This article was posted on Comment is Free, quickly pulled, and now
seems to have been pulled from gregpalast.com
---------------
Boasted £11 million donated by Tesco cut tax bill by £20 million
by Greg Palast
For the Guardian On Line

It was a stunning admission. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's crony
explained to the U.S. businessman, in evil detail, exactly how the
fix
is done in Britain.

Unfortunately, for Jon Mendelsohn and his partners, the "businessman"
was, in fact, an undercover reporter for The Observer of London.

Today, Brown's foes are calling for Mendelsohn's resignation as chief
fundraiser of the Labour Party for his admitted knowledge of £630,000
($1.2 million) in dodgy, possibly illegal, campaign contributions to
Labour.

What's odd here are the protestations of shock at the behavior of
Mendelsohn, described in the Guardian as an "ethical" lobbyist.
"Ethical" my arse.

It was exactly nine years ago that Mendelsohn and his lobby firm
partners were caught trading cash for access. How this Mendelsohn
character ended up heading Labour Party fundraising and how he
obtained the sobriquet 'ethical' is the real shocker.

I know a few things about this Mendelsohn. The "businessman" with the
hidden microphone was me. In June 1998, joined by my recorder and a
real US businessman, Mark Swedlund, who designed my elaborate
corporate front, I met Mr. Mendelsohn at his tony Soho London office.
There Mendelsohn confirmed what was already on tape from his partners
in the lobby firm he founded, LLM.

I explained my corporate needs: some environmental rules needed
bending. I hinted I was with Enron. Mendelsohn's partner Neil Lawson
told my recorder that, if I paid LLM £5,000 to £20,000 per month, "We
can go to anyone. We can go to Gordon Brown if we have to." Brown was
at the time Chancellor of the Exchequer. Could the lobbyist provide
concrete examples of a fix?

Easily. Here is a short list of LLM claimed accomplishments:

- Inside information on then-Chancellor Gordon Brown's budgets.
- Tax avoided by a supermarket chain following millions donated to a
New Labour pet project.
- A pass on anti-trust action against client Rupert Murdoch's media
empire.
- And for Gordon Brown, a favor that the Mendelsohn team expected to
redeem.

Tesco Goes Tax-Free
LLM, which stands for the founders Lucas, Neil Lawson and Mendelsohn,
were about to derail Brown's plan for a tax on car parks ("parking
lots" as we say in the States). This would cost Tesco, the
supermarket
chain, an LLM client, £20 million annually. LLM was holding secret
meetings that week in June 1998 with Tony Blair's Downing Street
Policy Unit to get Tesco exempted from the proposed tax.

The tax threat went away after LLM advised Tesco to drop £11 million
into funding for Blair's odd Millennium Dome project.

[To my US readers: The Dome is a gargantuan tent costing $1000
million
- no kidding.]

"This government likes to do deals," Lucas told me.

But this deal was complex, Mendelsohn said, not so simple as cash
paid
for a tax break. "Tony is very anxious to be seen as 'green',"
Mendelsohn explained to me and my confederate. "Everything has to be
couched in environmental language - even if it's slightly Orwellian."
So LLM devised a set of cockamamie gimmicks for Tesco, like offering
bus services to the elderly, which would paint the retailer green.

It worked. Tesco was spared the tax - though the company denies
categorically that its cash dumped into the Dome bought any favors.

Message for Murdoch
The year of my paper's original investigation (dubbed, "Lobbygate"),
anti-trust authorities were looking into Rupert Murdoch's companies'
alleged predatory pricing practices. LLM carried the word from
Downing
Street, according to Lucas, that, if Murdoch's tabloids toned down
criticism of new antitrust legislation, the law's final language
would
reflect the government's appreciation. On the other hand, harsh
coverage in Murdoch's papers could provoke problems for the media
group in Parliament's union-recognition bill.

The message to muzzle journalists was not, said Lucas, "an easy one
in
their culture" - journalists being a trying lot. However, the outcome
pleased LLM clientele.

A Peek at the Budget
It also happened that on one of the days I recorded Mendelsohn's
partners, they boasted of informing an LLM client about details of
Gordon Brown's budget plans before the Chancellor's announcement went
public.

A lobbyist competing for my "business," when asked to match the offer
of inside information and deal-making held out by LLM and another New
Labour firm said, "It's appalling. It's disturbing," and added that
he
would refuse to match LLM's services at any price.

If LLM appeared favored by Brown's operation, Brown himself received
favors from LLM. "Gordon Brown asked us to have our client KPMG [the
consultancy] host a breakfast for him where it was pre-arranged that
they would praise him for his prudent budgets." Brown basked in this
Potemkin praise-fest - a favor that would be returned with special
access (for my own clients, if I paid the retainer).

