Future News (Robin Hood Tax)

Check out this great video "The Robin Hood Tax campaign takes a cheeky look at what the world might be like in 2024, with a tax which tackles extreme poverty, climate change and cuts to public services. Starring Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead), Bill Nighy (Love Actually), Clémence Poésy (Harry Potter), Heike Makatsch (The Book Thief) and Javier Cámara (Bad Education)"

Below is part of a speech I made recently in support of a "Robin Hood (or Tobin) Tax".

"The basic idea behind the Robin Hood tax is very, very simple. It is proposed that an extremely small tax or levy is placed on each share bought or sold of 0.1% - or for a derivative transaction 0.01% of its value.

In a similar way that stamp duty is already put on buying shares in the UK. The primary reason that many people support such a Robin Hood tax is that it could raise billions of pounds from the banks and financial services industry, to help repair the damage caused by them in 2007.

A form of poetic justice on those who at best were reckless - and at worse - fraudulent – and who very nearly destroyed our economy.

This is why it is called the Robin Hood Tax "To take from the rich to give to the poor".

There is one other important reason. To add to the confusion over names, this idea of a very small levy on such transactions was actually originally proposed before the financial crisis - not as a way to provide much needed revenue but as a means to discourage unstable speculative high volume trading on the financial markets by the Nobel prize winner for Economics, James Tobin. 

A tax no matter how small would have damped down such damaging trading. Ironically if we had a Tobin tax before the crash in 2007 it may well have prevented it happening in the first place or at least had made it much less worse.

Don't believe for a nano second the propaganda being put out that this will in some way weaken our financial services and will make them want to leave London for some unstable and corrupt dictatorship abroad.

I was pleased that Ed Balls, our shadow chancellor, announced at Labour Party Conference his support and that of the Party.

So please support the Robin Hood tax  and send a message to the financial markets that not only should they help clear up the message they created in the first place but also what our pension funds, our life insurance and our saving plans want is their money to be invested in long term sustainable growth, not short term risky speculation by spivs and charlatans".

Robin Hood takes on the City Empire

Hat tip TUC ToUChstone "This Wednesday, the annual bankers’ and merchants’ dinner will be held at Mansion House. Before they start quaffing champagne and knocking back the caviar (ok, we’re not certain they’ll be on the menu, but it won’t be pork pies and stout, you can be sure of that!) you can take action to call for an end to the reckless gambling of the finance sector and demand a Robin Hood Tax to control speculation and raise billions every year for good things like spending on education, health and action against climate change here and around the world.

We’ll be playing a giant game of roulette with people’s jobs and lives in an iconic City of London location (to be announced) with a massive Peter Kennard photo-montage as a backdrop.
Come along on Wednesday lunchtime – dress up if you can! – and have fun while making a very serious point. If you can come, register to attend at otudor@tuc.org.uk and we’ll send you details nearer the time.

UNISON NDC 2010: Tobin (Robin Hood) Tax Motion 92

I actually managed to give this speech to conference without being “bumped off”!

"President, conference, John Gray, Housing Association Branch, London region speaking in favour of motion 92.

The Tobin or rather the Robin Hood Tax is a win, win for everyone. Not only a means to redistribute wealth from the very rich to the desperately poor but also a way of trying to ensure financially stability for our economy. Previous speakers have described how this tax is affordable, targeted and can raise large sums of money and the good use it could be put to.

However, we need to remind all members who have funded pension scheme’s or life assurance policies that it is very much in their own personal and collective interests that this tax is brought in. Remember conference that the original aim of the tax was to counter damage caused to economies by short term financial speculators who constantly buy and sell or “churn” currencies, stocks and shares. If by a relatively small tax on every city transaction it will make speculators think twice about such “churn” - then this will benefit not only our economy but our own worker savings.

Conference, don’t think that City speculators have nothing to do with you. For example every 3 months or so, city fund managers come and visit town halls up and down the country about their pension schemes. I’ve been a UNISON pension representative on my mine for 14 years; Pensions are by definition long term investments. What pensions need is investments that are also long term. But what happens in many pension funds at this moment is that we pay huge amounts of money to fund managers, who then spend even more of our money in commissions, buying and selling shares, on a daily or even hourly basis - not that they think these companies are well managed, well run businesses which will provide security and revenue for our pensions but because of short term volatility. This is what is meant by “casino finance”.

Conference, there is plenty of hard evidence that investing for the long term will produce superior investment returns. If our pension funds had been run in the past in our long term interests rather than the short term interests of the people who are employed in our name to run them, then perhaps we would not be having the problems and attacks on our pensions that we see now.

We should of course as unison activists be challenging our managers about their investments but the Robin Hood tax would make churn more expensive and also make it far more difficult for fund managers to justify such speculation.

Conference, please support this motion not least because it not only the right thing to do for your conscious but it will also be the right thing to do for your own pocket.

(I don’t think I will use my notebook to read off a conference speech again – during the speech I kept thinking that I was going to press the wrong key and it would crash! not a very nice feeling to have while in front of 1000 plus folk)

UNISON NDC fringe - Socially just solution to the global economic crisis

This conference fringe on social justice and promoting an alternative to CONDEM savage cuts should be really interesting.

I assume that it will also complement the planned speech to conference on the Thursday morning by Richard Wilkinson about his book (co-authored) “The Spirit Level - Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better”

Robin Hood Tax

Better late than never but I will now join on the band wagon and post the excellent Richard Curtis “YouTube” video staring Bill Nighy. Now the idea that a tiny, tiny 0.05% tax paid on certain big money financial transitions could raise £100 billion plus of revenue to “fight poverty, protect public services and tackle climate change” is deeply attractive to all progressives. I would support such an idea unconditionally for this reason alone.

However, the idea has also been supported as a means of discouraging damaging short term speculation and encouraging long term capital investment (Tobin Tax). Which may actually be even more socially progressive than anything even 0.05% Robin and his merry men delivers.