Comments on: Richard Murphy: The dark reality behind the Tories’ freeport plans

By: John Mowatt

John Mowatt — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 15:42:12 +0000

“Britain operated several free ports as recently as 2012, when the government stopped renewing their licences. Created in the 1980s, they included Birmingham, Belfast, Cardiff, Liverpool, Prestwick and Southampton”

By: Blissex

Blissex — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 15:39:04 +0000

«“Free Enterprise Zones”, that is industrial parks with no customs tariffs or rules, no labour laws, no corporate taxes, and usually no immigration restrictions.»

A blogger indeed summarizes the proposal from the Conservatives as:

“Truss indicated that the model would include customs and tax benefits designed to mirror the development corporations in areas such as the London Docklands in the 1980s. The freeports, she said, could also be free of UK regulations if the goods did not enter the UK economy but instead were re-exported.” Freedoms transformed London’s Docklands in the 1980s, and freeports will do the same for towns and cities across the UK. They will onshore enterprise and manufacturing as the gateway to our future prosperity, creating thousands of jobs”, she said.”

In these proposals the crucial detail is always the ability to staff the factories with cheap immigrant workers. UK workers are, from a Conservative point of view, quite “unaffordable”.

By: Baxter Basics MP

Baxter Basics MP — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 22:17:17 +0000

This piece contains more assertion than a pro Wrestling Match, and displays more ignorance about the world of Enterprise Zones than a butterfly.
I suggest a reading the abstract of the Sissons and Brown report from 2011, which found that the main benefit of enterprise zones with their tax incentives did not result from the tax incentives or the redirection of jobs from elsewhere but from . . . no, I can’t tell you what it is, that would be cruel. Save to say Professor of Practice Murphy didn’t mention it.
This is the same man who is eager to swing behind the EU, with its massive centralised programme of regional development funding ( that’s subsidies incident on pre-existing capitalists with wealth who are operating in poorer regions ).
On a separate note I can’t help noting this stanza “The arrangement avoids double tax, and double taxation has no more virtue than no tax. ” One for the ages, and which will be thrown back in Professor of Practice Murphy’s hairy face next time he recommends wealth and transaction taxes, which can only be days away.

By: steve

steve — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 18:04:14 +0000

NHSGP (allegedly) – I claim my £5.

You are, in fact, an undergraduate intern volunteering at Conservative Central HQ. And, believing that it will one day assist your elevation to high office, you devote your evenings to experimenting with cocaine.

By: nshgp

nshgp — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 16:28:42 +0000

We should make the whole of the UK a free port.

The wealth gap is caused by the 13,000 bn pound state debts pile.

220 bn a year goes on servicing that debt.

But you don’t get that. Hide the debts off the books, take the proles money, spend it.

Then when it gets shitty blame someone else.

By: Blissex

Blissex — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 11:11:51 +0000

My guess is that prof. Murphy is an amazing optimist and is being taken in by the word “Freeport” taken literally, in the technical sense that he is familiar with.
What actually the Conservatives (and the “think tanks” that inspire them) mean to estalibsh is “Free Enterprise Zones”, that is industrial parks with no customs tariffs or rules, no labour laws, no corporate taxes, and usually no immigration restrictions.
The conservative golden standard for those “Free Enterprise Zones” is that of the Mariana Islands, which is staffed mostly by east asian workers on indenture contracts.