LIVIN' IN A BANKSTERS PARADISE
The visit you have been dreading for months is taking place. Big Sam, from the farm across the water, is striding up the path towards your front door. He stops, and knocks roughly with his boot. With a heavy heart, you open the door to see what he wants. As if you didn't know. “Now see here, Brumville, I'm a-wanting to buy your ranch, and kick your family out, and I mean to have it. Trouble is, I ain't got no money. Know where I can borrow me some?”, he laughs. .
“Why, yeah!” comes a reply from your barn – the voice of your ranch hand. “You know the bank in the town – the one Mayor McJudas saved from collapse last year with our money? They're rolling in the stuff now, and they ain't proud who they lend to, either!”
Big Sam's face twists into a cheesy grin on hearing this news. He tips his hat to you, and says: “Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you suh, but I gotta go now, and talk to a man about money – be seein' ya! Hey, ranch hand! Let me buy you a beer when you get finished here!”
The above is a work of fiction. However..............
If there were any lingering doubt that the lunatics are running the asylum that is England, there can be none now, with the news that the British government is allowing American multinational Kraft to buy out Cadbury – a profitable English company with 6,000 employees in this country – with money borrowed from RBS, the Scottish bank rescued by Gordon Brown's Labour government with our taxes. In effect, the neighbours we helped in their time of need, are now happily stabbing us in the back by lending money to our competitors, who will use it to buy our confectionery industry, sack the English workers and outsource those jobs abroad.
Manchester United and Liverpool are also classic examples of global capitalism gone crazy – profitable English clubs with no debt to talk of, that were bought out by American businessmen with borrowed money, now in debt to the tune of hundreds of millions.
These examples illustrate everything that is wrong with our weak government and the system of global capitalism, that we in England are told is such a great thing. Great for whom? The bankers and deal makers stand to gain financially. Cadbury shareholders will gain financially, as will T-Rex lookalike Todd Stitzer, the American (what a coincidence!) CEO of Cadbury, who it is estimated will be paid off to the tune of £7 million and a fat pension pot. The 6,000 English Cadbury workers almost certainly face redundancy, their families and communities financial hardship.
Meanwhile, the English confectionery industry will join all the other English industries that have gone to the wall in recent years, because successive British governments have consistently refused to invoke protectionist measures – steel, coal, fishing, manufacturing – in the name of “Free Markets”. Business, like War, is an arena where playing fair and settling for second place will not get you a silver medal, it will get you destroyed - fighting dirty gets results. If you get cornered by a mugger who's waving a knife at you, are you going to shake his hand and wish him the best of luck, or are you going to pick up that broken bottle and even the odds?
The Free Market is all very well in principle, but when your national interest is threatened and foreign competitors are trying to destroy you, why shouldn't a your government step in and ban the sale of a company - and why shouldn’t you slap extra tax on imported goods?
Can you imagine the French government allowing this to happen? No? Then why are we?
“Why, yeah!” comes a reply from your barn – the voice of your ranch hand. “You know the bank in the town – the one Mayor McJudas saved from collapse last year with our money? They're rolling in the stuff now, and they ain't proud who they lend to, either!”
Big Sam's face twists into a cheesy grin on hearing this news. He tips his hat to you, and says: “Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you suh, but I gotta go now, and talk to a man about money – be seein' ya! Hey, ranch hand! Let me buy you a beer when you get finished here!”
The above is a work of fiction. However..............
If there were any lingering doubt that the lunatics are running the asylum that is England, there can be none now, with the news that the British government is allowing American multinational Kraft to buy out Cadbury – a profitable English company with 6,000 employees in this country – with money borrowed from RBS, the Scottish bank rescued by Gordon Brown's Labour government with our taxes. In effect, the neighbours we helped in their time of need, are now happily stabbing us in the back by lending money to our competitors, who will use it to buy our confectionery industry, sack the English workers and outsource those jobs abroad.
Manchester United and Liverpool are also classic examples of global capitalism gone crazy – profitable English clubs with no debt to talk of, that were bought out by American businessmen with borrowed money, now in debt to the tune of hundreds of millions.
These examples illustrate everything that is wrong with our weak government and the system of global capitalism, that we in England are told is such a great thing. Great for whom? The bankers and deal makers stand to gain financially. Cadbury shareholders will gain financially, as will T-Rex lookalike Todd Stitzer, the American (what a coincidence!) CEO of Cadbury, who it is estimated will be paid off to the tune of £7 million and a fat pension pot. The 6,000 English Cadbury workers almost certainly face redundancy, their families and communities financial hardship.
Meanwhile, the English confectionery industry will join all the other English industries that have gone to the wall in recent years, because successive British governments have consistently refused to invoke protectionist measures – steel, coal, fishing, manufacturing – in the name of “Free Markets”. Business, like War, is an arena where playing fair and settling for second place will not get you a silver medal, it will get you destroyed - fighting dirty gets results. If you get cornered by a mugger who's waving a knife at you, are you going to shake his hand and wish him the best of luck, or are you going to pick up that broken bottle and even the odds?
The Free Market is all very well in principle, but when your national interest is threatened and foreign competitors are trying to destroy you, why shouldn't a your government step in and ban the sale of a company - and why shouldn’t you slap extra tax on imported goods?
Can you imagine the French government allowing this to happen? No? Then why are we?