Former commissioner backs an EU presence
Friday 25th September 2009, 1:00PM BST.
GUERNSEY should increase its representation at the EU, according to a former commissioner.
Czech politician Pavel Telicka (pictured), who in 2004 became an EU commissioner in the Prodi Commission and who was thanked for helping the Czech Republic enter the Union, said the island barely registered with it at present.
‘To be frank, as Guernsey is not a member and has special status, I do not think there is ever a lot of focus on it,’ he said.
He said it listed similarly to many other small nations, organisations and companies.
‘How is Guernsey viewed? Not very much at all.’
However, he said it was highly regarded in certain circles, especially after signing various transparency agreements.
‘With reference to the finance sector I would say it is viewed positively by those people in the EU who deal with it.
‘I know very well that Guernsey is now a part of the white list.’
Mr Telicka commended the idea of setting up a permanent presence in Brussels in order to be better involved.
But he said that could achieve more if Guernsey teamed up with its neighbouring islands.
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The EU will attempt to force us into it as it grows in power and then God forbid!
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I’m not quite sure what Mr Telicka is getting at here as his comments would seem to indicate that he thinks Guernsey wants to join the EU at some point. Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought the general consensus was completely the opposite.
In fact I’m sure some folk would argue that this lack of attention to Guernsey in the EU is a good thing, calling attention to ourselves in Brussels wouldn’t be too clever and the less the EU thinks about Guernsey the better.
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Can someone help mere here as I’m not quite sure what Mr Telicka is getting at. Is it just me or do his comments seem to indicate that he thinks Guernsey wants to join the EU at some point? Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought the general consensus was completely the opposite.
In fact I’m sure some folk would argue that this lack of attention to Guernsey in the EU is a good thing; calling attention to ourselves in Brussels wouldn’t be too clever and the less the EU bureaucrats think about Guernsey the better.
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I am fairly ambivalent about the idea of formalising and expanding our presence in Brussels. I suppose it’s an interesting idea worthy of consideration in principle.
As readers of the Press will know, it is one of eight new revenue initiatives for 2010 proposed by the Policy Council as part of the States Strategic Plan, which will be debated in October.
So the immediate question for the States is whether establishing an office in Brussels next year – at a cost of £200,000 – should be afforded higher priority than, for example, the drug and alcohol strategy, bowel cancer screening, porters for the new clinical block at the PEH, provision of a wheelchair service, appointment of a disability officer, or developing facilities to enable the separation of adults and children at The Croft, all of which would cost about the same as the office in Brussels, but none of which have not been recommended for 2010 by the Policy Council.
Should be an interesting debate!
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Listening to GIBA president Paul Meader on BBC Guernsey’s phone-in just now, I’m convinced that spending £200,000 on a Brussels office is essential. He made some very sobering comments indeed about needing to invest to counter the EU threat.
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Martino
We are in structural deficit as a result of the finance industry. Tax competition is harming us. The whole basis of the idea is to attract high growth in an industry that can only grow if propped up by the global taxpayer, both in the bail outs and for the source of the original capital.
The only sobering thought was the man’s assertion that without finance we won’t have new services.
But we have finance and we haven’t had those services.
Opening an office in Brussels to lobby for decisions that enable tax dodgers to have more freedoms than the rest of us?
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I feel the Brussels office plan will sprout into another taxpayer financed exercise money eater like Guernsey Finance.
I thought (silly me) that Mr Meader was going to suggest the finance industry would pay for the Brussels office out of the £80 million plus annual windfall courtesy of Zero 10.
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So what are you asserting Arnald?
That we should give up the business that is the mainstay of our economy and from which you, yourself, materially benefit, either directly or indirectly?
In which case that business from ‘tax dodgers’ will just move to another jurisdiction somewhere else in the world and your mythical ‘global taxpayer’ still will be ‘propping up’ the same industry but elsewhere?
And please don’t bore me with one of your hysterical rants on behalf of ‘the world’s poor’. This is faux, bleeding heart sentiment at its worst and we all can see straight through it. Just answer the question.
