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Nighy stars in ‘Robin Hood’ drive to raise billions
Actor Bill Nighy and writer Richard Curtis join forces to make Tobin tax a reality
Has the English comic actor Bill Nighy, playing a nauseatingly supercilious bank executive, just given the performance of a lifetime? Several charity and aid organisations are hoping so - because the short film he's made is to promote a campaign launched today for the introduction of a "Robin Hood tax" on financial institutions.
Nighy was roped in by Richard Curtis, the man who wrote the scripts for some of Britain's most successful recent comedy films, including Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, in which Nighy famously played the ageing pop star Billy Mack.
As the Curtis-Nighy film (above) argues, a tax of just 0.05 per cent on global transactions between financial institutions - five pence for every £1,000 traded - would be enough to raise hundreds of billions of pounds to help fight poverty, protect public services and tackle climate change.
Nearly 50 organisations, including charities such as Oxfam, unions and green lobby groups, have joined forces to urge the government to push for what it calls the Robin Hood Tax - but is traditionally known as the Tobin Tax, named after the American economist who first suggested the idea.
Launched today, the campaign argues in a letter sent to the leaders of all political parties: "You could ignore the big problems facing the world ... or you can work to find an innovative, modern, regular way of accumulating a fund of money.
"We would ask you to seriously consider the Robin Hood Tax as that radical new option - a small tax on bankers that would make a huge difference to the UK, to the poorest countries and to our planet. Let's turn the crisis for the banks into an opportunity for Britain and the world."
The idea of a Tobin tax, first proposed in 1972, was floated again last year by both Prime Minister Gordon Brown and FAS chairman Lord [Adair] Turner as a way of raising funds to insure against another bank collapse. Brown eventually dropped the proposal under pressure from other politicians and banking executives who - just like Nighy's character in the campaign film - treated the idea of any further taxes on the banking sector as nothing short of preposterous. ·
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OK, I admit I had to think hard and hold back on any knee-jerk reactions on this one. It has a superficial attraction. But the fact is there are many objections to make, the most obvious being 'the thin end of the wedge', and fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer rejoices in large slices of fatty meat from bacon joint that is the City of London already. So this is just a tax hike. Death by a thousand cuts maybe...just another socialist attack on private property and the right to your own earnings. Just another stab in the dark, killing a few jobs out of hundreds of thousands, but certainly not anything other than a drain on the system. So, overall, I am against.
Let's just cut to the chase and nationalize everything comrades? Why waste time bleeding them a little at a time? They're all cheats, crooks and liars anyway - right? It's well past time for the Central Committee to step in and take their filthy lucre and distribute it to the masses. Who better to decide who deserves what, than a group of life-time bureaucrats who can't manage their own bank accounts. That's the spirit lads, put those nasty bankers under the boot and free the proletariat from their bonds! Merry Men from the forest, indeed.
Whilst I have no time for banks in a very general sense, I would say that the name of this proposed tax is very apt. Robin Hood was, after all, a thief.
Banks give money away? YEAH RIGHT!