I notice from my perusing of various left wing blogs that Liberal Conspiracy is making a big thing out of the fact that Vodafone shut down it’s mobile phone operation in Egypt on the orders of the Egyptian government and that this is a crime against humanity.

Vodafone is the current pet hate object of the left because they believe that it has evaded a multi-billion tax bill which should rightfully be paid into the UK bank account to fund all the right-on fluffy-wuffy namby-pamby goody-two-shoes eco-green-diversity coordinators that are being made redundant. They say that Vodafone should have stood up to the state and ignored them and done the right thing. Just like SNCF should have done in WWII. They believe that an Egyptian company should ignore the law of the land it’s situated in just because some people in another country think it right to do so. Ignoring the fact that the switching off of the internet and mobile phone network was probably done under the duress of a gun and ignoring that they always want British companies to obey UK law down to the nth detail.

Vodafone is British as it’s head office is in Newbury, but Vodafone in Egypt is a totally separate company, though majority owned by Vodafone UK. The left are saying that Vodaphone should carry out due diligence when starting business in a new country and should put in a very high position the human rights of the population of the country. In their view shareholders come down near the bottom in the list of priorities. So if the country is OK at the start but descends into a dictatorship what happens then? As usual the left shout first but don’t think second.

So what has Peterpan got to do with Vodafone? I’m coming to that. Read on.

Since they are so keen on interfering in how other countries run their affairs I wonder why they aren’t making a big thing out of the jailing of Nazril Irham. Nazril is a pretty major pop star in Indonesia in a band called Peterpan whose laptop was stolen and some personal and private videos on it were leaked to the press in what is called the Peter Porn case. Rather than find the thief and punish him they lock up Nazril for 3 and half years because he did not do enough to stop the distribution of the video. A private video which was for personal use.

Do you think that you are safe in this country from a similar case? The UK isn’t run according to fundamentalist Christian beliefs and gay rights should mean that sex in private is no business of the state. Think again. In the UK there is the extreme porn law where private videos taken last year of consenting adults indulging in some S&M is now illegal if not in the hands of the person’s involved. You too could be locked up just like Nazril.

SBML

John Levett
February 4, 2011 at 08:17

“Vodafone is the current pet hate object of the left because they believe that it has evaded a multi-billion tax bill which should rightfully be paid into the UK bank account to fund all the right-on fluffy-wuffy namby-pamby goody-two-shoes eco-green-diversity coordinators that are being made redundant”.

Actually, not just the left. I’m buggered if I can understand why HMRC let Vodaphone get away with a multi-billion tax evasion while setting the debt-collection heavies on we little people. Nor are the ‘fluffy-wuffy namby-pamby goody-two-shoes eco-green-diversity coordinators’ being made redundant: they’re on the increase and being paid for by you and me and not the mega-corps that they are ultimately benfiting.

JuliaM
February 4, 2011 at 10:43

“…because they believe that it has evaded a multi-billion tax bill…”

Not quite, they belive it has avoided that tax.

Tax EVASION is illegal. Tax AVOIDANCE is not only legal but it could be argued to be the duty of every company to its shareholders.

SadButMadLad
February 4, 2011 at 10:48

@Julia – You try telling some people that it’s avoidance, they still think that Vodafone have committed a crime by evading.

@John – HMRC didn’t so much let Vodafone get away with it. Vodafone have a huge tax bill which they paid. The fact that a lot of the tax bill was paid in Belgium where the transaction in question occured is being ignored by many. They think that because Vodafone is based in the UK it should pay taxes on all it’s international dealing in the UK.

John Levett
February 4, 2011 at 11:55

According to Private Eye, Vodaphone has evaded tax due to HMG as a result of ‘HMRC boss Dave Hartnett [intervening] without even consulting his own tax experts’. That sounds pretty suspect to me (as well as to the usually supine National Audit Office and the public accounts committee apparently) and I’ve yet to hear that anybody is suing Private Eye despite it doggedly sticking to this line ever since news of the deal became public knowledge.

I don’t know where your Belgian connection comes from (but I’m sure you’ll tell me!). Hartnett’s intervention is estimated to have saved Vodaphone £6bn in taxes as a result of passing its (German) Mannesman business through Luxembourg and now another 22 companies are reputedly seeking to cream off another £14.9bn thanks to similar deals.

“They think that because Vodafone is based in the UK it should pay taxes on all it’s international dealing in the UK”.

I certainly don’t think this! Presumably, HMRC did not assess tax on anything other than Vodaphone’s UK business – otherwise, any tax settlement would have been on the basis of a corrected assessment and it wouldn’t have been necessary for Hartnett to do a deal at all.

Rosscoe
February 4, 2011 at 15:50

A good explanation re Vodafone can be found here:

http://timworstall.com/2010/12/07/polly-on-tax/#more-19991

PT Barnum
February 4, 2011 at 09:03

The non-definition of ‘extreme porn’ in that piece of legislation would not simply catch something which involved footage or images of acts that are patently and self-defined hardcore SM, but gives the right to define the nature of the images to the police, courts or someone of delicate and righteous-inclined sensibilities. It can also be used against animated films. Check your hard drives, people, because we could all be criminals right now.

Richard B
February 4, 2011 at 09:03

I’ve seen the video – it’s actually quite tasteful. Nazril’s ‘crime’, apparently, was to be insufficiently enthusiastic about condemning himself and his film to all his fans, thus setting a ‘bad example’. Insufficiently enthusiastic? Where I have I heard that before? Oh yes, in comments about the 10:10 video. Thoughtcrime is world-wide these days.

Joe Public
February 4, 2011 at 09:04

A private video depicting sexual activity is stolen, published on the interwebby, and the star/victim is jailed.

I wonder if Mr Berlusconi is quaking in his boots?

Andrew
February 5, 2011 at 23:15

One basic grammar tip which might make you look at least competent – it’s (short for it is) has an apostrophe; its (possessive) doesn’t.

Oh, and you spell Vodafone in two different ways in successive sentences. The New Yorker, this isn’t.

SadButMadLad
February 5, 2011 at 23:44

Thank you for spotting the errors, and I yes I do know the grammer rules but I am only a lone person writing what I believe in. Sometimes I might not check enough before pressing the publish button.

Anna Raccoon
February 6, 2011 at 12:00

Gosh Andrew, I wish I could aspire to your standards in my second language, as does the author here – but I find it hard to maintain ‘New Yorker’ standards in my first language at times.
How is your second language by the way? Pristine I hope.