally ill and children

Citizens Advice also found that people were being chased for loans they had never taken out and customers were being 'hounded' at their home to shame them into paying up. Its research also said that in almost nine out of 10 cases, borrowers were not asked to hand over documents to show they could afford the loan. The findings come at a time when Britain's biggest payday lenders are under threat of being put out of action if they fail to prove to the Office of Fair Trading that their practices are up to scratch. Citizens Advice has been calling for high street banks to offer people 'micro-loans' as an alternative to payday lenders. DAILY MAIL

(“These people are constantly being hassled by everyone about their ability to pay. So when they meet us they’re always extremely grateful that we take them on their word,“ said a man with a baseball bat and a Rottweiler...)

Campaigners damn G4S contract to run sexual assault referral centres

Rape Crisis said: "...commissioning generic private contractors such as G4S to run Sarcs will lead to a focus on cost-efficiency above the needs of sexual violence victims and, in particular, that crucial long-term support services will be sacrificed in the name of cost-cutting." G4S made headlines when they bungled the Olympics security contract. The company has been awarded a three-year contract to take over two sexual assault referral centres (Sarcs) in Birmingham and Walsall. G4S recently advertised for "female crisis workers" to work at Sarcs at £12.50 an hour and to be on call on a 24/7 rota. GUARDIAN

Mastercard and Visa charge UK retailers (and therefore consumers) over twice what they charge in Europe
Payment processors and card issuers charge wildly different fees in different countries. In the US, the average cost to a shop when they accept a credit card is 2%. The average fee in the UK is much lower at 0.79%. But European shops pay only 0.3%. After a bitterly-fought legal tussle over unfair fees, US retailers last year secured a giant $7.25bn payout from the payment processors and card issuers. A lengthy EU probe into "anti-competitive" behaviour should conclude this summer, while Australia has imposed fee caps and stiff regulations. GUARDIAN

Huge disparities in fees paid by the UK’s local authorities to pension fund managers

Staffordshire’s average investment management charges over the past nine years have been almost three times as high as Devon’s, despite having similar pension investment portfolios. Across the UK, the quarter of funds with the most costly investment management paid more than four times as much as the quarter of funds with the cheapest. For an average sized fund, this represents a difference of £5.5m per year. Suspicions increased when, even after freedom of information requests, many funds only supplied details of how much they had spent in brokerage commissions with the names of fund managers and brokers redacted. FINANCIAL TIMES

Tax dodge transparency deal signed by nine more countries

Luxembourg, Singapore and Austria, a traditionally secretive banking jurisdiction, were among the latest countries adding their names to a list of more than 50 countries who have agreed to automatically exchange tax information. This will help nations clamp down on tax debtors and allow countries to conduct wide-ranging joint multiparty tax investigations. However, Singapore's deputy prime minister said UK overseas territories needed to come on board to ensure the convention functioned properly. The Austrian finance minister branded the UK and its overseas territories like the Cayman Islands as "the island of the blessed for tax evasion and money laundering." GUARDIAN

PPI complaints to ombudsman soar as banks fail to deal with claims

The Financial Ombudsman Service received a record 2m inquiries and complaints last year, including almost 380,000 about payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling. Banks have put aside £14bn+ to compensate victims of the PPI scandal. The FOS said there were signs that banks were fighting more PPI claims than previously: the proportion settled in favour of consumers has fallen to 70%, from 84% last year. The increasing number of households in financial difficulty has also played a part in the big jump in all kinds of cases, and that financial services customers are becoming more aware of their rights. GUARDIAN

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Big crooks getting pilloried by courts and parliamentary committees may be good. But don't let that be a distraction from actual change.

Size is relative. To a little kid a big kid is big. To the big kid the bigger kid is big. And to the bigger kid the biggest kid is big.

In school most of the bullying is actually not done by the biggest kid. There is only one 'biggest' while there are plenty of 'bigger' so the cumulative capacity for being mean is bigger among the many bigger than the solitary biggest. Punishing the biggest kid does not address bullying. But it does give the impression 'something is being done' even though nothing much is achieved.

Which is something rippers-off in politics and industry have noticed. By giving all us ripped-off Britons the spectacle of a really big fish getting a pasting in a courtroom or a parliamentary committee room or on the front page of a newspaper we are deceived that 'something is being done' and are thus lulled into doing nothing.

High pay is not actually to reward a top banker for being a really good banker, an energy company director for being really energetic, nor a top civil servant for being exceedingly civil. High pay is to compensate them for being called liars and buffoons. It buys them entry into the society of other liars and buffoons, where they can provide mutual consolation in their clubs chuckling into their canapes and claret.


Britain is going through a period of pillorying famous men and women. Lord Stephenson, former chairman of HBOS, was called dishonest or delusional by Lord Lawson in a parliamentary committee hearing. Matt Brittin, former MD of Google in the UK, was accused of doing evil by Margaret Hodge chairing another parliamentary committee. By taking their public pastings, these and many other famous men ensure nothing will be done.

Our leaders are proud people of substance, and would not sell their honour cheaply. So they sell it expensively. And thereby provide cover for all the other less famous rippers-off. Not just to draw our attention away from all the smaller misdeeds, but to provide the less big crooks moral cover that they are not as crooked as the biggest crooks. And as the biggest crooks get away with it, they would be naive not to do a little crooking when the opportunity arises.

