Taxes and Benefits

The last few days has seen a big furore over the extent to which the very rich, in Britain, have been seen to avoid and evade paying taxes.  Quite right too, but the reality is that, in a week or so, that furore will have died down again, as some new news story takes its place.  Its quite different with the question of benefits.  Moreover, the general attitude to tax avoidance and evasion is quite different to the attitude to benefits fraud.  Why?

There seems to me to be several answers to this question.  Firstly, despite the fact that its been shown that HSBC were involved, not just in tax avoidance schemes, which are legal, but also helping their clients to evade tax, which is illegal, all the focus has been on a discussion of tax avoidance.  That means that a smokescreen could be thrown up.  So, although most people are appalled, when former Tory co-Treasurer, Lord Fink, stated that tax avoidance is done by everyone, the Tories and their media mouthpieces have been quick to present this as, "Who pays more tax than they need to?  Who doesn't take advantage of Duty Free, or ISA's, and so on?"

But, of course, even within tax avoidance, let alone the illegal tax evasion, that some of these people were involved in, there is a huge and qualitative difference between doing things that are not just legal, but actively encouraged by the government, and doing things which border on being illegal, and which are merely clever manipulations of the rules, so as to avoid paying the tax that the government intended you to pay.  It is not tax avoidance to put money into an ISA, for example, because the government never intended you to pay tax on those small amounts of savings.  On the contrary, the government wanted to encourage you to save money.  The government clearly did not want you to stash millions of pounds away into some obscure scheme, that takes advantage of some badly worded phrase in the tax code, that enables you to get out of paying tax on earnings, the government intended you to pay tax on.

The other argument, that the tax code itself is over complicated, may be valid, but the gigantic number of rules for the benefits system is never considered as a reason even for people being mistaken about what benefits they might have been entitled to claim.  Moreover, if someone is found to have cheated a few extra quid out of the benefits system they end up in jail, whereas the billionaires simply offer to pay an amount of money - often less than they actually owed in tax -  and the HMRC accept it, because they claim they are more interested in getting in the tax.  If they gaoled a load of the tax dodgers, they would soon find the rest were less inclined to engage in such activity in future, and to pay what they owed!

Moreover, one reason the tax code is too big and complicated, is because clever tax accountants, in the past, found ways of getting round it, and in order to close those loopholes, additional legislation and amendments, to the tax code, were required.  Frequently, it has been the same tax accountants that worked on producing the legislation to close those loopholes, who then found lucrative work for themselves advising their super rich clients on how to get around the tax laws they had just been paid by the government to create!  Can you imagine the government asking the CAB or Claimant's Rights organisations to frame Benefits laws?

There is also a qualitative difference between someone saving a few quid by taking advantage of the Duty Free allowance, or taking out an ISA, and someone avoiding paying tens of thousands, and even millions of pounds in tax, because a clever tax accountant has found such a loophole for them.  The fact remains that for the vast majority of the population, they have no choice about avoiding tax on their income, or on the vast majority of their spending.  Their employer deducts directly the Income Tax and National Insurance from their wages, including those bits that go to pay for those commodities that make up the major elements of workers' expenditure on health, education, social care and so on, but over which they have no control.  The vast majority of workers' consumption spending is also directly taxed in the form of VAT and duties, which again are directly collected by the sellers, and handed to the government.  No amount of clever accountants could relieve you of the tax you have to pay by these means.

But, there is another reason why the attitude to the rich getting away with avoiding and evading tax is considered differently, by many people, to the question of a few people fiddling a few extra quid out of the benefits system.  It is that Britain still has a very deferential attitude towards the upper classes - just look at the attitude towards the Monarchy, for example.  They are the biggest benefit scroungers in the country; they live in the biggest council houses in the country, at taxpayers expense; their ancestors acquired wealth and property by the most vicious and widespread murder, and robbery - today it would be considered to be the proceeds of crime, and taken away from them, yet they are continuously fawned over.  When it comes to the super rich, we are also told that they cannot be taxed on their massive wealth and income, because they might decide to take their money elsewhere, which would mean a loss of jobs.

