The Scavenger column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard
It takes your breath away
Orimulsion is a cheaper fuel for electricity power stations. It is based upon bitumen and is imported from Venezuela. Since it has been used at Merton power station, near Ramsgate, asthma attacks in the area have quadrupled. Because it is cheap there are plans to introduce it at a number of other power stations.
So what's new?
They throw the most lavish parties. Last year they air-freighted more than £13 billion in cash into the country to satisfy the popular demand for foreign currency. Their offices are already extravagant temples to Mammon. But now Russia's bankers want more.
With the Kremlin’s help they arc amassing enormous political power. In short. Russia's new plutocracy can boast of wealth and influence to rival the Medicis or the Rothschilds. Sunday Telegraph 16 April.
Current account
In the first five years of private operation, the regional electricity companies accumulated £1 billion surplus funds, instead of reducing charges to customers. Professor Stephen Littlechild, the highly-paid regulator appointed to prevent such excesses, either knew nothing about this or chose not to take any action. Whichever was the ease, he was useless.
The Thatcher nightmare
House prices have fallen by 25 percent in real terms since 1990 and experts believe that they have much further to fall. Over a million people in Britain arc caught in the negative equity trap, where they currently owe an average of £7.000 more in mortgage repayments than their home is worth on the market. Apart from the debt burden, this makes it extremely difficult for them to move house. During Margaret Thatcher’s rule, with her campaign for a “home-owning democracy” and income tax relief on mortgage interest payments, house prices doubled in seven years. Now the market is swinging back again.
True Brits
National Grid, the electricity transmission company being privatised, has avoided paying almost £2m in tax by setting up a financial arm in Dublin.
The company ladled £160m of its cash flow into the tax avoidance scheme before the government stepped in to make the arrangement less attractive.
A National Grid spokesman yesterday confirmed the existence of the "special purpose” firm and defended it as: “a tax-efficient way of managing the company’s money which is our duty on behalf of the shareholders. It is part of our treasury function, and normal practice for UK companies that have big cash flows” Independent on Sunday, 2 April.
The Scavenger
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