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Stephen, could you point out how your quantify the £80mio+ windfall due to zero-10? I would have thought that the credit crunch reduced a huge amount of profit from Guernsey based companies (Mr Meader’s own company included), so suggesting an £80mio+ benefit might not be correct.
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Martino
If that was from any other poster I would have read it as a well observed satire on the ‘banker’ stereotype.
Unfortunately not. Do you wince when you are peer-pressured into sponsoring a relative to raise money for some clean water in some village or other? Do you dread the office envelope and laugh internally at what would drive someone to swim the Channel to help some made up problem in a probably made up country?
Putting my bleeding heart to one side – it may distract from all that world-class, above-weight punching activity – I’ll answer the question. Just.
I have always laboured under the illusion that it would be possible to remove the facility for people to cheat and promote good governance as a means of ensuring that tax is spent in the most efficient ways to progress the development, and so wealth generating opportunities, for the greatest number of people would be a no brainer. It’s a win-win. We get rid of the tiny proportion of cheats and send a clear message to the world. But you’ve added an extra dimension. Are you implying that there is so much business that relies on secrecy and short-termism that Guernsey would collapse as they fled to another forgotten-about shed, full of empty bottles of sherry and 1980s copies of Escort magazine (the richest and/or loudest of them get to keep the Christmas edition, I heard, in Jersey, for a whole week, I overheard a banker discreetly yelling in my face in a pub) (All the lawyers come down in full camo-gear, Dad’s Army style, to hide them away from all those thieving unemployed and hoaxing disabled that fill up the tv with their hammy acting and BBC hysteria.)?
Are you accusing the majority of the hoarders and gamblers we privilege with our Royal ability to change our laws to suit them above all else of having something to hide? Would realising that they have a civic responsibility be too much for their precious constitutions?
Oh My. Don’t tell anyone, They may question your employment contract.
Of course unilateral action would be reckless without a mature enough alternative business. But. Wait. A. Minute.
Aren’t we blessed with the best brains for weasling our way around pesky problems like international taxation and that pesky communist Gordon Brown? Aren’t we, like, sophisticated? Complicatedly The Best?
Well they’re not doing much for our long term survival then, are they? £200K to open an office so that we have a person in a suit ready to harrass someone and forcing a European to understand the benefit of letting their rich people and major corporations take the michael out of the very governments that gave them the inch (in the name of competition) in the first place is actually being done with white-list whiteness and in fact the tax they don’t pay goes, via reassuringly high fees, to provide healthy local-economy-distorting wages for some of the best guys you could ever meet?
(All the rest of it either causes recessions or makes self important Establishment Rascal arms dealers to African drugged up child soldiers even more obscenely rich – statistically probably at the same, amusing time).
*and breathe*
All the time that Mandelson and his many political secret admirers are around we don’t need another apologist reminding them quite how much power we can wield on countries that desperately need more revenue from the people they have nurtured to success.
But aside from that, why aren’t these super-men devising some long term plan for a non-theft based economy? They claim to ‘love’ the island, yet on the radio they don’t love it quite enough to suggest contributing a bit more, and then assessing which service to deny to someone who needs it to achieve a very basic quality of life.
The answer is that they don’t give a monkeys about Guernsey as a place where people live and die, aside from stability, geography and a resolute desire for an independent identity, they are willing to up and leave, multinats included, oddly, to not lose a few percent on the profits made on the back of our tax haven suitability checklist.
So what you are resigned to is that it’ll take the likes of an irate, local-paper website Here’sMyTuppenceworth junkie to come up with a viable alternative to an industry that can create money from nowhere, that pays for the motor and “oh what a lovely view I’ve got from my office window, lucky really, as I’ll be spending the next 1 million hours a week in here, just so YOU can afford a meal out once a month (providing any of my millions of weekly hours of genius hasn’t caused the interest rates on your mortgage to go up, or maybe the oil price rise I’ve backed heavily with your pension could put you out of business).”?
