A new year wish for our malign corporate sponsored plutocracy to wither and be replaced by true democracy

At present, as MP John Cryer explained:

“There’s a far too close relationship between the corporate world, lobbying, the city, big financial interests, big business and the heart of government.

It’s an access and an influence that isn’t available to resident associations, trade unions.

Ordinary citizens don’t have that sort of access . . .”

 

Campaign group ALT adds: “Right now lobbying happens in secret: we don’t know who is being paid to influence our government, its policies, our laws, and how public money is spent, whether it’s the private healthcare lobby pushing for the current NHS reforms; or banks lobbying against reform of the financial system; or the construction industry wanting to get their hands on greenbelt land, the activities of lobbyists affect our lives in countless ways”.

A step forward? Jim Pickard, political correspondent of the Financial Times, reports that a new regime monitored by a compulsory register for lobbyists will be introduced within a few weeks. But lobbying – and political influence bought by donations to political parties – are not the only problems.

The revolving door

For years CAAT has diligently recorded interchange of employees between government and the arms industry, known as the revolving door, drawing on the website of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA). See its latest findings here.

Lucrative employment offers

There is a half-way version of this – a foot in both doors – when large corporations offer directorships and other salaried positions to senior civil servants, politicians and their family members, while still in post.

The taxpayer pays corporate staff to work in government – standard practice

There is evidence of this influence in other sectors – most obviously in those of health and biotechnology. Today a Shirley reader adds news of the latest concern in the energy industry.

Damian Carrington (opposite) reports that MP Caroline Lucas and others made Freedom of Information requests which revealed that 23 employees from companies including British Gas and npower are working at the Department of Energy and, in most cases, are being paid by the government. Oil companies such as Shell and Conoco Phillips also have staff inside the department, and civil servants have travelled in the opposite direction to work for the companies. Government comment: this is standard practice . . . self regulation ensures no conflict of interest . . .

Joss Garman, political director of Greenpeace, says that corporations making huge profits from the fossil fuels have “a clear financial interest in putting their people into key positions where they can exert a malign influence that runs counter to the public interest.”

Senator Michael Bennet introduced the Close the Revolving Door Act of 2010 to end lobbyist abuses, and get Congress back on track to move America forward. It was not enacted, but we can still hope that John Cryer, Caroline Lucas or some other honest parliamentarian will gather sufficient support for a similar bill to be passed in this country.

 

 

 

Government: are share prices, lucrative consultancies and directorships more important than justice & food security?

Farmers’ lives are being shortened to give company shareholders, high flying consultants and industry leaders a substantial income and maximise corporate profits

 

A dairy farmer writes about the death of Andrew Hemming, vice-chairman of Farmers for Action:

This is so sad, I heard him speak at a few protests and meetings he attended in our area and he came over as caring, dedicated to our cause, and inspirational. I am truly sorry that his life has been cut short at such an early age and send his family my heartfelt sympathy.

I fear the same for members of other equally dedicated and caring farming families who are also fighting desperately for survival. They also may be shortening their lives by working far harder than is reasonable, or safe for their health, just in order to feed animals, meet bills and survive in a ruthlessly competitive target driven industry where maximising profit is considered by some as more important than people or animals, and for what?

To give company shareholders, high flying consultants and industry leaders a substantial income and maximise corporate profits?

All we ask is control of our own destiny by earning a fair and honest living from the land we are responsible for, with income derived from producing a good source of staple food that people need, and to leave a realistic and sustainable future for our families and communities, which is what Andrew was working so hard to achieve.

We do not want this continual conflict, and I am certain that Andrew didn’t

It is 2 years since Asda wielded their massive financial power to intimidate Andrew, David Handley and the other FFA regional coordinators by taking them to court.

Their crime was to help secure a fair price for our milk, which we are still seeking.

Now heads of state are also openly lobbying – what can be done about it?

In 2011 an article by our valued contact, Devinder Sharma, was published in the Deccan Times. He described the way in which the ‘storm’ over the entry of big retail was succeeded by an orchestrated media campaign, the handiwork of corporate lobbyists:

“Sharp, aggressive and of course always carrying bags of money, they move in the corridors of power. They hobnob with ministers, politicians, economists, and media personalities, ‘educating’ them for instance on how and why India needs to invite big retail to tide over its unemployment and agrarian crisis. They plan diplomatic evenings, organise industry conclaves and summits, plan seminars and conferences, and also demarcate media strategies”.

In the United States corporate lobbying is legal but in India it operates undercover and under different names to do the same job – influencing public policy and crucial economic decisions – and in turn undermining democracy.