The Left itself does not help in this mindset, because workers are continuously told that the only alternative to ownership of businesses, by this elite of the super rich, is ownership by the capitalist state, whose bureaucrats are frequently interchangeable with the bureaucrats who make up the Boards of Directors of businesses, that oversee the interests of the money lenders!  Workers, having seen that, as employees, they were treated no better, and often worse, by those state run businesses, for example, the experience of BL workers, and the miners during the 1980's, as well as being treated shabbily as consumers, for example, the bureaucratic regimes in respect of council houses, the mistreatment of patients by the NHS, and social care homes and so on, no wonder refuse to see the capitalist state as any kind of real alternative.

But, the statist message of the Left is just as elitist as that of the Tories.  It says, these businesses can only be run by either private capitalists and their representatives, or by the capitalist state, and those same representatives of capital.  Any concept that what these super rich individuals own, in any case, is only money - fictitious capital - and that what really counts is actual productive-capital, in the form of factories, shops, buildings, machines, and so on is lost.  Any idea that the workers could themselves simply take over all of this capital, irrespective of what happens to the stock market prices of bits of paper, or the electronic entries in the accounts of the banks, also disappears.

The role of the super rich is then cast in the public perception as completely different to that of the benefit recipient.  Although, in reality the former is by far the biggest leach on the surplus value produced by workers, the reality is inverted, like a mirror image, so that they appear not just fundamental to production, but the actual source of the profits made by businesses.  By contrast, the benefits recipient, who is the victim of the system, and frequently a bigger creator of surplus value than a drain upon it, is turned into the main leach on society.

Moreover, there is a deeper psychological factor taking place here.  One reason that the rich are able to get away with the continuance of such an unequal society, is the suspension of disbelief by the vast majority.  The chances of winning the Jackpot on the Euromillions are infinitessimally small, and yet people do the lottery in the hope of winning, just as in the past they did the football pools.  A survey a while ago found that a majority of people saw the way of getting rich being by either winning in such a lottery, getting a big compensation payout, becoming a top class sportsperson or entertainer, or getting onto a TV show like Big Brother!  Few thought that it was possible to get rich by actually working.

And the fact is that, the majority of people have a different attitude to the rich than they do to the poor, because of this simple fact - most people would hope to be rich, and very few hope to be poor! Its rather like Kant's Categorical Imperative, that says that a moral law is only valid if it is universalisable. That is, I can only logically support a moral principle, if I would be happy with that principle also applying to me.  Because most people want to be rich, and are prepared to suspend disbelief, so as to think that maybe someday they will be, few want to adopt a moral principle that the rich should be dispossessed, or even taxed heavily, because, in the back of their mind, is that nagging feeling, what if it was me.  By contrast, few people want to be poor, and so, although there is more chance they might end up in that position, they are more likely to be unmoved by attacks on them, more likely to be indignant at any supposed infringements they might undertake.

But, of course, there is another factor.  The media have been full of the reports over tax, in the last few days, but in a week or so that will have subsided.  We will not, for example, have long running weekly serials entitled "Tax Dodger Street", in the way we have "Benefits Street"; we will not have daily day time programmes, presented by odious TV presenters, entitled "Saints and Rich Tax Evaders"; we will not have the gutter press running endless stories about unnamed rich tax dodgers, who have been provided with free Lamborghinis, and mansions, in the same way those rags run stories about claimants and immigrants being given such phantom largesse.

But, in a sense, it is in any case all a charade.  The reality is that even if the super rich did pay their fair share of tax, it would change nothing fundamentally.  What they paid in tax on the one hand, thereby reducing the tax that workers had to pay, they would simply claw back over time, by reducing workers wages, by the amount of tax those workers had saved.  The real issue here is that the tax avoidance and evasion amounts to a redistribution of wealth and income amongst the capitalist class themselves, favouring the money-lending capitalists over the productive-capitalists, just as the benefits system, and welfare state, only redistributes income within the working-class, usually from the better paid workers to the worst paid workers, but not always, as things like subsidised tuition fees favour the middle class and better paid workers whose children are more likely to go to University.

As Marx long ago pointed out, none of these tax and benefit measures can affect anything substantially.  As he pointed out in relation to tax.

