The Bedford Heist

by Frederick Linden-Wyatt

  Exiting the pandemic

  This is the most difficult stage, especially when the public are sick and tired of getting a mixed messages from all sides and it has been shown that the elite can get away freely by totally ignoring the rules but the other 67 million of us have to stick to them. Due to the sad killing of George Floyd in the un-United States of America there were protest around the world which did nothing to stop the spread of Covid-19. For weeks we have been told that social distancing is the most import thing we can do to help stop the spread of this deadly virus. We all know about the BAME death rate being higher than the rate for white people. So what do many of the black population do, they go on several protest in cities across the nation and ignore the law on social distancing.

  I have nothing against protesting as I have been on several myself but the organisers surely recognise that there will be activists that will use the protest to cause havoc. With football matches being shut down the football hooligans have little to do on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and will string along with any protest hiding in the background. After the peaceful march has finished the trouble makers will guide the hooligans towards Downing street where they know the police will rightly protect the seat of our democracy and all hell will be let loose.

  As a prison counsellor I always look at both sides of the coin as the back of the coin will be totally different from the front and have a different meaning/message. Slavery will always be a tough subject to comprehend as people will have their own views on whether it was right or wrong. Some would say that without slavery there wouldn’t be a race problem today as there would be very few black people in the world as the vast majority originated from descendants of slaves. If the slave trade never happened then all the black slaves would have led a shorter life in Africa and would have been killed by hunger, drought or decease. IMO modern day slavery can be seen in the GIG community and those people who are on zero-hour contracts which should be banned. Slavery is in itself a fascinating subject to study and many facts can be seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade.

  When I was a boy you hardly saw a black man or woman in the UK. That was until the NHS started to recruit black nurses from the Caribbean and other organisations like the London Underground also urged black people to emigrate to Britain. These immigrants were later known as the Windrush generation which was the name of the ship that transported them. Between 1948 and 1970, nearly half a million people moved from the Caribbean to Britain, which in 1948 faced severe labour shortages in the wake of the Second World War. The immigrants were later referred to as "the Windrush generation". I do hope that we will see harmony between all races and creeds but instead of the “Black Lives Matter” we will see it changed to “All Lives Matter”.

  Another problem that I can see happening is when the pubs and clubs reopen. With the police, paramedics and the NHS already on their knee’s the government must ensure that night clubs must be closed at midnight (with last orders being stopped at 23.30pm) or these front-line workers will again be stretched to breaking point. There is no need to keep clubs open until the early hours in the morning as yobs simply stay at home drinking cheap supermarket booze until 11pm and then head for the nightclubs already partially drunk. The 24-hour rule was introduce when the Labour party were in power but I don’t think it has worked well for most (that’s unless you’re a brewer or club owner) and exciting Covid-19 may be the right time to bring binge drinking and the pressure placed on our front-line workers to an end.

  Another concern of mine is that the NHS and care staff will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and I hope that they will be treated better than the solders and other service personal that keep us safe and don’t face the same problems as Alan Frazer did along with hundreds I have seen over the years. More about Alan’s case can be read in chapter 27.

  The most disturbing thing to me about this pandemic was that the family were not allowed to say their final goodbye or to hold the hand of their loved one as they passed over. With the government failing to act quickly and stating that the infection of care home residents was “unlikely” IMO nearly 20,000 lives could have been saved. We will come out of this pandemic but whether we get back to the “normal” we once took for granted, we will have to wait and see. I just pray that I never hear the phrase “scientific advice”, social distancing” and “flattening the curve” ever again. This is a burden that Boris and the conservative government will have to carry and hope that the British voter has a short memory.

  On a lighter note:

  I can remember mentioning China to my mother one night as it was part of my geography homework and she said not to mention China again as she felt that the sleeping country should not be woken up. Let sleeping dogs lie, she said. I also remember a college mate of mine telling me this joke with regards to China. He said that two men from Nepal who crossed the border to China to find food as their families were starving. Things went wrong and they got caught with one man facing six counts of murder for shooting six border security guards and of another man for killing six sheep. The man who shot the six sheep was sentenced to 25 years but the man who killed six border guards was given just two years in prison. A western journalist asked the Chinese government why the man who shot the sheep was given 25 years yet the man who killed six guards was only given two years. The reply came back that China had millions of people but very few sheep.

  For further reading on how top UK companies such as Dr. Martens moved production to China please read Afterword’s - Chapter 15 at the end of this book.

  Chapter 16. Non-dom status. Is it right?

  Roy Wilson aged 39 married without children was serving a three-year sentence for fraud due to him stealing money from some of his clients, when he worked for an umbrella company who helped the rich get around the PAYE system.

  Note. An umbrella company is a company that employs agency contractors who work on temporary contract assignments, usually through a recruitment agency in the UK. Recruitment agencies prefer to issue contracts to a limited company as the agency liability would be reduced. It issues invoices to the recruitment agency (or client) and, when payment of the invoice is made, will typically pay the contractor through PAYE with the added benefit of offsetting some of the income through claiming expenses such as travel, meals, and accommodation.

  Umbrella companies have become more prevalent in the UK since the British government introduced so-called "IR35" legislation that creates tests to determine employment status and ability to make use of small company tax reliefs. According to criteria set out by the UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, there are an estimated 4 million temporary workers in the UK, of whom 1.56 million are "classed as being in a management or senior official role, a professional occupation or an associate professional and technical occupation." It is estimated that 14% of the UK's professional contractors are currently managing their business by working through an umbrella company. Source: Wikipedia.