Corporate lobbying also influences crucial decisions in agribusiness, fertiliser, seed, farm machinery, animal husbandry, dairy, energy, science and technology, and retail areas that affect country’s food security, explains Sharma. Crores of rupees have been spent over the past few years by some of the big multinational corporations to seek an entry into India.

What may appear to be economic decisions taken by the government often turn out to be the result of intense lobbying by foreign companies

He asks how such lobbying benefits the companies and finds the answer in a research study conducted by University of Kansas which worked out the cost-benefit analysis of lobbying expenditure, and concluded that 93 major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Pfizer among others, had spent Rs 1,456 crore on lobbying, which eventually won them tax breaks of Rs 3.2 lakh crore. At such a high rate of return, companies realise the importance of lobbyists.

Sharma continues, “Corporate lobbying is writing the economic policies of the American and European governments. The economic decisions are in reality not based on what the people require, but how much the business houses can invest in influencing policy decisions . . . “

”Currently around 15,000 Brussels-based lobbyists (consultants, lawyers, associations, corporations, NGOs etc.) seek to influence the European Union’s legislative process. In America, lobbyists mainly target the US Senate, US House of Representative and the State legislatures. In 2011, there were 12,220 lobbyists registered”.

A year later he returns to this theme with special reference to FDI by retailers: “There are layers at which lobbying operates. Starts with academic institutes, and then goes to economists and scientists. They help with funded studies and reports that come in handy to convince the bureaucrats and politicians. Media then steps in raising the pitch. And finally, it is the politicians, political parties and ministers who remain the prime targets”.

At the height of the Wal-Mart debate in parliament, some media houses refused to carry a news report from Punjab which showed Wal-Mart paying a meagre Rs8 to farmers growing baby corn. Wal-Mart sold it in wholesale for Rs 100/kg, making a neat Rs 92 in the process. Such a report, Sharma explains, would have negated and exposed the government’s claim that big retail would provide a better price to farmers by removing middlemen.

He worries even more when heads of state indulge in lobbying, reporting that all the heads of state of major economic powers who visited India after 2009 lobbied strongly in favour of FDI in retail:

“US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had impressed upon the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the need to open up for big retail. The US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who had earlier served on the board of Wal-Mart, had even gone to the extent of lobbying the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee when her party Trinamool Congress was part of the UPA-II Coalition”.

What is the true intention of some states and 700 private company members of the ITU?

Is the UN’s ITU agency ‘striving to improve’ or to ‘restrict’, ‘regulate’ and ‘monetise’ access to information and communication technologies – ICTs – at the UN-convened World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai?

The ITU states that it is committed to connecting all the world’s people – wherever they live and whatever their means, to protect and support everyone’s fundamental right to communicate. It is the only UN agency to have both public and private sector membership, including the 193 Member States, ICT regulators, leading academic institutions and some 700 private companies.

Three alarming sets of allegations:

John C Abell, the New York Bureau chief of London-based Wired, which covers innovation in science, culture and business writes in his Reuters blog:

• “The ITU is weighing proposals from many of its 193 member nations. Some of these proposals ‑ such as decentralizing the assignment of website names and eliminating Internet anonymity ‑ would make enormous changes to the organization and management of the Internet  . . .

• “Among the most vocal critics are a founder of the Internet, Vint Cerf, and of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee . . .

• “The U.S. House of Representatives, which cannot agree on anything, voted unanimously to ban ITU regulation of the Internet before it even happens. The European Union did that last month, before the ITU even met.

David Hencke warned last month that world’s most repressive regimes, named as including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria – and sadly after the Arab spring, Egypt  – want to ‘hi-jack’ the ITU for their own ends.

He added that they are canvassing over 80 other developing countries, including African and Asian dictatorships, to back a new UN Treaty which would legitimise the right of governments to limit who can access the internet and to support the introduction of a” Sender Pays” model, which would charge a person if his/her e-mail was read by anybody in another country.

The other hi-jacking attempt could be from “a group of unnamed European telecommunications companies who want to profit from this by introducing charges for using the net, including sending e-mails and talking on Skype – being well aware that the decline in post and international calls means the end of an income stream”.

Going to Work, a project of the TUC, makes similar points on its website. It adds that:

“So far the proposal has flown under the radar, thanks to the secretive nature of the ITU, but its implications are so serious that we must act quickly to show the ITU and its member countries that citizens will not stand by while our right to communicate freely is undermined”.

“The proposal would give governments and companies all over the world the ability to:

• Restrict access to the internet to approved uses
• Monitor everything done online
• Change the way we pay for the internet, potentially marginalising civil society and developing countries.