This excellent RSA Animate video of the speech by Dan Ariely, professor of behavioural economics, considers the motivations behind all the less than biggest crooks, from sub-board level bankers all the way down to the likes of us pinching a biro from the office. How we feel good about being bad.

As the video points out, we get far more ripped out of us by second division crooks than by those in the premier league.

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In 2012 Amazon received more money in government grants than it paid in UK corporation tax

Fee and Chris boycott Amazon. KJ is not so sure...

SOURCE CHANNEL 4 NEWS: Amazon pays less corporation tax than it got in government grants
The UK arm of internet shopping giant Amazon received more money in government grants than it paid in UK corporation tax in 2012, according to its accounts. Amazon's UK subsidiary paid £2.4m in corporation tax in 2012, but it received £2.5m in government grants during the same period. The company has previously said it made £4.26bn in sales to British customers. Amazon received the grants from Scottish Enterprise, part of the Scottish government, to develop its operations in Scotland and create more jobs.
OUR RELATED STORIES:

Is corporation tax being cut to make Britain more competitive, given the US rate is double ours? Or is it to continue the transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top

Tax Dodging in Britain is a government regulated sport

Read More

Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 23rd May)

Amazon pays less corporation tax than it got in government grants

The UK arm of internet shopping giant Amazon received more money in government grants than it paid in UK corporation tax in 2012, according to its accounts. Amazon's UK subsidiary paid £2.4m in corporation tax in 2012, but it received £2.5m in government grants during the same period. The company has previously said it made £4.26bn in sales to British customers. Amazon received the grants from Scottish Enterprise, part of the Scottish government, to develop its operations in Scotland and create more jobs. CHANNEL 4 NEWS

(“Oh, but Amazon’s so convenient. I order a gift in one place (let’s call it Scotland), and send it to another (let’s call it HMRC). Sure, £100k goes missing along the way, but what can you do? It's Amazon,” said the FD of Amazon...)

Atos benefit claimants face biased medical assessments, doctor alleges

Medical assessments of benefit applicants at Atos Healthcare were designed to incorrectly assess claimants as being fit for work, one of the company's former senior doctors has claimed. GP Greg Wood says that medical staff were told to change reports if they were too favourable to claimants. He added, "I think the Department for Work and Pensions is the real culprit here. It's the government training that makes Atos assessors do this." Last year the British Medical Association called for the tests to be scrapped to prevent harm to the most vulnerable people in society. GUARDIAN

(“OK, our health checks have zero credibility. But our health cheque has lots of zeros! So that’s OK, then,” said our Atos insider.)

MPs ask for £10k pay rise, saying 'It's not snouts in the trough - if you pay peanuts you get monkeys'
Annual salaries would increase from £65,738 to £75,000. One senior MP described their salary as a 'pitiful pay cheque.' The rise is expected to be recommended next month. Downing Street will be alarmed at the prospect of a big rise for MPs because it would undermine Cameron’s ‘we’re all in it together’ campaign to encourage other workers to make do with no increase or minimal rises of one per cent. DAILY MAIL

(So… to be clear about this: it’s a race for global competitiveness. And this is the Planet of the Apes…)

Lloyds chief pledges to pull out of tax havens

António Horta-Osório, CEO of 39%-taxpayer owned bank, makes pledge after a shareholder demanded to know why bank was the seventh biggest user of such facilities. Campaigning shareholder Anne Edmonds said: "I want to know when this will be stopped. Tax avoidance is legal and what Lloyds is doing is legal. But to me there is little difference between tax avoidance, which is legal, and tax evasion, which is illegal." GUARDIAN

(“We’ve been asking the same question for years! Seventh? We should be first!” said all the other shareholders...)

Contactless cards hit shoppers with phantom charges 
Customers were billed for items they never bought even though their contactless card was still in their pocket or bag. Marks and Spencer and Pret a Manger customers' cards were activated simply by being inches from the card reader “field”. The UK Cards Association, which represents debit and credit card firms, said: ‘We do think there is a bit more we can do in educating cardholders to tell them not to put their wallet down in this quite narrow field when they pay.’ DAILY MAIL

(In plain English: if we rip you off deliberately, it’s our fault. If we rip you off accidentally, it’s your fault.)

Taxing tax havens would raise £99bn and end world poverty, says Oxfam

Charity says governments worldwide are losing more than £99bn a year and calls for tougher action against tax havens. According to Oxfam's estimates, almost $18.5tn has accumulated over time by individuals alone in tax havens, one third of it in British Overseas Territories and crown dependencies. This total does not include taxes freshly dodged every year worldwide. GUARDIAN

UK Uncut loses legal challenge over Goldman Sachs tax deal with HMRC

The judge ruled the deal was not unlawful but criticises former HMRC tax boss, Dave Hartnett, for striking the deal, in part, to save Chancellor Osborne embarrassment. HMRC waived £20m in taxes believing that Goldmans would otherwise refuse to sign Osborne’s new tax code of conduct. Anna Walker, campaigns director of UK Uncut Legal Action, said: "Despite not having won the case today, we still feel that this judgment has demonstrated that the government is making a political choice to cut legal aid, public services and the welfare system, rather than take action to make corporate giants … pay their fair share of tax.” GUARDIAN