"No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital."

And his only reason for supporting direct taxation over indirect taxation was because it was more open, and enabled tax payers to see how much running the state was costing them. It was then a reason for workers to restrict the growth of the state, and focus instead on their own self-government.

"Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government."

(Instructions For Delegates to the Provisional Council of the First International)

But, moreover, any such tinkering could make no real difference, because ultimately the distribution of income and wealth is a function of the production of wealth and income.  So long as capital is owned and controlled by a few they will continue to derive the majority of the income and wealth produced by that capital.  Only when workers establish their own co-operative property on a large scale, will the distribution of wealth and income be changed fundamentally.

"Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labour power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?"

(Critique of the Gotha Programme)

The furore over tax avoidance and evasion shows just how removed the Tories are from the reality of life for the vast majority.  But, we should not be fooled by that into thinking that a Fabian/Lassallean style programme of tax redistribution can make any significant change for workers to the causes of inequality in wealth, income and power.  Only a change in the ownership of the means of production can do that.  It is why we should promote the development of worker owned and controlled co-operatives, and the development of workers' self-government as an alternative form of democracy based upon it.

Bosses, Businesses, Billionaires and Banks

The attempt by the Tories, their billionaire friends, and the media to paint Labour as “anti-business” has rapidly blown up in their face. If anyone had forgotten that it was these same billionaires, and their representatives in the banks that not only caused the worst financial crisis in history in 2008, that threatened to cause a severe economic crisis; if anyone had forgotten that it was those same billionaires that have been seen to have been doing all in their power to avoid and evade paying tax, and yet have got their Tory friends to impose swingeing tax increases, and benefit and service cuts on the rest of the population, to pay for the crisis they caused, then the recent revelations that HSBC has not only provided those billionaires with advice as to how to avoid tax, but also facilitated them in evading tax (which is a crime) should have acted to remind them. That comes on top of the criminal activities of the banks themselves in actions such as the rigging of the LIBOR rate. But, its also no surprise that although the HMRC knew about this activity by HSBC back in 2010, the Tories have done nothing to prosecute anyone. No surprise, because this is the same Tory government that has brought in tax cuts for the super rich, and which has provided Hedge Funds with a £150 million tax saving on their Stamp Duty, whilst those same Hedge Funds have provided the Tories with £50 million in donations!

What the Tories mean when they say that Labour is “anti-business” is that they are mildly “anti” those fat cats that sit atop these businesses and rake off millions of pounds a year in salaries, and other forms of remuneration, but whose contribution to those businesses is, in reality negligible. The same few bureaucrats circulate around the world's top businesses, in the same way that football managers circulate around the world's top football clubs. Whenever a business does badly, its rarely attributed to the performance of the Chief Executive, whilst every success we are told is a result of their unique talents, rather than the talents of the thousands of workers and actual managers in the business, that operate it on a daily basis. These top Directors of the company, are in reality not there to represent the interests of the business itself, but of the money-lending capitalists who own the shares and bonds issued by the company. In other words they represent the interests of fictitious capital against the interests of real productive-capital.

As Marx put it in Capital III, Chapter 27,

“Transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, administrator of other people's capital, and of the owner of capital into a mere owner, a mere money-capitalist. Even if the dividends which they receive include the interest and the profit of enterprise, i.e., the total profit (for the salary of the manager is, or should be, simply the wage of a specific type of skilled labour, whose price is regulated in the labour-market like that of any other labour), this total profit is henceforth received only in the form of interest, i.e., as mere compensation for owning capital that now is entirely divorced from the function in the actual process of reproduction, just as this function in the person of the manager is divorced from ownership of capital...

It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.”

Increasingly, Marx says, these functioning capitalists, the day to day managers of the business are in nature more and more like workers than capitalists. This is particularly the case as the extension of Public Education by capital to provide wider layers of the population with the kinds of administrative, technical and managerial skills required to perform this function increases the supply of such workers and pushes down their wages.  In fact, those "functioning-capitalists" the day to day managers, are just as likely to themselves be members of trades unions like MSF, and to be members of the Labour Party, or other social-democratic parties, if not more so, given their higher level of education, than any other worker.