Going to Work concludes:

“An internet totally controlled by government and big business contradicts the very essence of what the internet represents – open and free access for all. The new rules would affect us all, but would hurt people in poorer countries and those living in dictatorships even more.

“Add your name to the global petition we’re running in conjunction with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and ask our government representatives who will attend this conference to reject these changes that will seriously and permanently restrict internet freedoms”.

 

Yet more on the corporate-political nexus: Ministry of Defence and Saudi Arabia

 Ministry of Defence: Saudi Arabia pays for its Sangcom project team

 

After a protracted investigation saga (details via any search engine), Exaro has finally driven the UK’s Ministry of Defence to admit that officials working on a contract embroiled in bribery allegations are paid for by Saudi Arabia.

Snapshot

The extraordinary story of persistent investigation as MoD twists and turns may be read after registration with Exaro News.

Government has never tried to recover legal costs from promoters of tax avoidance schemes and continues to award them taxpayer funded contracts

Despite the evidence of fraudulent schemes, no major accountancy firm has ever been disciplined by any professional accountancy body

Professor Prem Sikka writes that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is investigating some 41,000 tax avoidance schemes, but there is still no investigation of the industry that designs and markets aggressive tax avoidance schemes . . .

Now the public accounts committee (PAC) chair Margaret Hodge has PwC, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Deloitte in her sights. The PAC should investigate the role of these firms in organised tax avoidance. An earlier internal HMRC study estimated that these four firms “were behind almost half of all known avoidance schemes” . . .

Despite the evidence, no accountancy firm has ever been disciplined by any professional accountancy body and despite spending millions of pounds to quash predatory schemes, the UK Treasury has never sought to recover the legal costs from the promoters of the schemes. Instead, the big accountancy firms continue to receive taxpayer funded contracts . . .

No government will be able to effectively tackle tax avoidance without shackling the designers and enablers.

Read the whole article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/08/predatory-practices-accountancy-firms

 

“British politics is riddled with patronage and cronyism”

The premise of Unlock Democracy is simple: far too much power is locked up in the hands of far too few people:

 

“British politics is riddled with patronage and cronyism, from new political appointments to the House of Lords to knighthoods like Fred Goodwin’s, which he was forced to return for his disgraceful running of the Royal Bank of Scotland”.

Non-dom party funding

“A law was passed in 2009 requiring donors giving more than £7,500 to political parties to declare they are domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. Three years later, this still hasn’t been enforced, and major parties are still accepting large sums of money from non-dom donors. We want to see existing law enforced, and parties handing back the money they shouldn’t have taken in the first place.”

A good democracy is for life – not just for Christmas

“As we reveal in our “twelve scandals of Christmas” campaign, the UK political system is in a mess – and it needs your help to sort it out.”

 

Bad decisions on organophosphates – 28: why doesn’t government act on reports by DEFRA, the Lancet and toxicology research, 1999-2012?

Has the state exposed sheep farmers and soldiers to OP poisoning?

Dr Virginia Harrison (Open University), co-author of the most recent UK study (cover opposite) on the subject very briefly summarised the problem a few days ago; a number of occupational groups have expressed concern that their health has been affected by exposure to organophosphates, including sheep farmers, who between 1988 and 1991 were required by government to dip sheep yearly in pesticide formulations containing OPs. Between 1985 and 1998 more than 600 reports of ill health following exposure to sheep dip were received by a government adverse reaction surveillance scheme.

Despite this, the government appears to have ignored research findings ranging over the last fifteen years, including:

July 1999

The Lancet : Volume 354, Number 9173, 10 July 1999 85-172, page 133 …  Prolonged, low-dose exposure to organophosphorus sheep dips is linked with chronic ill-health—the most risky occupational activity seems to be handling of concentrated pesticide. These are the main findings of a report published by the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM; Edinburgh, UK).

December 2004

The Lancet Neurology, Volume 3, Issue 12, Page 702, December 2004. A top-level US advisory Panel has reported that the neurological symptoms associated with Gulf War syndrome are probably caused by low-level exposure to various toxins that soldiers were exposed to during the war in 1991. The findings of the Panel, which was appointed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2002, support those of an ongoing series of reviews undertaken by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

August 2008

The finding of one of these reviews – well worth reading – was that evidence strongly and consistently indicates that one of the Gulf War neurotoxic exposures causally associated with Gulf War illness was pesticide use during deployment. Evidence includes the consistent association of Gulf War illness with pesticides across studies of Gulf War veterans, identified dose-response effects, and research findings in other populations.