Starbucks have still not paid money pledged after tax row in December

Starbucks has just admitted that they have not yet paid any of the £20m they promised they would pay to the government after a row over their tax dodging before Christmas. Back then their boss admitted that they might end up having to make a donation to charity because there is no mechanism for a company to pay tax in this way: paying an estimate after bowing to political and public pressure. ITV NEWS

Google branded "devious" over tax dodging arrangements

MPs reacted with incredulity to claims the company did not carry out advertising sales in the UK, despite £3bn a year in revenues. Google paid a mere £6m in tax in 2011. Vice-president Matt Brittin, Google's head of operations in northern Europe, was being interrogated by the Commons public accounts committee. The committee chairman Margaret Hodge said: "You are a company that says you do no evil and I think that you do do evil in that you use smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax." GUARDIAN

Energy firm Npower feels the heat after accusations of UK tax avoidance

With npower accused of avoiding tax at the same time as hiking prices, some consumers are taking matters into their own hands. Protest group 38 Degrees is organising 30,000 npower customers to switch suppliers. In April, CEO Paul Massara revealed to the House of Commons that his company had paid almost no corporation tax between 2009 and 2011. The energy giant had used a Maltese company to transfer funds between it and its German parent firm, RWE. Experts suggest there was no other reason to do this except to reduce the firm's tax liability. GUARDIAN

Tamiflu drug bill “shocking waste of taxpayers' money”

The government spent £424m stockpiling a drug to treat flu despite there being question marks over the effectiveness of the medicine. Of the 40m units of Tamiflu bought between 2006 and 2013, a quarter were written off. Some 6.5m units of the drug had to be binned because of storage problems - a mistake that cost £74m. Additional stocks of Tamiflu are due to reach their end of shelf lives and be replaced during 2013-14 at a cost of £49m. BBC NEWS
("Let's not be too harsh on them. Mistakes happen," said a gang of very understanding pharmaceutical manufacturers...)

Read More

Four times in six months the Office of Budget Responsibility and the UK Statistics Authority have publicly corrected Cameron and IDS for mis-using statistics

Cameron and Welfare Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith decide to check their facts...

SOURCE BBC NEWS: Iain Duncan Smith caught exaggerating benefit cap figures
The Work and Pensions Secretary said that his new benefit cap was having "the desired impact" because 8,000 people who would have faced a benefit cut had been incentivised to get jobs. But the UK Statistics Authority, the statistics watchdog, said his figures were simply "unsupported by the official statistics published by the department". For the third time in just six months, the head of the UK Statistics Authority has written to ministers to warn them about their misuse of statistics.

BBC NEWS: Politicians urged to avoid mixing up debt and deficit by UK Statistics Authority

BBC NEWS: Minister rebuked over immigration statistics by UK Statistics Authority

BBC NEWS: Office of Budget Responsibility contradicts Cameron on impact of austerity on growth

OUR RELATED STORIES:

The truth according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) behind the Public and Private Sector pay differential

Are the unemployed (a) Skivers and (b) A cause of the ballooning benefits bill? ONS and DWP figures show they are neither

Read More

Liebrary: "If it isn't hurting, it isn't working". How Austerity worked for the few by hurting the many

An earlier Tory chancellor during an earlier crisis claimed "If it isn't hurting it isn't working". This, together with the fib from a later Tory prime minister "We are all in it together", is used to convince the majority of us ripped-off Britons to keep taking the painful poverty pill while the elite take the opportunity to reinforce their positions. 


As Lord Young, former Tory minister and advisor to David Cameron, said "a recession can be an excellent time to start a business. Factors of production such as premises and labour can be cheaper". Young just said it as it is: bust businesses leave empty buildings and sacked employees who can be got on the cheap.

It was ever thus: when a ship sinks although all the passengers start off 'in it together' it is the passengers in the lower decks that drown first. The water eventually reaches the middle class, creeping up so they don't notice until it is too late. Giving the upper class time to float away in the lifeboats, taking their luggage and hampers, rowed by their more essential servants.

The sinking of the UK economy was made apparent by a release in May 2013 from the OECD and the Office of National Statistics. This shows that austerity did not improve our position relative to our competitor countries. In the period from 2005 to 2011 the disposable income per head in the UK fell from fifth to twelfth place in the OECD. France, much criticised for eschewing austerity, in the same period moved from four places below the UK to four places above.

Equally telling from these figures is the fact that in this period the UK disposable income grew by just 7%, compared with 22% in France and 19% in Germany.

It would be unfair to say that the slogan "If it isn't hurting it isn't working" is untrue. The fact is it is working - but we are misled as to what this is all 'working' towards. If you thought 'working' meant bringing prosperity back to all Britons you'd be wrong. The objective of all the hurting is to use the banker induced crisis as another smokescreen for taking back pay, pension, and employment rights, and to cut back health and education and other public services for those who can't afford to go private. 

This rise in inequality, most rapid during the last Labour government, can be seen in graphs produced by the Resolution Foundation's report "Squeezed Britain 2013". As an example, the two graphs below show how low and middle incomes have ceased to be sufficient to buy a home:

Houses once owned by their occupiers are now owned by their landlords. 

