Notts Uncut visited Vodafone, NatWest, Top Shop/Top Man and Boots, continuing the UK-wide network of groups’ mission to highlight the massive amount of money avoided by tax avoidance schemes of corporations and money paid to bankers as bonuses after their being bailed out for billions of pounds using public money.
Vodafone’s tax avoidance was sanctioned by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs when an official let the company off passing future trade through Luxembourg with a much reduced tax bill for past trade, allowing the company to avoid £6 billion pounds of tax after the deal was made. Top Shop/Top Man is one of government advisor Sir Philip Green’s high street stores in the ‘Arcadia group’ whose ownership was passed to his wife who is based in the tax haven of Monaco, whisking £285 million of UK tax away in the process. Boots moved it’s HQ to Switzerland recently to avoid £100m of UK tax. All daylight robbery achieved without breaking any windows but by use of the machinery of capitalism that allows money to be moved around the world whilst governments say there is no alternative to cuts in services we need. Another Sir, Richard Branson is considering a move abroad for his Virgin enterprise as the rich show their contempt for the rest of us after using the UK as their money-making playground.
Read story and see photos on Nottingham Indymedia plus more photos on Facebook.
Before the protest, the growing group announced,
“Notts Uncut will be coming together again to remind the tax avoiding banks and corporations based in Nottingham that we haven’t gone away and we haven’t forgotten what they’re up to.
While the Con-Dem government is getting increasingly cut-happy, telling us that there is no money for homeless shelters and women’s refuges, that we can’t afford to give charities government grants, that students must pay £9000 a year for degree courses, that people living on the breadline must survive on less and less there is a select group of people who are not suffering from the cuts – the bankers and corporate fat cats. While ordinary people are suffering these people are still paying multi million pounds worth of bonuses and avoiding billions of pounds worth of tax. Let’s get out there and make sure the government and their super wealthy tax dodging mates know that we’re onto them!!”