May 2009

Research published by DEFRA revealed the extent to which even low level exposure to organophosphate (OP) sheep dip appears to have caused health problems in farmers. An extensive study involving 132 farm workers with a history of using OPs before 1991 found they are suffering today from a range of physical, mental and emotional problems.  Dr Mackenzie-Ross, of University College London, said “Defra’s advice should stress OPs should be a last resort and that other chemicals can be used.”

Defra appeared to dismiss its findings, commenting: “The results of this report do not definitively demonstrate organophosphates cause chronic ill-health, but suggest that a relationship may exist.” It ruled out using taxpayers’ money to compensate victims ‘when the current independent advice is that a link between long-term, low-level OP exposure and ill health has not been proven’.

March 2012: VMD and OGOP – not a dynamic duo:

An update from the government’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate, informed the Official Group on Organophosphates that the VMD awaits new residues data from the manufacturer of Osmond’s Goldfleece. The last update from the manufacturer suggests that their report may be ready by April 2012. The VMD reminded OGOP that the change was separate from the issue of whether the use of OPs was linked to ill-health in humans. ACTION: OGOP Secretariat to arrange the next meeting for October 2012 if the OP review was completed. Searches show no sign that the review has been completed or an October meeting held.

December 2012

Earlier this month the farming press reported that a systematic review of the literature carried out by researchers at UCL, in London and the Open University, with the same lead author, found that low exposure to the chemicals damages ‘neurological and cognitive function’. The research was published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology.

Powerbase reports that some prominent European Food Safety Authority regulators have conflicts of interest, holding positions in organisations that are funded by the same companies whose products they are supposed to regulate – pesticides, genetically modified (GM) foods, and food contaminants.

This report shows that over a period of many years, influential EFSA managers and regulators have been heavily involved with a US-based organisation called the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), which is funded by multinational pesticide, chemical, GM seed,and food companies. The independence of EFSA’s risk assessment processes on pesticides and food safety has been seriously compromised by its close involvement with industry, chiefly represented by ILSI.

QUESTIONS

Is our government also closely involved with industry as we so often report?

Are they also bowing to the industry’s interests at the expense of many, including farmers, soldiers and pilots?

 

Political support for corporate Monsanto which has openly asserted that it need not vouch for the safety of its product

The European Food Safety Authority’s rejection of a study by French scientists linking GM corn to cancer has been widely reported.

This verdict has prompted several journalists to recall and quote the words of director of corporate communications for Monsanto, Phil Angell, who “summed up his company’s take on the issue” in a report by food author Michael Pollan for New York Times Magazine in 1998:

“Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”

Ethically bankrupt but legally in the clear? 

 

Though written in the ‘90s, this article is well worth reading and filing: Michael Pollan, “Playing God in the Garden” New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998.

Monbiot focusses on Neoliberalism: the justification of a global grab of power, public assets and natural resources by an unrestrained elite

Lord Stern has described climate change as “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”

George Monbiot continues:

“In return for 150 years of explosive consumption, much of which does nothing to advance human welfare, we are atomising the natural world and the human systems that depend on it. “The world is in the grip of Neoliberalism, an extreme political doctrine, whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it and appears to be little more than a justification for plutocracy, the ideology used, often retrospectively, to justify a global grab of power, public assets and natural resources by an unrestrained elite.

 

 

“The doctrine was first applied in Chile in 1973. The result was an economic catastrophe, but one in which the rich – who took over Chile’s privatised industries and unprotected natural resources – prospered exceedingly. The creed was taken up by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It was forced upon the poor world by the IMF and the World Bank. By the time James Hansen presented the first detailed attempt to model future temperature rises to the US Senate in 1988(3), the doctrine was being implanted everywhere”.

Those on the PCU mailing list will agree with him that “Neoliberalism protects the interests of the elite against all comers” but most will not side with his decision to support the expansion of the nuclear power industry.

As he says, we should ‘abandon the four-fifths or more of fossil fuel reserves that we cannot afford to burn’ – we add, for more than one season. And many will agree that:

“The struggle against all the crises besetting us cannot be addressed until the doctrine is challenged by effective political alternatives”.

To this end a democratic mobilisation against plutocracy is getting under way:

 Chilean student outriders: ‘Our future is not for sale’

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•  this should start with an effort to reform campaign finance: the means by which corporations and the very rich buy policies and politicians;

• a petition will be launched later this month.

Monbiot advocates a new politics – a more fiery version of the Green Party Manifesto?

• one that sees intervention as legitimate,
• that contains a higher purpose than corporate emancipation disguised as market freedom,
• that puts the survival of people and the living world above the survival of a few favoured industries.

 

 Read the article here, or the fully referenced version at Monbiot.com

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