It is this division of material interest between fictitious capital, speculative, money-lending capital on the one hand, and big industrial capital on the other, which is a fundamental factor in the ideological divide between conservatism and social-democracy, together with the fact that conservatism is also based upon those reactionary sections of small capital, whose very existence is itself threatened by big industrial capital.

“Aside from the stock-company business, which represents the abolition of capitalist private industry on the basis of the capitalist system itself and destroys private industry as it expands and invades new spheres of production, credit offers to the individual capitalist; or to one who is regarded a capitalist, absolute control within certain limits over the capital and property of others, and thereby over the labour of others. The control over social capital, not the individual capital of his own, gives him control of social labour. The capital itself, which a man really owns or is supposed to own in the opinion of the public, becomes purely a basis for the superstructure of credit... Success and failure both lead here to a centralisation of capital, and thus to expropriation on the most enormous scale. Expropriation extends here from the direct producers to the smaller and the medium-sized capitalists themselves. It is the point of departure for the capitalist mode of production; its accomplishment is the goal of this production. In the last instance, it aims at the expropriation of the means of production from all individuals.”

(Capital III, Chapter 27)

Its no wonder then that when the Tories speak about the interests of “business”, they do not really mean the interest of actual businesses, certainly not big industrial businesses, but mean the interests of these billionaires, and representatives of fictitious capital. Its notable that the examples of this “anti-business” attitude that have been cited come down to policies such as the introduction of the Mansion Tax, or clamp downs on the kind of tax avoidance and tax evasion that the revelations about HSBC have brought to light. In other words, not measures against the interests of business, but measures aimed at making these billionaires pay their fair share of tax. The real “anti-business” attitude is that of the Tories, such as their opposition to the EU, which is a requirement for the accumulation of capital on a rational basis, and their policies of austerity, which are an attempt to protect the value of fictitious capital, at the expense of destroying vast swathes of real productive-capital, a policy whose most clear manifestation has been the devastation caused in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

The Tories have claimed that such policies as the Mansion Tax or other such policies against these fat cats is anti-business, because it would stop such people coming to Britain, and investing their money in creating businesses here.  But, this is is complete nonsense for various reasons.  Firstly, it demonstrates why the Tories are so anti-Europe, because a real European state, and single market would have common rules that would prevent such cherry picking by the leaches.  More importantly, it is nonsense because, as Marx describes above, these directors do not invest their own money in these businesses.  They are only bureaucrats appointed by the shareholders to oversee their interests. Often the actual money-capital that is invested in these businesses, that was used to buy the initial productive-capital itself came from the accumulation of money-capital within the economy.

In fact, around £800 billion of the money-capital invested in Britain comes not from these capitalists, but from workers themselves.  It is the money they have accumulated in their pension schemes, but over which they are allowed no democratic control.  That control is exercised by the banks and financial institutions that rake off billions of pounds in commissions and back handers, for doing so. It is a control that is often used against the interests of the workers whose funds it actually is.  But, more significantly, the vast majority of the actual productive-capital employed by businesses does not come from these fat cat tax dodgers, it comes directly out of the profits made by the company itself, a profit which itself has been created by the workers in the business.   

The Tories when they speak about business simply equate it with the interests of these billionaires, and their representatives who sit on the Boards of Directors of companies, looking after their interests. They do not mean the thousands of workers who actually comprise any business, or even the practical managers of those businesses, who are the ones who day to day make the decisions that formerly would have been taken by the private capitalist. And they cannot do so, because it is the unity of interests between all of the workers in the business, and those workers that comprise the “functioning capitalists”, the practical managers, that creates the material basis for the ideology of social democracy, an ideology, which, whilst not socialist, stands in opposition to that of conservatism.

In the 19th century, the Tories represented the interests of all those unproductive classes that leached off the productive classes, as Adam Smith called them (the workers and capitalists).  They represented the interests of the landlords, the clergy, and the money lenders.  It was the Liberals that represented the interests of industrial capital, pulling the industrial workers along in their toe. Nothing fundamental has changed other than today, it is the Labour Party that represents that social-democratic ideology.  Far from being “anti-business”, it is social-democratic parties like the Labour Party, or the US Democrats, that are the true “pro-business” parties, from the perspective of advocating ideas that facilitate the accumulation of industrial capital.

