Corporate Public Responsibility - Tax
Interesting short article from, as ever, The Guardian
Obscene stuff - Companies are getting away with murder. As a small business person I find this even more galling. These companies have huge resources to spend on accountants to avoid paying their dues, yet the government seem to concern themselves more with chasing piffiling amounts from people who earn less than the executives of these companies get as a car allowance. Not good enough. I feel there will never be fairness here unless there is a concerted mulit-lateral strategy across the G7 nations to make companies pay their dues. Otherwise they will always find an off-shore solution that suits them.
I'd like to see companies forced to display / report how much tax they paid on their profits and their full executive compensation packages, their web-site would be a good place. Then we could see which companies were bankrupt, morally that is....
Saturday, February 07, 2004
UK Rail Privitisation
Good points on regulation there. Like anything in life, it's a question of balance - Too much regulation and you end up with an overblown bureaucracy that becomes a monster in itself, full of self-serving public-sector folk who can be just as bad as the private-sector ones. It's a difficult one to get right. Still, on the whole, I'd rather have the overblown public sector than the money-grabbing private sector solution. At least the public-sector one keeps plenty of people in a job, the private one just rewards those chosen few at the top and, to a lesser extent, the share-holders.
Good points on regulation there. Like anything in life, it's a question of balance - Too much regulation and you end up with an overblown bureaucracy that becomes a monster in itself, full of self-serving public-sector folk who can be just as bad as the private-sector ones. It's a difficult one to get right. Still, on the whole, I'd rather have the overblown public sector than the money-grabbing private sector solution. At least the public-sector one keeps plenty of people in a job, the private one just rewards those chosen few at the top and, to a lesser extent, the share-holders.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
It all comes down to the assumption that privitised companies are more economically efficient than public ones.
Perhaps some are, but economic efficiency is just one facet. Yes, we dont have infinite amounts of money, but effectiveness of a service should be just as important as economic prudence. Society should have effective services before they are made economically efficient. Instead we give them less money and tell them to get more efficient... the result being cutting corners just like any private company would do.
Then what happens is that the public services , if they are not privitised eventually bring in private money via sponsorship deals. These deals eventually hold more and more power over the public companies because they rely more and more on this private money and before you know it, we have a public company working for private investors making them money which is not re-investedin the public service but is exported out from the public service and into private hands... so our serives get poorer and poorer and they rely more and more on the private money- which gets more and more...
The answer is more accountability with less accountants!
More scruitiny with less lawyers and a more SENSIBLE moderate approach to this type of set up.
Perhaps some are, but economic efficiency is just one facet. Yes, we dont have infinite amounts of money, but effectiveness of a service should be just as important as economic prudence. Society should have effective services before they are made economically efficient. Instead we give them less money and tell them to get more efficient... the result being cutting corners just like any private company would do.
Then what happens is that the public services , if they are not privitised eventually bring in private money via sponsorship deals. These deals eventually hold more and more power over the public companies because they rely more and more on this private money and before you know it, we have a public company working for private investors making them money which is not re-investedin the public service but is exported out from the public service and into private hands... so our serives get poorer and poorer and they rely more and more on the private money- which gets more and more...
The answer is more accountability with less accountants!
More scruitiny with less lawyers and a more SENSIBLE moderate approach to this type of set up.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
UK Rail Privitisation
Very interesting report on 'File on 4' on Radio 4.
Basically whent the Tories privatised the railways (Nonsense all round really), they created a new type of entity, called a 'Rosco' which takes care of owning the rolling stock and then leasing it back to the train operators. This was done because the length of the train operator franchises was kept short (To make them efficient and generate competition - Market solution and all that tosh) and, consequently, the rolling stock would not be attractive for the train operators to buy due to the long lifetime of those assets. The problem is that although the Tories created 3 of these Roscos - again, to generate competion and a 'market' - there isn't really any competition going on. Result? The costs of leasing are too high to make it attractive for the train operators to lease the amount of rolling stock they really need. Hence standing on the Glasgow to Edinburgh train every day rather than being provided with an extra carriage...
Moral? Regardless of your idealogical position on the concept, privitisation and introducing markets is not an approach does not lend itself to everything.
Sensible? No - some things just don't make sense being de-nationalised. If you think not, go travel around Europe and find a good public transport system that isn't municipal, or otherwise state-owned...
How do we get out of this mess? Feck knows ....
Link :
BBC Radio File on 4
Very interesting report on 'File on 4' on Radio 4.
Basically whent the Tories privatised the railways (Nonsense all round really), they created a new type of entity, called a 'Rosco' which takes care of owning the rolling stock and then leasing it back to the train operators. This was done because the length of the train operator franchises was kept short (To make them efficient and generate competition - Market solution and all that tosh) and, consequently, the rolling stock would not be attractive for the train operators to buy due to the long lifetime of those assets. The problem is that although the Tories created 3 of these Roscos - again, to generate competion and a 'market' - there isn't really any competition going on. Result? The costs of leasing are too high to make it attractive for the train operators to lease the amount of rolling stock they really need. Hence standing on the Glasgow to Edinburgh train every day rather than being provided with an extra carriage...
Moral? Regardless of your idealogical position on the concept, privitisation and introducing markets is not an approach does not lend itself to everything.
Sensible? No - some things just don't make sense being de-nationalised. If you think not, go travel around Europe and find a good public transport system that isn't municipal, or otherwise state-owned...
How do we get out of this mess? Feck knows ....
Link :
BBC Radio File on 4
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