Frankly, I’m flattered, but I’m far too faux to think of a suggestion that will revolutionise Guernsey into a sustainable economy, preferably one that I don’t fret too much about at midnight on a Sunday (when I should be out building a gulag, or a turnip or something with a bushy moustache. Out of potatoes.)
So in summary: what was the question?
Thanks for asking it anyway.
No, really.
PS Having an office in Brussels makes good business sense, it is a shame that ‘representing Guernsey’s interests’ carries such a negative connotation. You’re right, the politicians have let this go way too far for any idealistic hubris. Seriously, I had no idea that the level of de facto fraud was so high that it paid for my cornflakes. Can’t you extrapolate the likely future scenario after frenzied competition amongst tax havens (caused by unrealistic growth targets needed to mitigate the cost of the ‘incentives’) for more and more wealth (owned by fewer people) to pass through without any democratically mandated taxation in any jurisdiction?
Good solid ideology, that. Instills national pride.
Anything else I can help you with?
GCSE homework?
I do after dinner speaking as well, mainly directly at the telly, but I’ll do functions and weddings if you want. I’m cheap.
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Ha ha ; In just love reading ‘Arnald’s letters. of course he will get people who try to unnerve him: think on, you’ll never do that. he’s wiser than most, and it’s that that annoys them.
Carry On ARNALD.
‘You make my day every day.
As for why we are dependent on the ‘Havens’ is quite simple really- It cost a mint for the occupation of their cousins, and they in turn refused to allow us to claim compensation.
‘
SO we were left with a bill for danmages, and for the upkeep of the Nazis.
‘
To me and to many who lived under those years we will never forgive, or forget how we were treated at wars end.
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Way-to-go! Arnald’s found a friend in eric!
Prepare for a synergetic blend of new age nationalism!
“Get off my land but do it really nicely!”
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JL Seagull.
Perhaps the truth DOES hurt, so flapping your wings doesn’t say much.
Why is it whenever someone agrees with another poster; One that some says what he thinks, and another who agrees, people like you Seagull, try to belittle.
Is it because you cannot understand the way we as Islanders have to put up with all the nonsense that you choose no throw.
Try discussing, not cussing.
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ERIC are you kidding me?? ‘Try discussing, not cussing’ you couldn’t be a bigger hypercritic if you tried! Every so often i come on this site as it used be a pleasant place for non-aggressive debate.. That was till YOU ERIC showed up.
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Oops! I seem to have touched a nerve!!!
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Has this site recently become a forum for the mentally deranged to vent their spleen?
Arnald appears to have lost the plot completely, and Eric is being dragged along with him, it’s hilarious!
Personally Arnald I don’t know how you allow yourself to live in such a despicable island, benefiting from the incalculable damage that Guernsey has caused to the third world. I hope that you remember that each time you turn a tap on, or flush your toilet, or walk on the pavement, or drive on the road, or use the harbour, the airport, the beaches, the parks etc, THERE’S AFRICAN BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!!
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Unreal;
If there is any hypocrisy in this blog it comes from the likes of you and your soul mates-
You all still believe in your colonies, and are astounded when some revolt.
‘you have a nerve to spout out when the English live in a land and control a Land they stole from the Brits.
Go to your corner Unreal, for that is what you are, unreal. Should anyone speak out against any of nyou, you always without hindrance bring up WW2, that is you sole defence lately.
You cry down the French as you have done for centuries, yet the Maquis did a hell of lot more than you give them credit for.
‘But you love to mock as you did in your serial on TV, ‘Allo Allo..
Yet you are pleased to be the biggest consumer of French wines. Double play is the game, and you lot are masters of the game.
‘
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Phil
Understanding the problem is the first step towards rehabilitation.
It’s not the island at fault. It’s the people exploiting it. There wouldn’t be a problem if you all weren’t so pleased with the fact that you can hide criminality and dubious morals here.
It’s your attitude that is damaging Guernsey’s reputation, not mine.
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Arnald
I wasn’t suggesting that you are damaging Guernsey’s reputation, I was merely pointing out that I fail to understand how you can live in an island whose business practices (the source of its tax revenue) you obviously despise so much.
