Milibands Mates: In Bed with the Merchants of Death

This published by the Celtic League:

Milibands Mates: In Bed with the Merchants of Death

NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE

Ed Miliband adopted the moral high ground somewhat when he revealed during a pre-election sound-bite earlier this week that he intended to take a tough line with tax havens.

Over twenty years ago when there was real need for regulation and reform in places like the Isle of Man etc we cannot remember Ed being to the fore. At that time it was nationalists on the Isle of Man who adopted and pursued a policy of opposition to and monitoring of what was then a unregulated financial services sector – something which they continue to this day!

So where was Miliband? Well when over twenty years ago (before TIEAs had appeared on the Manx governments agenda and ‘know your customer’ was just recognising the guy who arrived in your bank with a suitcase full of money from Dublin) he was just emerging from High School.

Today, when comprehensive money laundering legislation is in place, Tax Information Exchange Agreements are signed with countries as diverse as the United States and Slovenia etc he decides its time to ‘come to life’ – conveniently just ahead of the UK General Election! (see link).

Mind you Ed hasn’t exactly been a shrinking violet when it comes to personal financial planning. According to ‘how-rich.com’ (see link).

“He talks transparency and stripping the big millions from politics; however he owns a 1.6 million pound house in an exclusive London neighbourhood and has used the inheritance rules of the land to his advantage. Some say his net worth might be 5 million pounds or US$ 8 million.”
The difficulty, as well, with adopting the moral high ground is that sometimes it can come back to bite you…

One area in which the United Kingdom (the country Ed hopes to lead) definitely needs some moral guidance is ‘arms trading’.

The UK arms industry all coordinated of course via its business Capital the City of London stokes conflict globally and draws precious funding away from social programmes in third world countries by selling them armaments which in many instances they don’t need. The whole system is perpetuated by a system of corruption on an unrivalled scale.

So where’s Ed Miliband’s Labour Party on this issue? Well, tellingly, at a recent glitzy Arms Dealers banquet in London a third of the MPs invited were Labour Party members (see links).
There was however one uninvited guest and we urge readers of CL News to watch the video on Youtube (see link).

It’s all very well adopting the moral high ground over tax evasion but when some of your colleagues are in bed with the merchants of death perhaps some house cleaning nearer to home is warranted.

Various links referenced above:

http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/taxinformationexchangeagreementstie...

http://how-rich.com/143/how-rich-is-ed-miliband/

https://www.caat.org.uk/issues/influence/resources/2015-02-03.ads.dinner...

https://www.caat.org.uk/media/press-releases/2015-02-05

J B Moffatt (Mr)
Director of Information

07/02/15

(Please note that replies to correspondence received by the League and posted on CL News are usually scanned hard copies. Obviously every effort is made to ensure the scanning process is accurate but sometimes errors do occur).

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