UK Uncut targets Topshop and Vodafone over tax arrangements (angry socialists on warpath)

Movement invades stores in push for government to tax the rich and big companies more instead of making budget cuts

With superglue and megaphones, pop-up protests forced several branches of Topshop and Vodafone around the country to close today on one of the busiest trading days of the year.

Campaigners staged a sit-in at Sir Philip Green's flagship London Topshop store, and in Brighton a few glued themselves to the branch windows, while other high streets in towns and cities across Britain saw similar protests in a day of action against the tax arrangements of rich individuals and big businesses.

Green, the Arcadia retail group tycoon, and other wealthy individuals and big businesses including Vodafone, Barclays and Boots are the focus of rising anger over the programme of government cuts that campaigners say could be avoided if tax dodging was stamped out, bringing in some £25bn a year to the public purse and making a sizeable dent in the national debt.

socialist thieves feign anger while trying to rob complete strangers blind.<.i>

When you're talking about people who feign anger while trying to rob strangers blind, you could be talking about Philip Green and people like him.

Philip Green is (allegedly) asking his workers to increase their pension contributions by 50% AND (allegedly) work longer before they're entitled to retire in that scheme, AND he's been accused of running sweatshops. At the same time he's (allegedly) dodging his own taxes AND (not allegedly) is telling the government not just how to cut the public spending but also HOW TO INCREASE TAXES DOWN THE LINE.

Now, I don't care that he's rich, or successful, or knows a few tax loopholes, or doesn't appear to be particularly popular. I do care that he is being paid to tell the government how to take MY money out of MY wage packet while HE squirrels HIS away through some offshore fiddle.

Can I just remind you of something? TEA. Taxed Enough Already. Unless I've massively misunderstood the TEA Party raison d'etre, you'd be protesting the guy on that basis alone.

Would you give an Obamacare stooge a free pass simply because you learnt he was a megarich dude?

Are you really suggesting that even richer Obamacare supporters who are already making damn sure their workers pay for Obamacare while they ensure their own personal platinum-plated non-Obamacare cover package increases in value year after year, shouldn't be protested?

The day Philip Green pays the taxes he should ALREADY be paying, is the day he'll be qualified to advise the government on what I, and millions like me, should be paying. If he's not paying his taxes I don't see why I should have to pay mine!

If Philip Green paid his taxes and advised the government on how to hike my taxes, then I’d hate him for being a socialist but at least I’d know he was doing conservatism a favor. But what he’s doing instead, is DAMAGING conservatism in the United Kingdom.

America is a completely different political animal, and FOR NOW Americans can argue that giving the likes of Philip Green a free pass benefits the political Right, not the political Left. But that isn’t the case in the UK, and it may not always be the case in America.

The Leftists in the UK thrive on the notion of the “undeserving elite”. They had a pop at the monarchy, the landed gentry, peerages (even those who earned their peerages), the “Tory Toffs”, and now they’re gunning for mega-rich tax dodgers.

They claim these people are all part of the “undeserving elite” - a clique which writes the rules that everyone else must follow, but who don’t ever think those same rules should apply to them.

By being a member of the government and advising them on things that hurt working folk while exploiting tax loopholes they wouldn’t be able to exploit, Green, by his own actions, lends credence to that stereotype.

Right now, America does now have a social elite who show total disdain for the rest of the American people, and you DO have a sense within the ranks of that elite, that the rules that apply to mere mortals, don’t apply to them.

And you DO have a popular uprising in the making, with the TEA Party. Granted it is mostly conservative now but that may not remain the case if the Republicans get in and nothing changes.

And you ALREADY have very senior politicians who’re already showing that they’d be right at home under a socialist regime.

If everyone has the same right to succeed, then they must also have the same right to fail and the same right to expect to be punished, not be propped up by the state. But you’ve had bailouts, and who benefited from the bailouts?

Free Republic rallies around what it means to be American, and that’s the right thing to do - after all it was the American Dream, not the American Gun, that caused the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

In Obama’s world, nobody’ll want to start a business; they can get richer by appearing on reality TV, and they can get more powerful by being a career politician. Why bother teaching snot-nosed kids their ABCs when you can earn a hundred times more, by talking a good game in a courtroom to get rich people out of having to pay their taxes?

To maintain your freedom, Americans have to see evidence of aspiration every day of their lives, and that means taking aspiration back into Main Street. And giving people like Philip Green a big pat on the back and a government job for pulling the kind of white collar tax dodge that the average Joe on Main Street would be heading to prison if HE tried to repeat, is not the way to do it.

All in all, the “undeserving elite” is going to play a big role in American politics for many years to come, especially if Obama gets a second term or the old school Republicans like Rove get their way.

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