With the tents coming down all over North America the big question is what happens next?

There are plenty of people who think the New York City authorities have done Occupy Wall Street a favour by “providing a dramatic ending”. 

Here in Canada from Vancouver to Halifax, Occupy protestors are being told to pack up and move on.

Some commentators say eviction needn’t mean defeat. We are told protestors can redirect their energies towards changing the tax code!

If only!

That would mean getting involved in mainstream political parties and, even then, there is no guarantee things would change. The wealth gap in the UK grows inexorably, for the most part without comment. 

How many people in Britain’s Labour Party for example are calling loudly and persistently for a return to progressive taxation?  Not many. Some influential voices, incredibly, want to see the 50p top rate on incomes over £150,000 jettisoned asap.

Seems to me the rage over growing inequality must come from outside the political parties who are compromised by their years of inaction.

Indeed, the Occupy protestors now have some unlikely allies. American millionaires are pleading with Congress to have incomes over $1 million taxed more heavily. They say that private jets should no longer be tax deductible!

I hope the Occupy movement will morph and survive in some form until the issue at the heart of the protest is seriously addressed.

The parasitic super rich are getting ever more wealthy while the rest tread water or see their incomes fall.

The top1% in America are now in a league of their own.

A fact confirmed by a weighty report from the US Congressional Budget Office (see attachment).  Astonishingly, the richest 1% of Americans own a third of US net worth.

But it is not just wealthy individuals who are playing the system. The pressure group Citizens for Tax Justice tell us the most profitable 280 US Corporations shelter half their profits from tax. 

Tax dodgers in Canada and in the UK adopt similar strategies and, in every case, a pusillanimous political establishment lacks the courage to act. 

The politicians need to feel as outraged about income inequality as the rest of us if things are to change.

Until they do, we need Occupy.

Ashcroft sues the BBC

I see Michael Ashcroft is back in Court again.

The impertinent tax cheat is suing the BBC over allegations about his tax affairs which were made in the Panorama programme broadcast in October 2010.

The BBC should respond by making a docu-drama on how Ashcroft cheated his way to a peerage in 2000. The material is all there.

And, as we all know, truth is an absolute defence.

A recent report by academics at UCL (see attachment) on the impact of the Freedom of Information Act says this: 

…Ashcroft had committed to changing his tax status on receipt of his peerage, but FOI revealed this promise had not been kept. A clause was added to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill 2010 requiring members of both Houses to be treated as resident and domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. Five peers chose to leave the Lords, while others, including Ashcroft, changed their tax arrangements in order to remain.

The Panorama programme can be accessed via the Turks and Caicos Sun which helpfully keeps an eye on the old fraudster. Click on “Ashcroft’s millions” .

Attachments:

Congressional Budget Office report on household income.pdf	[Household Income. Congressional Budget Office]	1646 Kb
FoI report. UCL Constitution Unit.pdf	[Freedom of Information Act - UCL report, September 2011]	409 Kb