Whether Mendelsohn, Lawson and Lucas actually pulled off all they
claimed, I can't say. Though just kids in their twenties, LLM had
garnered millions in revenue, a lot of loot if for mere advice. No
one
seriously investigated; no one asked uncomfortable questions of Mr.
Brown, Mr. Blair or the man at the center of several of these
supposed
"deals," Mr. Peter Mandelson, now an EU Commissioner.

However, that Mendelsohn made these tawdry claims (or grinned at me
while his partner made them), and that they were published on page
one
of every newspaper in the realm - part of an LLM tape broadcast on
BBC's Newsnight - one would think that the perspicacious Mr. Brown
would have avoided Mendelsohn like the plague.

But the PM embraced Mr. Let's-Make-A-Deal. The reason was made clear
to me by Mendelsohn himself, a man as brainy as he is cynical and
wealthy. Those many years ago, at the dawn of the Blair regime,
Mendelsohn handed me a confidential manifesto he'd penned for LLM
clients only. It was a map of the soul of New Labour.

Here was a chilling combination of Mendelsohn, Mandelson and
Nietzsche. "AN OLD WORLD IS DISAPPEARING AND A NEW ONE EMERGING," he
announced in upper case. In the "Passing World" were "ideology" and
"conviction" - which would now be replaced by "Pragmatism" and
"Consumption." "Buying" would replace "Belief."

And ultimately, in this Brave New Labour World, style was all: "WHAT
YOU DO," wrote Mendelsohn, was passé, replaced by, "HOW YOU DO IT."

So why demand Mendelsohn's head now? Gordon Brown is a prudent man
whom, I suspect, reads a newspaper or two - and knew exactly whom he
had positioned to fill his party's coin sacks. Mendelsohn is just a
gun for hire, a forgettable factotum. I wouldn't place the blame on
the hired gun, but on the man whose finger is on the trigger.

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:56:01 -0800 (PST), Freddie Freeloader
 wrote:

>This article was posted on Comment is Free, quickly pulled, and now
>seems to have been pulled from gregpalast.com

so it seems

>---------------
>Boasted £11 million donated by Tesco cut tax bill by £20 million
>by Greg Palast

usually an ethical source

>For the Guardian On Line
>
>It was a stunning admission. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's crony
>explained to the U.S. businessman, in evil detail, exactly how the
>fix
>is done in Britain.
>
>Unfortunately, for Jon Mendelsohn and his partners, the "businessman"
>was, in fact, an undercover reporter for The Observer of London.
>
>Today, Brown's foes are calling for Mendelsohn's resignation as chief
>fundraiser of the Labour Party for his admitted knowledge of £630,000
>($1.2 million) in dodgy, possibly illegal, campaign contributions to
>Labour.
>
>What's odd here are the protestations of shock at the behavior of
>Mendelsohn, described in the Guardian as an "ethical" lobbyist.
>"Ethical" my arse.
>
>It was exactly nine years ago that Mendelsohn and his lobby firm
>partners were caught trading cash for access. How this Mendelsohn
>character ended up heading Labour Party fundraising and how he
>obtained the sobriquet 'ethical' is the real shocker.
>
>I know a few things about this Mendelsohn. The "businessman" with the
>hidden microphone was me. In June 1998, joined by my recorder and a
>real US businessman, Mark Swedlund, who designed my elaborate
>corporate front, I met Mr. Mendelsohn at his tony Soho London office.
>There Mendelsohn confirmed what was already on tape from his partners
>in the lobby firm he founded, LLM.
>
>I explained my corporate needs: some environmental rules needed
>bending. I hinted I was with Enron. Mendelsohn's partner Neil Lawson
>told my recorder that, if I paid LLM £5,000 to £20,000 per month, "We
>can go to anyone. We can go to Gordon Brown if we have to." Brown was
>at the time Chancellor of the Exchequer. Could the lobbyist provide
>concrete examples of a fix?
>
>Easily. Here is a short list of LLM claimed accomplishments:
>
>- Inside information on then-Chancellor Gordon Brown's budgets.
>- Tax avoided by a supermarket chain following millions donated to a
>New Labour pet project.
>- A pass on anti-trust action against client Rupert Murdoch's media
>empire.
>- And for Gordon Brown, a favor that the Mendelsohn team expected to
>redeem.
>
>Tesco Goes Tax-Free
>LLM, which stands for the founders Lucas, Neil Lawson and Mendelsohn,
>were about to derail Brown's plan for a tax on car parks ("parking
>lots" as we say in the States). This would cost Tesco, the
>supermarket
>chain, an LLM client, £20 million annually. LLM was holding secret
>meetings that week in June 1998 with Tony Blair's Downing Street
>Policy Unit to get Tesco exempted from the proposed tax.
>
>The tax threat went away after LLM advised Tesco to drop £11 million
>into funding for Blair's odd Millennium Dome project.
>
>[To my US readers: The Dome is a gargantuan tent costing $1000
>million
>- no kidding.]