Prosperity was once used to justify excessive pay to fill the pockets of the 'excellent' few (such as the financiers who mis-sold to their customers and crashed the economy). Now Austerity is being used to achieve the same end: a means to squeeze ordinary Britons into the pockets of the 1%.

Read More

Liebrary: "If it isn't hurting, it isn't working". How Austerity works for the few by hurting the many

An earlier Tory chancellor during an earlier crisis claimed "If it isn't hurting it isn't working". This, together with the fib from a later Tory prime minister "We are all in it together", is used to convince the majority of us ripped-off Britons to keep taking the painful poverty pill while the elite take the opportunity to reinforce their positions. 


As Lord Young, former Tory minister and advisor to David Cameron, said  "a recession can be an excellent time to start a business...Factors of production such as premises and labour can be cheaper".  Young just said it as it is: bust businesses leave empty buildings and sacked employees who can be got on the cheap.

It was ever thus: when a ship sinks although all the passengers start off 'in it together' it is the passengers in the lower decks that drown first. The water eventually reaches the middle class, creeping up so they don't notice until it is too late. Giving the upper class time to float away in the lifeboats, taking their luggage and hampers, rowed by their more essential servants.

The sinking of the UK economy is made apparent by a release in May 2013 from the OECD and the Office of National Statistics. This shows that austerity has not improved our position relative to our competitor countries. In the period from 2005 to 2011 the disposable income per head in the UK has fallen from fifth to twelfth place in the OECD. France, much criticised for eschewing austerity, in the same period moved from four places below the UK to four places above.

Equally telling from these figures is the fact that in this period the UK disposable income grew by just 7%, compared with 22% in France and 19% in Germany.

It would be unfair to say that the slogan "If it isn't hurting it isn't working" is untrue. The fact is it is working - but we are misled as to what this is all 'working' towards. If you thought 'working' meant bringing prosperity back to all Britons you'd be wrong. The objective of all the hurting is to use the banker induced crisis as another smokescreen for taking back pay, pension, and employment rights, and to cut back health and education and other public services for those who can't afford to go private. 

This rise in inequality, most rapid during the last Labour government, can be seen in graphs produced by the Resolution Foundation's report "Squeezed Britain 2013". As an example, the two graphs below show how low and middle incomes have ceased to be sufficient to buy a home:

Houses once owned by their occupiers are now owned by their landlords. 

Prosperity was once used to justify excessive pay to fill the pockets of the 'excellent' few (such as the financiers who mis-sold to their customers and crashed the economy). Now Austerity is being used to achieve the same end: a means to squeeze ordinary Britons into the pockets of the 1%.

Read More

Whistleblower says Britain's biggest out-of-hours private care provider Harmoni routinely jeopardises safety to cut costs

KJ, Chris and Fee have a brilliant idea...

SOURCE DAILY MAIL: One nurse for 250,000 patients: whistleblower reveals nurses are replacing GPs to cover entire counties
The revelations about Britain's biggest out-of-hours private care provider Harmoni come from a whistleblower GP. Harmoni makes £100million a year from NHS contracts. The GP has made a number of other startling allegations about how Harmoni is routinely jeopardising safety to cut costs. They include:
Terminally-ill cancer patients made to wait eight hours for a doctor to visit them at home and administer pain relief; Foreign doctors with a poor grasp of English being used to plug gaps in the rota; Locum doctors flying in on easyJet from Europe, or driving from elsewhere in Britain, to work back-to-back shifts round-the-clock without sleep.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

House of Lords refuses to block bill forcing NHS to tender services, and taking away their right to reject dodgy providers

Nurses caught neglecting patients? They're only following the national trend

Read More

Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 16th May)

Cameron threatens to prosecute oil bosses for fixing the price of petrol
BP and Shell’s London HQs have been raided for evidence by the European Commission. They are investigating claims that prices were rigged for more than a decade. It could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps "potentially harming final consumers". Four months ago the UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) ruled out an investigation into petrol price fixing after finding "very limited evidence." TELEGRAPH
(Oh no, not another EU initiative that tells us what to do. We Brits do things differently! Errr... we do nothing.)

Iain Duncan Smith caught exaggerating benefit cap figures

The Work and Pensions Secretary said that his new benefit cap was having "the desired impact" because 8,000 people who would have faced a benefit cut had been incentivised to get jobs. But the UK Statistics Authority, the statistics watchdog, said his figures were simply "unsupported by the official statistics published by the department". For the third time in just six months, the head of the UK Statistics Authority has written to ministers to warn them about their misuse of statistics. BBC NEWS

(However, their sister regulator, the UK Lies Damn Lies Authority, once again gave IDS its full support...)

100 of UK's richest people concealing billions in offshore tax havens
An unprecedented global investigation is now under way as HM Revenue and Customs acts on a 400-gigabyte cache of leaked data. George Osborne, the chancellor, warned the alleged tax evaders and a further 200 accountants and advisers accused of helping them cheat the taxman: "The message is simple: if you evade tax, we're coming after you." HMRC declined to name any of the individuals, advisers or companies it is investigating. GUARDIAN
(“...And why should we? A quick look at the list of Tory party donors should tell you all you need to know,” said HMRC...)