After Cyprus, Who's Next

So far, Russia has turned down any offer to get involved in bailing out Cyprus. That could be because Cyprus has not been prepared to offer Russia the things in return it requires, such as control over the gas reserves, and a warm water port, or at least not at a price Russia feels it has to pay given the situation. In response, the EU and IMF have toughened their stance to an extent that it looks like Cyprus may be forced out of the Eurozone, because the changed conditions mean that any bail-out is likely to be insufficient to deal with the now bigger problem. Already, Cyprus is talking about 20% levies on deposits over €100,000, but also the introduction of capital controls to prevent large scale capital flight, if and when its banks do open. Capital controls themselves breach EU rules, which insist upon the free movement of Capital and Labour, though their introduction was mooted last year in response to the potential capital flight from Spain, Italy and Portugal.

A lot of the coverage of events in Cyprus, and the complaints raised by other EU states are hypocritical. Cyprus is not, after all the only EU country that is host to large amounts of Russian money. The London property market has been massively inflated upon a sea of Russian money, much of it of dubious origin. The events surrounding the death of Boris Berezovsky today are just one aspect of that. But, there are lots of other property developments in London that have forced up property prices on similar grounds. For example, their have been numerous property developments that have occurred with no real intention of providing immediate shelter for anyone, but instead have been investment vehicles for foreign money, that is happy to simply allow the property to remain empty, while the owners benefit from rising prices, whilst paying no Council Tax even.

Britain is particularly hypocritical in its criticisms over the use of Cyprus as a tax haven given its role in that regard. Places like the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands only survive, because they are even bigger tax havens than Cyprus. There can be little doubt that the same Russian money that went into Cyprus, that goes into London property, will also be tucked away in places like the Isle of Man, and the Channel Isles. These purpose built tax havens created by Britain, so that its rich can conveniently shelter their funds away from the tax man, have the benefit of paying no tax to Britain, elect their own Parliaments to keep those benefits in tact, and yet have all the benefits that British residents have to pay for, such as defence against attack, and so on.

Even less than Cyprus do these tiny British enclaves of tax exiles, have anything they can rely on other than the inflow of funds from the rich. If the Russians and other global rent seekers, decide that after Cyprus, their funds are not particularly safe anywhere in Europe, these tax havens could also see massive outflows. Given that many of the banks that operate there are themselves branches of British banks, that could have a significant effect on them. No doubt, they too, will then be looking to the British taxpayers once again to bail-them out. Its time that Britain ended the charade with these tax havens. Either they are part of the British State or they are not. They should be asked to either be governed by the British Parliament, pay British taxes and so on, or else separate themselves entirely. That would mean them having to pay for their own defence, their own health service and so on.

But, for Europe there is a much bigger problem. Much has been said about the fact that the deposits of the Cypriot banks amounted to 8 times its GDP. But, of course, Cyprus' GDP is tiny. Its less than the annual income of a large company like Apple. Apple, with its $140 billion of cash sitting on its Balance Sheet, could have bailed out Cyprus 20 times over! A country with a much bigger GDP, and with a much bigger proportion of deposits to its GDP is – Luxembourg. In 2011, according to this IMF document,

“Luxembourg’s financial sector is exceptionally large and globally interconnected (Table 1). It represents about one-fourth of Luxembourg’s GDP, one-third of its tax revenues, and 12.5 percent of its labour force. It comprises the banking industry, with total assets surpassing 20 times GDP; the investment fund industry, with assets under management equivalent to around 50 times GDP; and the insurance industry, with an aggregate balance sheet of about four times GDP. Luxembourg’s international financial centre has strong

linkages with France, Germany, Italy, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Box 1), and is driven by private banking and investment fund activities (Figures 1 and 2). Its monetary and financial institutions (MFIs) intermediate about 16 percent of total cross-border exposures among Euro area MFIs.1”

Cyprus' GDP is $22.5 billion, whereas Luxembourg's GDP is $55 billion, which means the total exposure is that much greater in Luxembourg than in Cyprus. But, the problem for Luxembourg is that much greater, because of the interconnectivity of its financial system with that of the rest of Europe.

