Saturday, March 26, 2011

TJN joins huge rally in London

TJN was well represented at today's massive trade union rally in London against the government imposed cuts. Special trains and hundreds of coaches from across Britain brought a diverse and good-humoured crowd (the organisers stopped counting at a quarter of a million people) into the capital.


While we enjoyed the carnival atmosphere of the huge rally, it was also gratifying to see how many people were carrying posters making the point that an alternative to public service cuts is to cut Britain's tax gap - estimated at £120 billion. The tax gap is an estimate of losses of revenue due to tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax simply not being collected. Even if just 20 per cent of the gap were collected, the scale of cuts being imposed by the government could be massively reduced.

Away from the trade union march, UK Uncut activists held non-violent sit-down actions across London's West End, closing many stores - the picture below was taken at Dorothy Perkins on Oxford Street [part of Philip Green's retail empire] - and for the first time targeting Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly.


2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where does this 120 billion figure come from.

Do you have examples?

1:46 am  
Blogger TJN said...

The figure of £120 billion is an estimate of the tax gap produced by Tax Research LLP, an independent research group headed by chartered accountant Richard Murphy. This estimate stands in stark contrast to HMG's estimate of the tax gap of £40 billion. Murphy's analysis of the differences between these estimates and the basis on which both are constructed can be read here: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/TaxGapResponse.pdf

12:42 am  

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