Monday 20 April 2015

Bribe Follows Bribe Follows Bribe

Peter Lazenby writes:

The Tories were accused yesterday of offering “bribe after bribe after bribe” to voters after David Cameron promised cut-price shares for sale in Lloyds bank if the party win the general election.

Cameron said £4 billion of publicly owned shares would be offered to small shareholders at a “discounted” price of 5 per cent below market value — and said shares worth around £10bn would be sold by May 2016.

But left Labour MP Michael Meacher slammed the offer as a blatant bribe following a series of others dangled before voters, including selling housing association homes at huge discounts.

And he said all banks should be taken into public ownership following repeated financial scandals such as rigged foreign exchange and interest rates, fraudulent payment protection insurance (PPI) and helping companies dodge taxes.

“Bribe follows bribe follows bribe,” he told the Morning Star.

“This whole Tory election campaign is about bribing people — bribing people through the housing association sell-off, bribing the rich by raising inheritance tax limits to£1 million, and now this Lloyds sell-off at a discounted rate.

“It is difficult to see how this is different from the 18th century when they just went out and gave out pound notes to people to vote for them.

“And it is a disgrace that the Tories sell off public property which we all own, and the taxpayer meets the cost.

We are the losers. It is utterly contemptible and totally lacking in principle.”

He called for all banks to be taken into the public sector.

“There is the degree to which banks are responsible for fixing up tax avoidance and evasion — the deceit is unbelievable,” he said.

“They say they have learnt their lesson.

There have been fines of millions of pounds, but the executives responsible are never punished. No-one goes to prison and the fines are paid by the shareholder.

“All the banks ought to be in the public sector. It is the only way they can be operated,” he said.

Chris Leslie, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the Lloyds sale had now been announced seven times.

If, like me, you are averse to the wholesale nationalisation of banking, then we need to come up with a better answer to the concerns expressed by Michael Meacher.

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