One nurse for 250,000 patients: whistleblower reveals nurses are replacing GPs to cover entire counties 
The revelations about Britain's biggest out-of-hours private care provider Harmoni come from a whistleblower GP. Harmoni makes £100million a year from NHS contracts. The GP has made a number of other startling allegations about how Harmoni is routinely jeopardising safety to cut costs. They include:  

• Terminally-ill cancer patients made to wait eight hours for a doctor to visit them at home and administer pain relief 
• Foreign doctors with a poor grasp of English being used to plug gaps in the rota
• Locum doctors flying in on easyJet from Europe, or driving from elsewhere in Britain, to work back-to-back shifts round-the-clock without sleep 

DAILY MAIL
(How about Easy Group cuts out the middle man and launches its own “no-frills” out-of-hours private care provider. Call it easyNHS?... easyGP?... easyMoney!!!)

SSE boss says he is 'ashamed' over mis-selling

In April, energy firm SSE was fined £10.5m and ordered to compensate customers who were lied to, switched to SSE, and ended up paying more. But Chief Executive Ian Marchant insisted that examples of his staff lying were “few and far between” and that “a more common thing that was happening was misunderstanding – either deliberate or accidental”. BBC NEWS

(...And the latest addition to the Oxford Dictionary? A “Marchant” - a deliberate misunderstanding, otherwise known as a lie.)

Ban on pensions middlemen whose rip-off fees wipe out retirement saving

Rip-off charges levied by middlemen consultants that can wipe out large portions of pension savings will be banned from auto-enrolment schemes, as part of a two-pronged attack on pension charges. New rules mean employers must auto-enrol 11m workers onto pensions in the coming years. The ban however is not retrospective and will only be effective on schemes which are set up from today. But supporters of the fee said if employers cannot pass on the cost of the advice to their staff, they won’t bother to seek advice and end up choosing the wrong workplace pension provider. DAILY MAIL

Co-op Bank bosses face clawback of bonuses

The news follows the six-notch downgrade by Moody’s of the Co-op Bank’s credit rating, which was relegated to junk status after its failed takeover of Britannia Building Society in 2009, and a deal to buy 632 branches from Lloyds Banking Group collapsed this year. The Co-op’s directors are understood to be looking at what action they can take against managers, including former Co-op Bank boss Neville Richardson. He left the in 2011 with a package worth £4.6m, including a £1.4m payment for “loss of office”, as well as £1.39m in “compensation” for leaving. TELEGRAPH

Government cuts threaten gender equality gains

Some of the most vulnerable women in society – including single mothers, those who are disabled or from minority ethnic groups – are bearing the brunt of government policies. The findings come in a report by an umbrella organisation of 42 women's and human rights groups, including Women's Aid and the Fawcett Society. The report says all but the richest women are doing worse than in 2008, and that further spending cuts will worsen things further. Latest polls suggest support for the Conservatives among women is 15 points behind Labour, while it is roughly neck and neck among men. GUARDIAN

UK's top companies condemned for prolific use of tax havens

• Only two FTSE 100 companies have no subsidiaries in tax havens
• Big four banks and Tesco among biggest users

The UK's 100 biggest public companies are running more than 8,000 subsidiaries or joint ventures in onshore and offshore tax havens. Cameron and Osborne have promised the UK will lead a global clamp down on tax dodging. But 1,685 of those tax haven subsidiaries are in UK Crown dependencies such as Jersey, or overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Bermuda and Gibraltar. GUARDIAN

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UK Uncut exposes Goldman Sachs’ £20m tax dodge deal with HMRC, struck “to save Government embarrassment”

Cameron interrogates Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs...

SOURCE INDEPENDENT: £20m 'Sweetheart' tax dodge deal between HMRC and Goldman Sachs was struck to save Government embarrassment, court hears
The deal has become the subject of a legal challenge by UK Uncut, the tax pressure group. The deal allowed Goldmans to escape paying between £6m and £20m in interest on tax owed to the Exchequer. HMRC apparently feared that Goldmans would pull out of George Osborne’s new tax monitoring agreement unless it was let off the tax. UK Uncut wants the High Court to declare the deal unlawful, but even if it does so, the deal cannot be overturned and Goldmans will not be obliged to pay the money. The court saw incriminating emails by Dave Hartnett, who was the top ranking civil servant at HMRC at the time.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

In numbers (+ a cool animation): Global tax evasion and money laundering

Is Corporation Tax being cut to make us more competitive? Or is there another reason?

Read More

Liebrary: The truth according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) behind the Public and Private Sector pay differential

The government gets regularly rapped by its own statistics body, the UK Statistics Authority, for making up stuff to support government policies. In May 2013 the Secretary of State for Works and Pensions, Iain Duncan-Smith, was put on the naughty step for fibbing about the number of people enthused into getting a job as a justification for his draconian policy of cutting benefits. 

Duncan-Smith's claim that the statistics "clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact" was quickly shot down by the UK Statistics Authority. The Authority declared the statistic "explicitly states that the figures are 'not intended to show the additional numbers entering work'". The decrease in claimants was actually due to policy changes that reduced the number being counted. Andrew Dilnot, Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, wrote:

"We have concluded that the statement attributed to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that ‘Already we’ve seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the cap move into jobs. This clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact’, is unsupported by the official statistics published by the Department on 15 April.

