George Monbiot Is Funded By Climate Destroying Tax Dodgers

It depends upon where we draw the corporate veil

George Monbiot has his positive attributes. His change of mind on nuclear power in the face of the evidence from Fukushima - that no one at all died from three reactors going pop, while 15k and more did from the tsunami and therefore he became in favour of nuclear - is an example. OK, that’s rather hitting someone over the head with a cluebat but it’s also true that Caroline Lucas didn’t manage to note that same point. So, there is that. Even if “more aware of reality that Caroline Lucas” is a low bar to have to clear.

George can also rather dig himself into holes. As he is here with his insistence about funding of varied think tanks and so on.

And, OK, let’s go look at George’s registry of interests:

This is a comprehensive list of my sources of income, and any hospitality or gifts I receive (except from family and friends), and the income tax I pay, beginning in September 2011.

I have opened this registry because I believe that journalists should live by the standards they demand of others, among which are accountability and transparency. One of the most important questions in public life, which is asked less often than it should be, is “who pays?”.

Until members of parliament were obliged to reveal their external earnings, we had no means of knowing whether the positions they took were influenced by the money they made: whether, in other words, they were acting on our behalf or acting on behalf of hidden sponsors. Many of the thinktanks and campaign groups which claim to be independent often sound uncannily like corporate lobbyists. When they refuse to reveal the sources of their funding, the public has good reason to be suspicious. Several journalists have been exposed for what, in the United States, are called payola scandals. It would not be surprising to discover that others were taking undisclosed payments for championing certain interests.

OK, that’s the sword that George declares he’s going to live by. Fair play and all that.

Except, except. Last year was pretty good, book royalties flowing in and more power to that typing. The core earning is The Guardian, royalties on top. Not unusual for a writer to be honest. Gain a core contract that produces an ongoing and assured income, spend time floating books or other work out there to see what happens to income. Freelancing is certainly a great deal more fun if you already know where the monthly nut is going to come from with such a core contract.

But, but.

Book royalties, umm, Penguin? Used to be part owned by Pearson, also at the time owners of the Financial Times. So that’s a connection into the shadowy world of international capitalists. It’s now Bertelsman, so foreign international capitalists to boot. Macmillan? They admitted to bribery in Sudan over a school books contract. So a link to international thieving capitalists too. HarperCollins? That’s Murdoch, no more need be said, right?

But, but, a reasonable response would be that this is all far removed from the level George works at. That would be a fair enough response too.

But note the thing here. By agreeing that there’s some level of connection which is too ephemeral to matter we are agreeing that this thing called the corporate veil exists. We can indeed don the tin foil hats and connect near anything we want. Pretty much all Europeans are 16th cousins for example. So I - and George - am/are responsible for WWI because we’re both related to the Kaiser, Emperor and Tsar all at the same time. It’s our family wot dun it, see? Within economic connections that concept, that there’s this thing ‘ere which is responsible not the further connections away from that, is called that corporate veil. I shop at Sainsbury’s sometimes. The Labour Minister husband of a Sainsbury’s heiress employed two butlers (before dumping her for his boyfriend if memory serves). It’s possible to claim that I therefore fund dual butlership but it’s not a claim that all that many are going to regard as valid.

But The Guardian, that core contract. The newspaper seems to have returned to profit recently but there was a decade or so there where it was losing tens of millions a year - and more in some 12 month periods. Those losses were covered by the profits from Autotrader more than anything else. So, George was funded by the facilitation of climate destruction through the trade in internal combustion engined cars.

If, you know, we wanted to put it that way.

Or there’s a considerable section of the paper funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So, George is funded by a WEF affiliated software monopoly that tax dodges in Ireland.

Or we could even think of Guardian Media Group’s tax treatment of that Autotrader work. Entirely and wholly legal but the sort of tax avoiding positioning that the paper itself screams against. Or, for the true aficionado, there’s the Scott Trust, which owns the whole shebang. Originally set up - and declared to be set up - to avoid inheritance tax. And then converted from charitable trust to Scott Trust Limited because that alleviated the capital gains tax bill on those offshore Autotrader and Emap bits of work. For a charitable trust would be liable for CGT on the sale of an operating subsidiary which a limited company would not as a result of Gordon Brown’s corporate tax changes.

So, George Monbiot is funded by Murdoch, foreign capitalists, monopolists, WEF adjacent types, offshore tax shenanigans, inheritance tax avoidance and the climate destroying internal combustion engine.

Well, you know, thanks for the register of interests George.

We could also be that little bit more rational and accept that the corporate veil exists. How the managing director of The Guardian (it is the MD in newspapers that deals with revenue, publisher when talking of the US) raises the cash to pay George isn’t a direct influence upon what George writes. That’s the Editor. Different person. Or, move up that one small step and agree that how The Guardian gets funded isn’t the point. The source of the cash that pays George doesn’t matter. What does is the validity (as at the top, sometimes it even is, valid that is) or not of George’s facts, arguments, logic or even ethical positions.

OK, I’m fine with that. George is clearly fine with that too.

The corporate veil exists, what happens above it isn’t a relevant point concerning what people argue for, write about or urge as public policy.

Cool.

So, that’s the question about how the Institute for Economic Affairs is funded dealt with then. Those who work for it are covered by that veil, just as George is by that of The Guardian and those of his publishers.

Next question!