For instance, I would not feel comfortable living in a jurisdiction that raised its tax revenue through allowing human trafficking, or the exploitation of children say.
Yet you appear to be willing to benefit from taxes raised (directly or indirectly) from Guernsey’s finance industry, an industry that you obviously abhor.
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I despise the denials of obvious truths.
Why must I not have my opinion without getting the first boat out?
If you were living in a place like you describe, would you not complain about your discomfort?
More irrelevant nonsense.
next.
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You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, I have never suggested otherwise. My point is that you have virtually zero chance of anybody with any influence taking any notice of your rants.
I would of course complain about any practices that I found morally reprehensible, then, upon realising that I was banging my head against the proverbial brick wall, I would almost certainly leave as my conscience would not allow my to stay and benefit from such foul practices. You evidently don’t have that problem.
As for irrelevant nonsense, I shall take that as a compliment, coming as it does from the master of meaningless twaddle.
Oh, and as you despise the denial of obvious truths, here’s one to get your head around; I have not yet seen an instance where your arguments win through against logical, unsentimental opposition (from David primarily). You simply switch tangents and begin to rant uncontrollably about all of the (perceived) harm that is being caused to the poorer off in the world as a result of Guernsey’s finance industry. Is that deniable?
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Arnald
In this thread you state “Why must I not have my opinion without getting the first boat out?”, this was in response to another writer who asked “how you can live in an island whose business practices (the source of its tax revenue) you obviously despise so much.”
Yet in another thread you stated “If someone doesn’t like the tax regime in one country, they should physically leave”
You don’t appear to like the tax regime in Guernsey based on many of your comments so one must ask the question are you going?
This is not the first time I have picked up on your contradictory posts and adds weight to my opinion that you are merely a troll*
*In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion
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Captain Oveur
To clarify. If someone doesn’t like their personal tax burden they could move domicile to seek that satisfaction. Using smoke and mirrors to pretend that everything you do is somewhere else is not the same.
Selling that service is not the same as selling investment products or family settlements and all the other stuff.
Of course I understand that sometimes secrecy is needed in dire circumstances, but that should based on a case-by-case assessment, not given as a right.
Whatever my personal gripes with the rest of the business we do, and that is irrelevant as I recognise that it’s driven by a distrust of it all; it is the idea that the services are sought by a section of society that believes it has the right not to play by the same rules as the rest of us, and who then demand stringent controls over how society develops. By taking the money from the real economy, the few business leaders then take it all out of circulation. Some of it comes back as spending, some as investment, but the majority is hoarded in wealth preservation vehicles.
Useless to anyone but that individual.
If enough people do it, and the ultimate conclusion to competing to attract people to avoid their taxes is that it reaches the maximum possible market, then the fabric of society, the very social structures that enabled the wealth to be generated in the first place, collapses in a heap.
The result is pompous speeches by the rich demanding that the poor do more for less, otherwise they won’t get these exploitation bonuses which they say are essential for running the country.
The result is more people at the mercy of the merciless. You cannot tell me it isn’t happening.
I only start trolling when I’ve said the same thing a few times. I really shouldn’t respond when my objectionable “lies” are countered with more lies.
The Guernsey finance industry isn’t evil. It has created a function for itself very adeptly.
But the reality of all the fine words about facilitating global trade to bring benefits to all has demonstrably not happened.
It is not a ‘capitalism’ problem. This system has screwed the private sector as much as the ‘global poor’ that I emote. As I say, whatever my thoughts on the business/social balance generally, I truly believe that jurisdictions that exist purely to create an environment for a minority to inhabit, and the fact that that existence is at the rest of the world’s expense, is a matter for wider investigation.
But the rest of you are right, really. I can only lose this argument.
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I’d say a Trot more than a troll. Trot as in Trotskyist (card carrying member of the SWP at a guess) rather than a Lyndon Trottskyist!
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As the world has crashed into a recession it’s obvious that the spotlight is going to be on offshore jurisdictions. That’s what big countries do, they look for soft targets and misunderstood Gullivers Travels like islands are perfect fall-guys for the deflection of their own internal issues.