The release Ad-hoc statistics on JobCentre Plus activity, from which the 8,000 figure appears to be drawn, explicitly states that the figures are ‘not intended to show the additional numbers entering work as a direct result of the contact’. The release Ad-hoc statistics on households identified points out a number of policy changes that occurred between the publication of the 56,000 and 40,000 numbers, as well as caseload changes ‘due to normal caseload churn, reducing those potentially in scope for the cap’."

Politicians rarely allow truth to get in the way of policy. 
Another statistic that is grotesquely misused is the average pay in the Public and the Private Sectors. The two great heists being perpetrated on us ripped-off Britons in the name of 'austerity' are changes to pensions and the outsourcing of public services. Of these two, the greater is the outsourcing of public services:

• One reason the private sector can cut costs is it cuts the pay of all except top executives. (Remember, these services employ and pay ordinary people like us).
• Another reason the private sector can cut costs is it cuts the scope and quality of what the service formerly provided. . (Remember, these services serve ordinary people like us who can't afford directly to buy private health, education, legal services etc.).
• The objective of the service ceases to be to serve the public, and becomes to serve the shareholders. (Remember, on the basis that 'he who pays the piper calls the tune', the privatised service will think twice before criticising the governments that pay them).

Recent governments, Tory and Labour, have used the true fact that the average salary in the public sector is higher than that in the private sector to justify the privatisation of public services. In November 2012 the Office of National Statistics produced a report and video politely debunking government claims that public sector staff are overpaid, providing statistical reasons for the overall higher average pay. We summarise the main points below:

a) Public sector jobs have a higher proportion of higher skill jobs. Just as in the private sector, higher skilled jobs attract higher pay.
:

b) Public sector workers tend to be older. Just as in the private sector experienced staff tend to be paid more.

c) In both private and public sectors, those who work in larger organisations are paid considerably more (24.9% more) than those in smaller organisations. 94% of the public sector but only 49% of the private sector fall into the category of 'larger organisation'.

c) The group of people who are actually "overpaid" compared to the private sector are not the 'fat cats' but the poorest group. The lower paid groups are paid better in the Public Sector, while the higher paid groups are paid less.

The higher pay of the few is funded by the lower pay of the many:

Privatisation may mean costs are lower in the short term. However, in practical terms this means:

• Lower pay and services for the public who are employed and who are served. 
• Higher private sector profits, to fund pay and dividends for company executives and shareholders. 
• Lower taxes for those who pay tax. Rather than being taxed to maintain public sector services, they use the money they save to go private.

The greatest loss of all is the most powerful force protecting the interests of ordinary Britons: all those other ordinary Britons working in the public service watching the interests of us ordinary Britons. They may not be driven by heroism, but they are also not driven by profit.

That ONS video:

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£80bn for Help to Buy 'bubble' could push house prices up by 30%... How about building some houses!

KJ and a banker discuss...

SOURCE TELEGRAPH: Help to Buy 'bubble' could push house prices up by 30%
The Government’s "reckless" Help to Buy scheme uses taxpayer money to provide a loan of up to 20% of the value of a new build property, provided the borrower can raise a 5% deposit. But it risks creating a new housing bubble and could push the average UK house price up by 30% to £300,000 by the end of 2015, a leading economic think-tank has warned. “Help to Buy is a reckless scheme that uses public money to incentivise the banks to lend precisely to those individuals who, absent the scheme, would not and should not be offered credit," said Fathom Consulting, set up by former Bank of England economists.

OUR RELATES STORIES:

Build more affordable homes, reverse the property bubble, and we'll save billions

Stop Britain’s biggest rip-offs, and no budget cuts or tax rises are required

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Rip-off News round-up. Our pick of the last week's media (Thu 9th May)

“Shrinkflation”: Food products are getting smaller while the price you pay stays the same

Manufacturers and retailers are increasingly sneaking in new reduced sizes while describing them as special offers or re-launches. One shopper said: ‘It feels like being lied to. Why act in a deceptive manner unless it is to make more money out of us?’ The shrinking has happened over the past few years, with many customers being none the wiser. 

• Bakery chain Greggs cut the meat content of its Steak Bake pie by 15% while keeping the price at £1.35.
• Walkers crisps contents have fallen by 6% from 34.5g to 32.5g, but the price remains the same.
• A Mars bar has shrunk 2.5g to 58g.

