19th August 2015

Banking fines, the new ‘Klondike’

London, 7th July 2015 – The latest ‘HM Gov splash of cash’ is to create two more (not one) memorials for victims of terror attacks. This is in addition to the ‘7/7’ memorial in Hyde Park to honour the memory of the victims of the 7 July 2005 London Bombings, recently seen being used as a dining table by homeless Roma gypsies.

I am not sure the country needs a third ‘Terror Victim’ memorial, surely just one would be a more poignant and meaningful place to focus national grief, rather like the Cenotaph in Whitehall or the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

This latest offering from ‘call me Dave’ smacks of some very cynical political exploitation of bad behaviour by the banks dressed up as a pseudo act of kindness by politicians.

There may be much wrong that could and should be put right in the world of casino banking, but the banks did not shoot 30 ‘Brits’ dead in Tunisia and the banks certainly did not commit to wars based on dodgy dossiers placing our troops in harms way.

Over the last century or two the nations wealth and success was built on our vast below ground natural resources.

Coal, tin, oil, sand, cement, gravel extraction have all played their part but many fear that these resources have a limited life as dwindling stocks make it more expensive to recover.

Of course with all natural resources there is a tax raising opportunity but if stocks of natural resource reduce or become exhausted this will in turn see tax revenues reduce and that spells trouble for HM Treasury.

But we need no longer fear where the nation will turn to get more ‘natural resource’ because of some very clever ‘fine fracking’ on the part of the last government.

A decision by Parliament on 27th February 2013 has seen a very big ‘gusher’ explode out of the ground in the form of 2014 banking fines being paid away to HM Treasury.

Fines in 2014 were £1,462bn. To put some contextual scale to this massive amount, the total revenue raised for alcohol and tobacco in 2014 was £197bn- that equates to 4% of total UK taxation revenues according to HMRC figures.

The FCA was obliged by statute to pay away £1.370bn of the fines the Treasury, the equivalent of 70% of all alcohol and tobacco levies for 2014. 

In the run up to the election this is where the money was spent according to our FOI request reply: 

£35,000,000 to the Armed Forces

£10,000,000 to Armed Forces covenant

£40,000,000 toward veterans’ accommodation

£20,000,000 to Childcare, but exactly what is not known

£10,000,000 to medical training, again, exactly what is not known

£10,000,000 to Blue Light charities, exactly which is not known

£10,000,000 to Youth United

£5,000,000 to the Imperial War Museum/ WW1 gallery refurbishments

£ 1,100,000 an approximate VAT rebate for the Tower of London poppies sale to allow more money raised to go to charity. This is not a government donation. It is a fine redistribution and a very cynical play upon public sentiment and the war dead of WW1.

This gives a grand total so far of £141,000,000 going toward good causes leaving a pre election pot of £1.322bn left over. Note, no money to MAS, FSCS or Pensionwise- the most morally obvious homes for such largesse.

The resulting cash reservoir from ‘fiscal fracking’ is creating a big problem for the government. That problem is how to spend it fast enough, rather than ‘fixing the roof while the sun is shining’, a pre election mantra that so quickly rings hollow today.

The Treasury always fails to see that natural resources eventually dry up.

There will come a day when there is no more economically viable natural resource to recover. The pollution of carbon-based fuels will have wreaked health havoc with the resulting clean up and cure cost falling on the NHS, more troops will have been committed where they should not but never mind, after all the banks are still there to ‘fine frack’ the cost.

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