According to the IMF,

“Luxembourg’s banks are mostly foreign-owned and net providers of liquidity to their parent groups. The banking sector accounts for about 28 percent of total financial sector assets. As of June 2010, there were 149 banks operating in Luxembourg. However,

most banks and 90 percent of total bank assets are foreign-owned. The majority of these groups operate through both subsidiaries and branches in Luxembourg, which provides flexibility to accommodate clients’ needs for financial services and to optimize funding operations with parent groups. Indeed, reflecting the liquidity generated by treasury

management for institutional customers, as well as private banking and custody activities, the local banking system is a net provider of liquidity to parent banks (“upstreaming”). Overall, interbank positions represent about half of bank assets and liabilities (compared to an average of about 28 percent in the euro area), two thirds of these interbank positions are cross-border exposures, and intra-group exposures account for about 40 percent of total bank assets.”

And,

“Luxembourg is the world’s second largest centre for investment funds after the United States. Investment funds domiciled and marketed in Luxembourg account for about 70 percent of its total financial sector assets, and about 30 percent of total assets under management by European funds. Fund sponsors mainly originate from Europe and the United States. Funds domiciled in Luxembourg are generally managed from other international financial centers. Fund shares are distributed in other European countries through an extensive use of the European passport, as well as to investors worldwide (particularly Asia). MMFs represent a fifth of Luxembourg’s investment funds and more than 25 percent of total European MMF assets under management.”

The tiny Northern Rock was the canary in the coal mine.

In other words, Luxembourg represents a much bigger threat to European, and therefore, global financial security than Cyprus ever could. But, the measures undertaken in Cyprus, in particular the expropriation of Cypriot bank funds, and the reneging on the Bank Deposit Guarantee, must now mean that this foreign money must be removing itself from Luxembourg as fast as it can! All eyes are currently on Cyprus, and from there to Spain and Italy, but the real focus should be on these other tiny economies, where contagion is likely to spread to first, but which represent a much bigger systemic threat than does Cyprus.

Many more could be asking the same question - "Where is my money?"

That is not to say that if you have money in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, or Ireland you shouldn't be getting it out as soon as you can find some alternative safe home for it. A rush for the doors in Luxembourg, the Channel Isles, Isle of Man, and other small states like Malta, will crush their banks and their economies even more severely than in Cyprus, but because those banks are largely foreign owned, and tightly enmeshed in the European, and global banking system, the ramifications will send shock waves around the globe, and the first banks to get swamped by the tsunami will be in those weaker economies like Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Ireland. Far better to move to higher ground well in advance of any potential flood than to wait until its lapping your ankles.

But, Britain would not escape such a situation. Nigel Farage has called on the government to give a public statement saying that the existing Bank Deposit Guarantee will not be infringed, and Government Ministers have come out to say that of course there is no chance that they would renege upon it. Well, given that the EU and IMF called for it to be scrapped in Cyprus, we now know how much such government backed guarantees are worth! In fact, of course, the British Government is already imposing such expropriation on British savers via Financial Repression.

On the one hand, money printing by the Bank of England is crushing the value of the pound, thereby pushing up inflation. On the other hand, that same money printing means that savers are able to get nothing in interest on their savings. With inflation at real levels way over 3%, and after tax interest rates at around 1%, British savers have already had around 10% of their bank deposits taken from them over the last 3 or 4 years. Those that have been encouraged to save for a lifetime in a pension fund now find that this same money printing means that the annuity they can get on their pension pot is virtually worthless. Given that the British Government has already been filching money from savers in this way, there can be little doubt that if push comes to shove, and they need to save the necks of their friends in the banks, they will take even more arbitrary action to do so.

Apparently, sellers of safes are doing good business at the moment. But, as the Foreign Office pointed out in recommending that British tourists take plenty of Euros with them to Cyprus, beware of thieves. There again deciding exactly who the thieves are now, is not that clear.