Tell-tale signs are “special deals” which are just a cover for shrinking goods. They even have the nerve to make boasts like “less fat” when it is due to them offering less everything.’ Shredded Wheat Superfruity used to be sold for £2.68, so Sainsbury’s put it on £2 special offer before returning it to £2.68 but with less content. A spokesman for PepsiCo, which owns Walkers, said: ‘We have faced rising commodity prices and raw ingredients costs. Where possible we absorb costs but we have had to make slight reductions to the weight of some crisp products.’ Laura Sandys, Tory MP for South Thanet, says: ‘It’s wrong that consumers are forced to absorb inflation without knowing about it. The Government is looking at the issue.’ DAILY MAIL

("…we certainly are. So we can pull the same trick. Pay, pension and benefits freezes force those on lower incomes to absorb inflation more than anyone, but sadly they know all about it!" said our government insider…)

£20m 'Sweetheart' tax dodge deal between HMRC and Goldman Sachs was struck to save Government embarrassment, court hears

The deal has become the subject of a legal challenge by UK Uncut, the tax pressure group. The deal allowed Goldmans to escape paying between £6m and £20m in interest on tax owed to the Exchequer. HMRC apparently feared that Goldmans would pull out of George Osborne’s new tax monitoring agreement unless it was let off the tax. UK Uncut wants the High Court to declare the deal unlawful, but even if it does so, the deal cannot be overturned and Goldmans will not be obliged to pay the money. The court saw incriminating emails by Dave Hartnett, who was the top ranking civil servant at HMRC at the time. INDEPENDENT
(“So… it always pays to dodge tax. Even if we get caught, we get to keep the interest on the cash we’ve stashed. And get to blackmail George Osborne while we’re at it!” said our Goldmans insider…)

One in four UK children will be living in poverty by 2020, says thinktank

The IFS says tax and benefit reforms introduced since April 2010 account for most of the projected rise in numbers. Another 600,000 children may fall into relative poverty during this parliament, with this figure rising by more than 1 million by 2020, the IFS says. The jump will result in Britain missing binding targets to reduce child poverty by 2020: the target was to reduce it to one in 10, or fewer, of all children, or about 1.3 million. A government spokesman replied: "...We want to take a new approach by tackling the root causes of poverty including worklessness, educational failure and family breakdown.” GUARDIAN
(“Ummmm… and all our tax and benefit reforms introduced since April 2010,” the government spokesman added. Not.)

Is ScottishPower the next to be fined for mis-selling and repeatedly misleading customers?

SSE has already been fined £10.5m for repeatedly misleading customers. The other two firms being investigated by Ofgem are Eon and npower. All the investigations relate to past mis-selling: in SSE’s case it concerned hundreds of thousands of customers mis-sold contracts between 2009 and 2012. Angela Knight, boss of the industry’s trade body Energy UK, said that the industry faced an issue of trust when dealing with the public, and that companies that made mistakes should own up promptly. DAILY MAIL
(…And Angela Knight knows all about trust and owning up promptly. Her last job was the head of the British Bankers Association from 2007 to 2012…)

Help to Buy 'bubble' could push house prices up by 30%

The Government’s "reckless" Help to Buy scheme uses taxpayer money to provide a loan of up to 20% of the value of a new build property, provided the borrower can raise a 5% deposit. But it risks creating a new housing bubble and could push the average UK house price up by 30% to £300,000 by the end of 2015, a leading economic think-tank has warned. “Help to Buy is a reckless scheme that uses public money to incentivise the banks to lend precisely to those individuals who, absent the scheme, would not and should not be offered credit," said Fathom Consulting, set up by former Bank of England economists. TELEGRAPH
(Hmmm… lending vast sums to people who can’t pay it back. Where have we heard that before?…)

One in five families rely on loans and savings to meet grocery costs

The worst-affected group was households earning less than £21,000 a year and squeezed 30 to 49-year-olds, many of whom had children. 31% of people surveyed by Which? cut back spending on essentials last month, and they were most likely to be women aged between 30 to 49 years old. Which? Said: “Our tracker shows that many households are stretched to their financial breaking point, with rising food prices one of the top worries for squeezed consumers.” 68% of people across the survey described the state of the economy as poor, although 9% said it is good. DAILY MAIL
(…and 100% of payday lenders said it is bloody fantastic!)

£410m pension crackdown on foreign spouses will be 'bureaucratic nightmare'

A new law will close the loophole that allows 220,000 spouses who live abroad to receive UK state pensions. Steve Webb, the pensions minister, said that every year £410m is spent on spouses living outside the UK, some of whom are foreign citizens who have “never set foot in Britain at all”. The pensions can be worth £3,500 a year for the entire length of a person’s retirement. But experts say administering the new system will be a "bureaucratic nightmare" that could cost as much as it saves. TELEGRAPH

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Should the wealthy elderly return their benefits, or the super-rich and corporates return their £70bn+ dodged taxes?

Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith do the sums...

SOURCE BBC NEWS: Iain Duncan Smith urges wealthy elderly to 'hand back' benefits

Wealthy elderly people who do not need benefits to help with fuel bills, TV licences or free travel should give the money to his department, said the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith. He said he would "encourage" people who do not need such financial support "to hand it back".

OUR RELATED STORIES:

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House of Lords refuses to block bill forcing NHS to tender services, and taking away their right to reject dodgy providers

The local elections in May 2013 reminded many Tories that their time at the trough maybe shorter than they had thought. Like children stuffing themselves in an unguarded sweet shop they will have two things on their minds:


1) How to stay in the sweet shop as long as possible, stifling their rustling and their chuckles hoping no-one will hear them.

2) How to take as many sugary delights with them when they are eventually ejected.

The sugary delights in question being the lucrative transfer of public services to the private sector. It is not that the time for privatisation and outsourcing is getting short. Labour governments of recent years were hardly any less enthusiastic under the cover of PFI (Private Finance Initiatives). It is just a question of which political party has its hands on the ladle when the deals are doled out.

