“… In the old days, courtiers aped the style of the monarch. Modern politicians aspire to be like today’s rulers – our corporate overlords. If you spend a sizeable chunk of your career making sure corporations can take their money offshore, and hope to work for those companies later in your career with some title like Non-Executive Director Of Thanks For All The Favours, and if corporations actively court political influence through massive lobbying operations, then you will end up with a certain level of symbiosis. …
… In the end, as a senior politician having spent a career in what is the PR wing of corporatism, offshore tax arrangements might well be one of the few things you know anything about. I mean that quite literally. Politics is full of people who don’t know the price of a pint of milk but do understand the incorporation of a shell company. Why wouldn’t they have a trust in Panama?
Corporations may hire celebrity spokesmodels, personify themselves as mascots, and in the US, demand that they have the constitutional rights of people, but they are not people. They are blueprints for making money, and they don’t address their social obligations because they don’t care. I suspect before long we’ll see corporations donating to space exploration in the hope that they’ll be able to take advantage of a zero per cent tax rate by screwing their “Company Headquarters” plaques to the surface of the moon. In a decade, it’ll be covered with so much tessellating brass, it’ll shimmer like a distant glitterball through the gaps in the roofs of their employees’ shacks.
East Devon Watch 