OK, the inclusion of the words “sex-mad” in that title was merely a desperate scheme1 to try and get you to read an article on a case brought against the UK by the European Commission in the European Court of Justice regarding the Terminal Markets Act 1973. However there really is mention of Nazis, and of the coronavirus, though not of the former being infected by the latter. In fact I would have preferred it if there had been less of the Nazi stuff2: the rather tasteless comparisons to World War II made me inclined to dismiss this “Briefings for Britain” piece on the case from two days ago, but I have a feeling that maybe it ought not to be dismissed.
In it, Caroline Bell writes:
This Thursday, the European Court of Justice delivers its verdict in the European Commission’s infraction proceedings against the United Kingdom for failing to impose VAT on transactions in the City’s multi-trillion-dollar derivatives markets. Launched during the murky days of the Brexit withdrawal negotiations in 2018, this judicial time bomb has the potential to blow up both free trade talks and the Withdrawal Treaty itself if the Court finds against the UK.
Which it did. The judgement issued today can be read here.
Caroline Bell speculates that a decision against the UK might have dramatic consequences:
In terms of trade talks, an adverse judgment would probably mean the City could kiss goodbye to any sort of enhanced equivalence (which Brussels is not willing to grant anyway) and even basic equivalence for financial services could be an issue. But for every blow the EU tries to strike here, the UK is in a position to retaliate much harder against EU financial institutions, so the outcome is again likely to be neutral. Does anyone even expect there to be a financial service agreement with the EU anymore? The EU’s action against the Swiss in this area to try to bring them to heel has badly backfired, and would do so if they applied the same tactics on the UK.
I know that quite a few of our readers work in the legal and financial fields. Is there anything to this story? What effect will the verdict on Case C‑276/19 have?
1I think it was the humourist Alan Coren who said that since the bestseller charts back then in the 70s always seemed to be topped by sex books, WWII books and golf books, his next book ought to be about sex-mad golfing Nazis. Edit: I had misremembered. Alan Peakall and Mr Ed have pointed out the existence of Golfing for Cats, pub. 1976. How many publishers would dare have that cover today?
2A wish shared by most of Planet Earth in 1945.
Hmmph. If you’ve severed control by EU political bodies and institutions, why does the EU think that it was appropriate to continue through a court case that it no longer had jurisdiction over?
“If you’ve severed control by EU political bodies and institutions, why does the EU think that it was appropriate to continue through a court case that it no longer had jurisdiction over?”
Because it still has jurisdiction. From the link:
I don’t understand what that means in practice. They don’t have any authority to order changes going forward. Is this just another attempt to loot the UK fisc?
“It [the UK] criticised the Commission for failing to take account of the complex series of restructurings carried out in the London commodity markets since 1977.”
Oh, no, you did not! To court with you. Bureaucrats gonna bureaucrat.
“I don’t understand what that means in practice. They don’t have any authority to order changes going forward. Is this just another attempt to loot the UK fisc?”
It’s a combination of looting the treasury and sabotaging the London commodity markets, which was originally used as a transparent ploy to put pressure on the negotiations back in May’s time, and which continues in the role, likely with a lot less probability of success, in the current negotiations.
We derogated our commodity markets from VAT back in 1977. As new markets started up, we extended the same scheme to them all under the same justification, and despite there being a technical requirement that we ask permission, the EU knew about it and made no objection. However, it would appear that under the letter of the law we should have asked permission and didn’t.
Given that neither paying a huge fine nor wrecking the London markets by taxing them under EU ‘level playing field’ terms is politically viable, Boris is likely to tell them to get knotted. (So the article’s authors think.) And this blatant move by the EU will give Boris the leverage with the public to be able to do so. Maybe.
I don’t know. It’s not my field.
I think that Alan Coren’s quip was, on having been told that books on cats and books on golf both sold well, that his next book would be titled Golfing for Cats. The book, as delivered, added the Nazi theme through the flags in the golf course’s holes bearing miniature swastikas. Around the same time he, or possibly another humorist, identified Royal Gun Dog Bites Sex-Change Vicar as the perfect tabloid headline.
You have slightly mis-remembered Alan Coren’s quote, in the 1980s, I was in Portugal one summer and took that book on the interminable bus rides I went on to get to the coast. It was called Golfing for Cats and it had a cover with a prominent swastika flag in NSDAP colours (as per the link). It was only on one of my later journeys that it dawned on me that the Portuguese seeing me read the book, barely a decade after the fall of the Estado Novo, might’ve judged it by its cover, and I didn’t have the language or opportunity to explain. It was a good read.
I got distracted by happy memories of 1980s Portugal, and a wild-goose chase. The ‘Terminal Markets Act’ was actually a Statutory Instrument, The Value Added Tax (Terminal Markets) Order 1973. not that it matters much as were it an Act, it would still be invalid for breaching an EU Directive.
At the time of the Referendum, I noted that no one was saying that this would be a golden opportunity to ditch VAT and rid ourselves of this insane tax. Instead, we have a back-dated VAT bill of immense size, from which the EU gets a cut.
I suggest that we cough up, but pay the bill in Trident warheads, after a decent warning to allow for evacuations. It’s the only way to liquidate the statism. And pass an appropriate Act of Oblivion. And also, scrap the fiat money scheme that helps this nonsense of huge derivative debts being created.
The Telegraph reports 24 Covid-19 cases a day in London at present, it’s vanishing, just as that German chap and an Israeli chap said it would. So should the EU.
I would read that to mean that they have no jurisdiction to order prospective changes, as you say, but they retain jurisdiction to penalize for past conduct that occurred when the measures still applied. So, to your question, I think the answer is “yes.”
