Apple's tax arrangements are the tip of the iceberg

Apple's tax arrangements with the Irish Government is a symptom of a much wider problem. Multi-nationals, through TTIP style trade agreements, are bypassing the wishes of democratically elected governments; insisting on the privatisation of all services and manipulating the different tax policies of the countries they operate in to pay as little tax as possible.

Also, while using the infrastructure facilities of host countries they pay little or nothing towards the maintenance and modernisation of those facilities. They are parasitical in nature, taking but not giving, impoverishing the world’s populations while enriching themselves (and at the same time destroying the planet in the lust for bigger and better profits).

Two years ago it was estimated that 1 per cent of the world’s population owned 48 per cent of the world’s wealth and that this was set to rise before 2020. If this is not evidence of a “takeover” of the world by unelected CEOs and major shareholders, I don't know what is.

Unless democrats all over the world start doing something about this, I predict that 50 years from now there will be no democracy, no public services and a dystopian world of mass poverty, virtual slavery and rule by “the company”.

Mike Jenkins
Bromley

Labour's commitment to online voting is clear from its use in the leadership election. A secure digital identity is what was missing from Blair’s identity card. Online co-operatives are a logical move to empower small businesses and reclaim the internet from multinationals. Wider online contribution to the detail of policies could ensure they are well thought through before they are implemented.

Failures in presentation are more than made up for by content.

Jon Hawksley
London, EC1R

I followed with bewilderment the British-French quarrel over the Calais jungle. Presidential nominee Sarkozy has suggested that the jungle should not be in Calais and that it is perfectly normal for France to take control of its own borders. However, how were immigrants able to evade security, cross the French border and settle in Calais? I assume that many have even destroyed their documents for safety and security reasons. On Monday, I was not allowed at Heathrow airport to board a plane to Amman, Jordan because my British passport was valid for less than six months.

How would the UK then be expected to admit persons with no proof of identity and who passed from safe country into another before camping on French territory? The refugee crisis is bound to escalate with no end in sight for the Middle Eastern and North African crises. Why not support countries in the region that are the first point of entry for refugees? Jordan, for example, has been the first entry country for refugees for cultural and linguistic reasons. The kingdom has reached a breaking point under the weight of refugees, in addition to a new security dimension with refugees arriving from territories controlled by terrorist organisations.

It is high time for the global community, UN agencies and other stakeholders to move from the humanitarian response towards a more global, forward-looking, holistic and sustainable approach that deals with this, the most extraordinary movement of humans since World War II.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London, NW2

Badgers are not being “culled” to protect cattle from bTB. In my opinion this is a red herring.

It is because the badger is a protected species. It cannot under law be harmed, and nor can its setts. This fact absolutely outrages the significant and powerful minority in the countryside who think it their God-given right to kill wildlife as and when they please, mainly for their own enjoyment, or their convenience.

If a sett is in the way of a farmer ploughing up a field, that farmer may well think their desire to make a few extra pounds from the piece of field the sett occupies far exceeds the badgers’ right to live unmolested. This lobby was beaten and the badger protected because they could not demonise the inoffensive badger sufficiently to make the public accept that it should be left to the fate dictated by those least likely to show compassion towards it.

The fact that badgers can contract bTB provides the ideal opportunity to override this protection and skew the facts, putting the blame on badgers for the problem rather than where it actually lies, i.e. with cruel, stressful and unhygienic farming practices. The very fact that the badgers killed in the cull are not even tested to see if they had TB tells you this is a charade.

The legal protection of the badger forms an undesirable precedent to those who think wildlife is theirs to mistreat as they so wish. What next, they think – foxes? After all, they love killing foxes and have persecuted them for centuries. A ban on hunting them has been flicked away by the hunters as a minor inconvenience that has not stopped them carrying on exactly as they did before the ban. But if foxes had legal protection, like the badger, dear me, that would be a serious impediment to the current situation of inflicting brutal cruelty on them via hunting, snaring and shooting.

Recent Prime Ministers and Defra Ministers have been no friends to wildlife, supporting both the badger cull and hunting. Public opinion is ignored and so is scientific evidence.

This is my opinion, but it is an informed opinion, informed by over 20 years of campaigning against cruelty to wildlife.

Penny Little
Great Haseley

In reference to Anna Soubry: free movement of people? Access to the single market?

I don't wish to appear rude, but, Good Lord, you really do need to accept the view of the British people, not say you accept it and then prove by your embittered comments that you absolutely don't.

Brexit means no freedom of movement, in time, as far as we are concerned, and it means no access to the single market.

That's it, full stop. I wonder if you might consider moving on.

Neil Coppendale
Address supplied