no....more that $2 billion ...ie more that $2000 million...and still
     counting

>"This government likes to do deals," Lucas told me.
>
>But this deal was complex, Mendelsohn said, not so simple as cash
>paid
>for a tax break. "Tony is very anxious to be seen as 'green',"
>Mendelsohn explained to me and my confederate. "Everything has to be
>couched in environmental language - even if it's slightly Orwellian."
>So LLM devised a set of cockamamie gimmicks for Tesco, like offering
>bus services to the elderly, which would paint the retailer green.
>
>It worked. Tesco was spared the tax - though the company denies
>categorically that its cash dumped into the Dome bought any favors.
>
>Message for Murdoch
>The year of my paper's original investigation (dubbed, "Lobbygate"),
>anti-trust authorities were looking into Rupert Murdoch's companies'
>alleged predatory pricing practices. LLM carried the word from
>Downing
>Street, according to Lucas, that, if Murdoch's tabloids toned down
>criticism of new antitrust legislation, the law's final language
>would
>reflect the government's appreciation. On the other hand, harsh
>coverage in Murdoch's papers could provoke problems for the media
>group in Parliament's union-recognition bill.
>
>The message to muzzle journalists was not, said Lucas, "an easy one
>in
>their culture" - journalists being a trying lot. However, the outcome
>pleased LLM clientele.
>
>A Peek at the Budget
>It also happened that on one of the days I recorded Mendelsohn's
>partners, they boasted of informing an LLM client about details of
>Gordon Brown's budget plans before the Chancellor's announcement went
>public.
>
>A lobbyist competing for my "business," when asked to match the offer
>of inside information and deal-making held out by LLM and another New
>Labour firm said, "It's appalling. It's disturbing," and added that
>he
>would refuse to match LLM's services at any price.
>
>If LLM appeared favored by Brown's operation, Brown himself received
>favors from LLM. "Gordon Brown asked us to have our client KPMG [the
>consultancy] host a breakfast for him where it was pre-arranged that
>they would praise him for his prudent budgets." Brown basked in this
>Potemkin praise-fest - a favor that would be returned with special
>access (for my own clients, if I paid the retainer).
>
>Whether Mendelsohn, Lawson and Lucas actually pulled off all they
>claimed, I can't say. Though just kids in their twenties, LLM had
>garnered millions in revenue, a lot of loot if for mere advice. No
>one
>seriously investigated; no one asked uncomfortable questions of Mr.
>Brown, Mr. Blair or the man at the center of several of these
>supposed
>"deals," Mr. Peter Mandelson, now an EU Commissioner.
>
>However, that Mendelsohn made these tawdry claims (or grinned at me
>while his partner made them), and that they were published on page
>one
>of every newspaper in the realm - part of an LLM tape broadcast on
>BBC's Newsnight - one would think that the perspicacious Mr. Brown
>would have avoided Mendelsohn like the plague.
>
>But the PM embraced Mr. Let's-Make-A-Deal. The reason was made clear
>to me by Mendelsohn himself, a man as brainy as he is cynical and
>wealthy. Those many years ago, at the dawn of the Blair regime,
>Mendelsohn handed me a confidential manifesto he'd penned for LLM
>clients only. It was a map of the soul of New Labour.
>
>Here was a chilling combination of Mendelsohn, Mandelson and
>Nietzsche. "AN OLD WORLD IS DISAPPEARING AND A NEW ONE EMERGING," he
>announced in upper case. In the "Passing World" were "ideology" and
>"conviction" - which would now be replaced by "Pragmatism" and
>"Consumption." "Buying" would replace "Belief."
>
>And ultimately, in this Brave New Labour World, style was all: "WHAT
>YOU DO," wrote Mendelsohn, was passé, replaced by, "HOW YOU DO IT."
>
>So why demand Mendelsohn's head now? Gordon Brown is a prudent man
>whom, I suspect, reads a newspaper or two - and knew exactly whom he
>had positioned to fill his party's coin sacks. Mendelsohn is just a
>gun for hire, a forgettable factotum. I wouldn't place the blame on
>the hired gun, but on the man whose finger is on the trigger.