Dear Miss Solent
The eu knew about it for decades and did nothing, so the equitable doctrine of estoppel applies.
If they don’t like it, the response in Arkell v Pressdram [1971] seems to fit the bill nicely.
DP
Back in the 50s one literary type noted that the best-selling books of the time were about Abe Lincoln, doctors, and dogs. She suggested the ideal title for a best-seller would be Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog.
Dr Doggie Hauser MD almost saved Lincoln?
“The EU’s action against the Swiss in this area to try to bring them to heel has badly backfired”
If anyone has a link substantiating this backfiring I would appreciate it. My limited understanding of that trade treaty is that it is still stuck in an impasse (as for example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7157539/EU-threatens-BLOCK-Switzerlands-access-financial-services-market-Brexit-warning-shot.html).
Sovereign Immunity?
Well that was annoying – everything I had typed vanished, perhaps I hit the wrong key or something (I HATE computers and I spend most of my life typing on them, which I HATE).
“The City” was destroyed long ago. The private clubs, associations, partnerships and so on were swept away by a tidal wave of GOVERNMENT REGULATION which was falsely presented as “deregulation”.
The old self governing institutions of “The City” (which were voluntary – as trading “off exchange” was legal) were declared “restrictive practices” by the government courts – following some “perfect competition” model they were taught in universities.
As for banking.
Banking was always, to some extent, a Credit Bubble – but it is totally a Credit Bubble, so it is best to turn one’s eyes away from banking (leaving it to its Frankfurt School of Marxism “Diversity” advertising campaigns – which even Barclays, historically the least left wing big bank, now goes in for). Banking no longer has any real connection to Real Savings (which hardly exist anymore) – and is best seen as largely an arm of the state, totally dependent on the Bank of England and its funny money (the same is also basically true in the United States – where Real Savings have also collapsed).
I suspect that it was always the fate of Credit Bubble banking to end up as, essentially, an arm of the state – after all it always depended on “suspension of cash payments” and the rest of the legalised fraud (whenever the bubble was about to burst).
Bankers wanted to be “more” than mere money lenders (“Shylocks”) they wanted to CREATE money – not just be like the “Iron Bank of Braavos” handing out sacks of physical gold and demanding payment in physical gold.
Well you wanted to be more than a mere “Shylock” – and you have ended up being LESS than an independent money lender. Your Credit Bubble (“broad money”) ways have led you to total dependence on the state
You are welfare claimants – in thousand Pound suits. So bleep you.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson differed on many things – but their view of banking was the same, because they both knew that bankers never settle for being “mere Shylocks” they always aspire to be “more” than this – creating vast Credit Bubbles (palaces in the air – held up by magic pixie dust and Moon Beams). Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren (who had been a banker – and knew every trick) agreed.
There is nothing wrong with money lending – as long as you actually have the money you are lending out, and as long as you do not pretend you still have the money AFTER you have lent it out (till when and IF you are repaid).
This does NOT mean that all banking is equally bad.
For example, the first Mr J.P. Morgan in banking had an unofficial rule – he never lent out more than three times the physical gold (it could be physical silver to – it depended what the money was in a given country) than he had actually had.
A fraudster certainly (legal fraud) – but by the standards of most bankers (even in his own day) he was a saint. Even all the paper connected to him (all the “loans” and so on) and he would have the physical gold in his vaults to cover a third of it – even the worst bank run was unlikely to sink him.
Before the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 he had the physical gold to cover at least a third of his debt mountain – so it was not all Magic Pixie Dust and Moonbeams.
Of course AFTER 1913 (and both the Morgans and the Rockefellers pushed the creation of the Federal Reserve) all caution was gone – and fraud could be unlimited.
Still enough about banking – there has long been (basically) no gold in their vaults anyway. They do not even have very much token notes and coins (little actual CASH).
The Commodities Markets?
Do they actually have, for example, the physical GOLD they claim to have?
I doubt it – I suspect the market is a giant FRAUD. But we shall have to see.
The European Union.
None of the above is its affair – indeed the European Union should not exist, and should be ignored.
A British government that FOUR YEARS AFTER WE VOTED TO LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION is still indulging the E.U. (trying to make “agreements” with it and what not) is impossible to respect.
“But this is still within the jurisdiction of the E.U. – doe to this or that agreement”.
What do you, or the government, not understand about WE VOTED FOUR YEARS AGO TO LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION.
After four years for the government to still be messing about with the E.U. is very hard to forgive.
As Richard Cantillon, the old partner of John Law in the early 1700s, pointed out….
The smaller the gap between the Credit Expansion and the physical gold (or the physical silver – if that is the money in a country) is, the smaller (by definition) the Credit Bubble is – because the gap (between “Broad Money” and the “Monetary Base” – the actual CASH) is the Credit Bubble.
Thus the smaller the “Boom-Bust” cycle will be – and the less the rich will artificially profit at the expense of the poor. For the Credit Expansion boom-bust does indeed tend to benefit the rich at-the-expense-of the poor (which is NOT the case with the normal operation of “capitalist” industry).
When my father was born (February 1913) there was still no Income Tax and no Federal Reserve in the United State.
Up to 1931 in London and 1933 in the United States one could still “cash in” notes for physical gold.
Up to the 1960s in the United States there was still some silver in the coins.
The idea that this vast fraud, this Credit Bubble “financial structure”, is inevitable in an “industrial society” is a lie.
The European Union?
It should not exist.
But if it does exist – then we must reject any claim of “jurisdiction”. Free trade with people – most certainly. But not at the cost of any acceptance of the jurisdiction of any foreign power in the INTERNAL affairs of this land.
Finis.