Day: April 5, 2021

Jan 2014; The Office of Sarah and Gordon Brown

Investigation of declarations made in Brown’s parliamentary register of interests provided a picture of the until now private accounts of the company, the “Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown” is not a registered charity, it is a private limited company set up by Brown and his wife Sarah in 2010.

It allows for money raised through publications, speeches and public appearances to be invested into charitable work. Brownn is currently the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education. 

Brown declared to parliament that the total amount paid into the company since 2010 was £3,605,197.

According to a recent announcement on the company’s website £912,702 has so far been given to charity.

This leaves over £2 million to be accounted for when according to the latest available records the company had only £160,978 in cash at the bank. You can see an itemised spreadsheet compiled from Guido’s investigations here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m06erj5LpOktUV3g95ePimcArREmJWR8VZhQxxKXmOo/edit?pli=1#gid=0

The company admits it budgets £550k-a-year for expenses to meet salaries, accommodation costs and staff expenses.

Brown can be paid as much as $100k for a single speech to investors at finance conferences in the US. In funnelling his speaker fees through the company he avoids tax on his income, even though it covers the £10k a week expenses for Gordon and Sarah to maintain the jet-set premier lifestyle they were accustomed to when in Downing Street, travelling first class around the world and staying in top five star hotels attended to by flunkies. Something Gordon would not be able to do on his backbench MP’s salary…http://order-order.com/tag/wheres-gordon/page/2/

Jan 2014; Sarah Brown’s (Gordons Wife) unpatriotic office

“The old tax havens have no place in this new world. We now call on all countries to apply international standards,” said Gordon Brown back in 2009 when he was Prime Minister.

This is only mentioned because Brown’s philanthropist wife Sarah had made an odd choice of home for her charity.

Sarah Brown is the founder and Executive Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education – a charitable organisation whose members include heavyweights such as Accenture, Chevron and Tata.

The organisation admirably aims to bring ‘the business community together to accelerate progress in delivering quality education for all of the world’s children and youth.’

But the GBCfE is based in one of the most secretive tax jurisdictions in the world – Delaware, a state affectionately known by tax lawyers as “the Cayman Islands of North America”. The charity’s registered office is 1209 North Orange Street, a single story building which is the legal address of 285,000 businesses according to the New York Times.

The New York Times profile said that 1209 North Orange Street is home to “big corporations, small-time businesses, rogues, scoundrels and worse”.

What might have drawn Sarah Brown to such an infamous site in so controversial a state? And is there enough desk-space at 1209 to house more than a quarter of a million tenants? 

Besides, Sarah Brown should be more patriotic and back the British tax system, which treats recognised charities very generously indeed.  More here: https://www.ieyenews.com/sarah-browns-unpatriotic-office/

Q. Why, if it is a charity would it need to be registered in a tax haven ?

A. Perhaps it is not actually registered as a charity – at least not in the UK.

Many celebs register their “charities” in Delaware because their annual filings are kept confidential and there is little or no oversight. So if saving the planet requires travel via private jet, luxury accommodations, staff of well-paid flunkies and so on, no-one’s the wiser.

UK Charities risk having their operations and accounts scrutinised by the Charity Commissioner and Delaware is even dodgier than the Dutch Antilles or Panama for funny money.

This is an extract from an article written by Ray Morrell and published by Conter. I commend it as essential reading for Scots before the next Scottish General election

Before last weekend, the SNP and the Green Party’s outlook was unchallenged within the independence movement. Since 2016, the Greens have propped-up the SNP’s minority administration, and are an essentially list-based party leading some to view it as a ginger group on the dominant party.

Now the SNP have a competitor that challenges both their narrow vision of independence and their support in the lists. If the Alba Party doesn’t have any discernible policies (some should be forthcoming at a policy conference), they do have one big idea, that of the ‘supermajority’. As cynicism grows with politicians of all shades, it’s likely that a relative lack of policies won’t have much impact and the slogan can cut through. Salmond has also said that Alba wants to work with the SNP and other MSP’s to achieve independence. Alba is prepared to use alternative tactics should the Tories continue to stonewall the Scottish people. “International legal action, peaceful street demonstrations, popular will – these are all tactics but the tactics have to be founded on the legitimacy of the parliament,” Salmond said. “The parliament has to have… a supermajority that changes the balance, fundamentally, into Scotland’s favour.”

Salmond explained that Alba would aim to increase overall pro-independence representation: “At the last election there were nearly 1 million wasted SNP votes on the regional list.” This reflects a reality – the electoral system in Scotland is designed to balance list against constituency representation. However any ‘gaming’ of lists will also be open to accusations of manipulation by the British Government, who will deploy any excuse to ward-off another independence challenge.

Alba’s campaign will now put more scrutiny on the list vote, challenging the “SNP1+2” tactic, which is much better at protecting the SNP’s hegemonic position in the independence movement than it is at producing overall independence majorities. According to a recent Survation poll the SNP would elect no regional seats at all from a million votes on the list. In previous elections, it’s been the Greens who have benefited from vote-savvy independence supporters using their list votes wisely to elect a larger Indy cohort. Now the Greens have competition in this field, although it’s likely that the appeal of Alba’s call for a ‘supermajority’ will hit the SNP’s list vote more than the Greens, as more Indy voters become aware that an SNP list vote is likely to be a wasted one. Many Greens would also probably prove resistant to Alba’s more populist appeals.

Alba has announced its intention to build an “economically successful and socially-just independent country, through the pursuit of a social-democratic programme”. Late last year Salmond produced a joint paper with former SNP MSP Alex Neil, an Action Plan to tackle the Covid unemployment crisis in Scotland. Amongst its many ideas was a national housebuilding company to build an additional 10,000 energy efficient homes a year on top of existing targets, with funds made available to train apprentices to tackle the dire housing and youth employment crisis. The paper also proposed a Scottish national renewable corporation to invest in wave and tidal technologies with the development of a Scottish supply chain to ensure we face no more disasters like the recent BiFab closure.

With the election approaching the SNP led Scottish Government has announced a 4% increase for health workers, a housebuilding program and the doubling of child benefit. If Alba positions itself to the left of both the SNP and Labour on economic issues there is scope for further pressure here.

Full article here: https://www.conter.co.uk/blog/2021/3/31/alba-and-the-crisis-of-indy-movement-leadership