With further privatisations and outsourcing likely to be fast-tracked - including the sale of Royal Mail and the sale of government stakes in the banks RBS and Lloyds, as well as various outsourcing contracts - we take a closer look at a little reported skirmish in Parliament in April 2013.

A debate was held in the House of Lords on the 24th April 2013, where peers voted to accept legislation making it a legal requirement for the NHS to contract with private sector suppliers of any odour (or should that be ordure). In particular, it removes the right of the NHS commissioning body to refuse to deal with a company because of its dodgy background:

Here are extracts from the clarification document (extracts highlighted in yellow and red) produce by the Department of Health with annotations by us:

The pre-amble to the Department of Health document states:

These notes relate to the Regulations made under sections 75 to 77 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. They have been prepared by the Department of Health in order to assist the reader of the Regulations and help inform any debate. These notes should be read in conjunction with the Regulations themselves. Where a regulation does not seem to require any explanation or comment, none is given. 
The specific sections are these:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/7/section/75/enacted
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/7/section/76/enacted
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/7/section/77/enacted

It goes on to say that those commissioning services from the private sector must:

3(2)..treat providers equally and in a non-discriminatory way, including by not treating a provider, or type of provider, more favourably than any other provider, in particular on the basis of ownership. 

Now we know from his time as Culture Secretary that the current Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has particularly liberal views in terms of the type of owners he is pleased to deal with.


4 (3) A contract notice must include— 
(a) a description of the services required to be provided, and 
(b) the criteria against which any bids for the contract will be evaluated. 

Can't complain about that. Except the "criteria against which any bids for the contract will be evaluated" creates an open door for dodgy providers prepared to be creative in their promises as demonstrated in the following clauses:


5 (1) A relevant body may award a new contract for the provision of health care services for the purposes of the NHS to a single provider without advertising an intention to seek offers from providers in relation to that contract where the relevant body is satisfied that the services to which the contract relates are capable of being provided only by that provider.

So, it is left to the commissioners' discretion whether to award a contract to a favoured provider without advertising it for other potential providers to tender.


5 (3) For the purposes of paragraph (1), a relevant body is not to be treated as having awarded a new contract— 
(a) where the rights and liabilities under a contract have been transferred to the relevant body from the Secretary of State, a Strategic Health Authority or a Primary Care Trust; or 
(b) where there is a change in the terms and conditions of a contract as a result of— 
(i) a change in the terms and conditions drafted by 
the Board under regulation 17 of the 2012 Regulations (terms and conditions to be drafted by the Board for inclusion in commissioning contracts), or 
(ii) new terms and conditions drafted by the Board under that regulation. 

Apparently contracts can be awarded under an open tender and then the terms & conditions can be changed without re-opening the tender. Now, we wonder if that is open to abuse? 


6(1) A relevant body must not award a contract for the provision of health care services for the purposes of the NHS where conflicts, or potential conflicts, between the interests involved in commissioning such services and the interests involved in providing them affect, or appear to affect, the integrity of the award of that contract.

The document helpfully clarifies:

An interest referred to in paragraph (1) includes an interest of— 
(a) a member of the relevant body, 
(b) a member of its governing body, 
(c) a member of its committees or sub-committees or committees or sub-committees of its governing body, or 
(d) an employee.

So the interests of sundry friends and their friends and relatives and partners and ancestors' next door neighbours are not mentioned here.

And here is why publishing the 'criteria' for selection at the outset opens a barn sized door for those who would bend their promises to fit into the criteria, knowing that the terms&conditions can be changed later (as per 5(3) above). No matter how pongy the provider or its owners may be the commissioning body is forbidden to turn its nose up:

7(3) When taking a decision referred to in paragraph (2)(a), a relevant body may not refuse to include a provider on a list where that provider meets the criteria established by the relevant body for the purposes of that decision


7(4) When taking a decision referred to in paragraph (2)(b), a relevant body may not refuse to include a provider on a list where that provider meets the criteria established by the relevant body for the purposes of that decision

7(5) When taking a decision referred to in paragraph (2)(c), a relevant body may not refuse to enter into a framework agreement with a provider that meets the criteria established by the relevant body for the purposes of that decision

In short:

• All contracts must be put out to tender, except when the commissioners want to give the contract to a specific supplier in which case they don't need to put it out to tender after all.
• Contract terms can be changed after the contract is awarded, without regarding it as a 'new contract' with the scrutiny that would require.
• Conflicts of interest are tightly defined as members and employees of the commissioning bodies. The interests of chums and chums of chums are overlooked.
• Commissioners are specifically not allowed to reject suppliers who claim to be able to meet the "criteria established by the relevant body for the purposes of that decision". So no consideration is allowed to be made of the supplier's reputation and past history, and political affiliations. 

A proposal was moved in the Lords to block this law. The proposal was defeated: the results on the right show how the parties voted. 

One can't blame the Tories for backing this law. It is in their nature just as it is in the nature of a scorpion to sting. However it is more difficult to understand the support of the Liberal Democrats whose votes would have blocked this change in procurement regulations. Regulations that the British Medical Association oppose.

We assume removing the right to refuse to deal with dodgy companies, as legislated above, will become the template for future outsourcing and privatisations.

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