We have had a couple of choices; previously it was keep our heads down and hope various countries and international organisations go away. They haven’t gone away and are unlikely too any time soon. The CM has chosen a different route and that is of active engagement.
If there is an argument that the setting up of an office in Brussels will go some way to assist in the long-term security of our primary employment and wealth generator then I would support it.
As for the prioritisation of Brussels vs Drug and Alcohol, this is where government seems to get things wrong. Here’s the money for the D&A strategy Matt
- L’Aumone field tendered in GP last Saturday – why rent it when you can sell it along with, probably, a lot of random Waterboard and States parcels of bits of land.
- Yellow Harbour Mobile Crane: Should never have been bought. £100k+ for that piece of kit, overtime, training and repairs when a fixed price contract to either Froome or Mourant would have sufficed.
All of the money for most of the social policies are available, they just seemed to be locked up in land or services that government doesn’t need to provide.
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Completely pointless to gain a presence in the EU, money can be better spent, and look what the EU has done to the UK… lots of people out of jobs, lots of migrants in jobs, getting free health care and schooling for their children.
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It’s nothing to do with the EU, GG. The UK opened its doors to back up an ideological economic theory. It was a race to the bottom for British industry. With the bosses creaming ever more off the top, the ‘efficiency’ planning of the offshore PE and investment funds ensured that only the cheapest possible labour could be afforded.
The unaccountable management structures enforced direct social change on the UK.
The EU states were far more protective.
There is no real benefit in these structures except for those holding the rights. Now the bankers have run the UK into the ground, there is a net outflow of EU migrant workers.
That is the real position of UK industry. Even the cheap labour can’t find work. Blaming the foreign labour market for the UK’s woes is wrong. The whole neolibertarian experiment has eaten itself.
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Perhaps we could employ Eric and Arnald to man our Brussels office?
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Well it has been said that that Belgium was created so England and Germany had somewhere to fight their wars.
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The EU should be shut down. It is one colossal jobs-for-the-cronies politburo (like 90% of Govt) and is a huge financial and democratic fraud on the peoples of Europe with no known positive output.
Hopefully the Irish will vote ‘sod off’ a 2nd time this corrupt socialist plot to control Europes free people will grind to a halt and collapse. Fingers crossed xxxxxxx
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Yes, Arnald.
I’ll just change my domicile. Easy peasy.
Except it’s not (said like Clarkson).
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Spanner77
They. Are. Under. Your. Bed.
Billythefish
Not sure what your point is. So you think that avoiding tax that everyone else pays at source in the jurisdiction you reside in should be easy?
It’s treachery. Usually it’s the same people that support the Spanner viewpoint. Mixing jingoistic tripe with no contribution makes for a bunch of shallow freeloaders that want their landowner powers back per the Magna Carta.
The birch beckons, I’m afraid. They are the opposite of what they purport to represent.
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Just that changing your domicile is not easily done these days. You can’t just run around the world changing domicile every other year.
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Btf
Your factually incorrect point still being what?
That people only like living somewhere where they can pay no tax yet still operate within society?
You been on the Suez fumes?
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Ignoring Arnald in (his/her/non gender specific) ivory tower for a moment…no lets not.
Would Arnald like to be in an ivory tower? No of course not. It represents bourgeois colonialism. And Tax evasion. And representation of all thats wrong with the finance industry.
However, no! Ivory towers are great. By increasing the ivory trade with Africa all that continents troubles will be over. Arnald can pontificate atop his/her/whatever column and Africa will be saved. Hooray!
Back to thread – I’d like to see Guernsey more closely aligned with Europe.
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Sorry, but it’s not factually incorrect – take a look at HMRC rules on domicile status and evidence they accept before they consider domicile to have been changed.
There are lots of UK resident non-doms though and there is a deemed dom time limit, but that is plenty of years!
Show me where it’s factually incorrect please.
MMMMMmmmmmmm…. P10 particulates…..smokey…
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