-- 
web site at www.abelard.org - news comment service, logic, economics 
 energy, education, politics, etc 1,552,396 document calls in year past
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  all that is necessary for       []     walk quietly and carry
  the triumph of evil is that      []           a big stick.
  good people do nothing     []   trust actions not words
                    only when it's funny -- roger rabbit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

=[1]= The entire world, be it the West or the East, the developed
world or the developing world, is enveloped in a chaotic situation....
Some are concerned about the internal disorder in their countries,
some are concerned about a terrorist threat - threat of a terrorism
that stems from political or so-called religious basis; so-called,
because no true religion ever promotes terrorism, in particular the
teaching of Islam.... In Islam it is completely unacceptable for a
citizen of a country to commit such acts, but it is unfortunate that
some people transgress in the name of God.... Then there are nations
engulfed in natural disasters, in short anyone with compassion for
humanity and fear of God cannot help but reflect that no one in the
world seems to have peace.
*********
=[2]= In this age Promised Messiah 'sCommunity is concerned about the
global situation as well as the state of peace affairs (in their own
189-homelands)..... This thinking is the outcome of the reasons for his
advent which are to strengthen faith and prove the existence of God to
people.... He felt that the state of affairs were such that the reliance
people had on worldly means was missing in their connection with God....
He said he was commissioned to restore the connection between God and
His creation and to bring an end to religious wars.... He explained that
the two chief commandments of the Qur'an are regarding the Unity of
God and compassion for humanity.
*********
=[3]= He was sent for the reformation of the world at a time when self-
interest was rampant. He showed the way to avoid that evil. The
attention is required towards establishing the Unity of God, to
generate a personal connection with God and to have compassion for
creation.....One must try and explain to people the reasons and causes
for the calamities and the disturbances that occur all around us:
**
i-  in previous, 1100- years there were  11- big earthquakes (50,000
plus deaths each) =BUT=   in last 100 years,  13- major quakes !
**
ii- wars from year 1900  to  2000 = 95 million deaths.
**
iii- This year floods and earthquakes in Indonesia (Feb), a huge
earthquake in the Solomen Islands, floods in Pakistan, floods in
Bangladesh (June) , in India (July), in The UK (July), huge earthquake
in Japan, a natural disaster  in USA (Aug),  floods in China, heavy
rainfalls and flooding in N. Korea,  the Peru earthquake, more
flooding in Pakistan.....In Australia natural disasters caused havoc
with the motorways... Horrendous rainfall in Burkina Faso; a hurricane
caused havoc in Hawaii as well an earthquake... An unprecedented
tropical cyclone occurred in the Arabian Sea, there was a tornado in
Alabama USA and flooding in South Africa etc now and very recently in
Bangladesh the biggest cyclone in the last 47 years which has left
600,000 people homeless. Etc..>>
**********
=[4]= This restlessness will not ease and peace could not be
established while transgressions against one who was sent from God
continue.... Indeed the world says that the seasonal storms and extreme
weather are because of climatic changes etc. However, it bears
thinking that a hundred years ago a person had declared that if people
did not pay attention to his Divine message God would exhibit signs
through natural disasters... He had also warned about earthquakes which
have been occurring with astonishing frequency in the past hundred
years.
**********
=[5]= He claimed :

1)   to re-establish spiritual relation of human with God based upon
love and sincerity.
2)  no wars on the name of God and installation of peace.
3)  to re-illumine the divine truths for words of wisdom.
4)  to develop spirituality in human which is lost under the darkness
of selfishness.
5)  Reflection of attributes of God be shown in human by self-
example---by means of prayers and spiritual attention.
6)  to remind people about the pure unity of God.
 His humble claim=all mentioned goals shall be accomplished not by
him--but with the help of Lord of heaven and Earth.

***********
=[6]= His Community shows practically compassion for humanity even to
those who persecute them in their homelands around the globe...
***********
=[7]=Oppressors should take heed from the situation in Afghanistan
where two pious person of Promised Messiah's community were martyred -
this is when it was revealed to the Promised Messiah (on whom be
peace) that two of his people were martyred God would grant him
nations. ....Today there remain his community in Afghanistan, although
not many, but in accordance to the Divine promise the Promised Messiah
has been granted 'nations'[200 million plus pious people  in 189
countries]. However, the forewarning the Promised Messiah (on whom be
peace) gave to the land of Kabul has come true with precision and it
is clear to see that the one who gave this admonition was none other
than from God.
***********
=[8]= The responsibles who run affairs of lands  must not fear those
who create terror in the name of religion. Only the fear of God is
required. Peace comes when religion is practiced with freedom and the
rights of each citizen are honored.
***********
=[9]= One must seek help from Allah and pray 'Guide us in the right
path' (1:6) lest we are impatient. It is one's task to observe utmost
patience so that Allah's blessings descend.
Promised divine peace maker in latter days    www.alislam.org  ,
     www.mta.tv    with
              LOVE FOR ALL HATRED FOR NONE. . LOVE FOR ALL HATRED FOR
NONE.