Thursday, February 11, 2010

Robin Hood Tax campaign nobbled by City firms

An extraordinary story in The Guardian this morning, on a subject we recently blogged:

"Campaigners for a "Robin Hood tax" watched with alarm as thousands of votes poured into their website, rejecting their proposal for a levy on City wheeler-dealing, to raise money to fight poverty and climate change."

Almost 5,000 votes poured in within 20 minutes. Interesting, the campaigners thought. So they investigated. What did they find? These votes

"turned out to emanate from just two computer servers, one of which was registered to the investment bank Goldman Sachs."


Sigh. We're quite used to it. Try editing Wikipedia on tax havens, and see what happens. Within hours, the edits will have been removed or amended or trashed. Goldman says it is investigating the matter "fully." And:

"Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, indicated to the chancellor, Alistair Darling, at last week's G7 summit in Canada that America could support the idea of an international bank tax, and the prime minister has since said he hopes the principles of a worldwide levy can be agreed by the summer."

1 Comments:

Anonymous Helen said...

There is a verb for it.
It's 'pharyngulate ' See PZ Myers blog or http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pharyngulate

5:48 am  

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