  Roy said that he had always worked in the financial sector and had earnt a nice salary. He said that at first it was just small amounts to pay for his cannabis and nobody spotted a problem but when he needed more money to fund his drug addiction he got caught and ended up in prison. He said that he and his wife had sold their lovely home so that he could repay the money he had stolen, and this had helped him get a lesser sentence. Having read Roy’s case notes I noticed that he lived in a nice area on the outskirts of Cambridge and had what looked like the perfect life. He was well travelled, and he and his wife looked set up for life, so I asked him to explain further why he had got hooked on drugs. Roy said that what he was doing for the umbrella company was legally trying to avoid his clients paying PAYE like the rest of us. He said that he first got angry as he could see that those who could afford to pay their taxes were trying to avoid doing so.

  He said that he had started off by just smoking cannabis in the evenings but has his workload increased he smoked more, and it had
got out of hand. He said that tax avoidance was legal, but it annoyed him that the rich were getting richer and the poor becoming poorer. Having always paid my taxes I asked him what really got his back up and made him so stressed out that he need his drugs more and more. He said that thousands of people in the UK worked for firms that helped people legally pay less tax, but he said that for some client’s this wasn’t enough. The richer his client was the greater desire was to pay zero tax and those who take up non-domiciled status were the worse.

  I asked Roy to explain to me what non-domiciled status was all about. He said that someone with non-domiciled status, sometimes called a 'non-dom', is a person living in the United Kingdom who is considered under British law to be domiciled (resident) in another country. This can have significant tax advantages for the wealthy. The non-domicile rule, that allows some UK residents to limit the tax paid on earnings outside the country, has been a regular topic of debate in recent years. The BBC reported that various changes have been made to the way people face charges in the UK if they wish to keep their non-dom status. Still, the tax status remains, and there is an element of mystery about it - with the number of non-doms in the UK a matter of informed guesswork. In 2017 the Labour Party vowed to scrap non-dom status, with some caveats to protect temporary workers, if it won power in the 2017 general election. To most people the matter of Non-dom status means very little but to any one of the millions of Britain’s living on or below the poverty line it makes shocking reading. You can also get some misinformation by searching the web, so I stuck to the good old BBC who said “A non-dom is a UK resident whose permanent home, or domicile, is outside of the UK. A domicile is usually the country his or her father considered his permanent home when he or she was born, or it may be the place overseas where somebody has moved to with no intention of returning. That means somebody can be born, educated and work in the UK but still hold non-dom status. It also means that some may inherit their non-dom status from their parents. For proof to the tax authority, they must provide evidence about their background, lifestyle and future intentions, such as where they own property or intend to be buried. Key to non-dom tax status is that an individual must pay UK tax on UK earnings, but need not pay UK tax on foreign income or gains unless they bring that income back to the UK.”

  This made Roy Wilson incredibly angry as he saw the system as an easy way for the rich to move their money around the world without paying UK tax on their earnings. Ron said that nobody really knew how many non-dom’s there were as people do not necessarily have to indicate their domicile status on their UK tax return. The BBC estimated that there were over 114,000 non-doms in 2012-13. There is a charge made by the UK tax authorities for a non-dom to maintain their tax status. This ranges from an annual fee of between £30,000 and £90,000 per year but this is peanuts to a non-dom as they are saving millions elsewhere. According to the Labour party there is good reason to get rid of this scheme and replace it with a scheme that protects temporary workers and overseas students who can legally maintain a form domicile overseas. Individuals who were raised and educated at the expense of the UK taxpayer should not have a legal loophole not to paying a contribution back to the country that created them.

  A fine example of a Non-dom would be our very own Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton MBE (born 7 January 1985) in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England. Lewis is by far the best formula 1 racing driver ever and has a great following. Lewis’s grand parents moved to the UK from Grenada in the 1950s and his father Antony Lewis married his mother Carmen but his parents separated when Lewis was two; as a result of this, he lived with his mother and half-sisters Nicola and Samantha until he was twelve, when he started living again with his father, stepmother Linda and half-brother Nicolas who has cerebral palsy. Allegedly, Lewis’s mother may have claimed benefits as a single mother and when he moved in with his father, he then received child benefit. If you add that his half-brother Nicolas who suffers from Cerebral palsy, would have received a lot of financial help from the state to help him cope with his cruel disability. So, what does Lewis do when he becomes a millionaire, he thanks the country that made him what he is and has cared for his family and his disabled half-brother by sodding off to Switzerland and then moving to Monaco? According to Wikipedia at the start of 2013, Hamilton took delivery of a metallic red and black Bombardier Challenger 600 series private jet, tail plate number G-LCDH. Following the leak of the confidential Paradise Papers in November 2017, it was reported that Hamilton had avoided paying £3.3 million of Value Added Tax on his private jet worth £16.5 million. The leasing deal set up by his advisers was said by the BBC to appear to be artificial and did not comply with an EU and UK ban on refunds for private use. The BBC also say that Hamilton's social media accounts provide evidence that he has used the Bombardier Challenger 605 for holidays and on other personal trips around the world. A new company owned by Hamilton, Stealth (IOM) Limited, leased the jet from Hamilton's British Virgin Islands Company, Stealth Aviation Limited, and imported it into the Isle of Man. It was then leased on to a UK jet management company that provided Hamilton with a crew and other services, which leased it back to Hamilton and his Guernsey Company, BRV Limited. Lawyers acting for Hamilton said that the company made all necessary disclosures to Isle of Man officials, who approved the approach. According to Wikipedia as of 2020, Hamilton was ranked as the richest British sportsperson, with an estimated personal fortune of $285 million.

  Another name that keeps popping up is that of Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British business magnate, investor, author and philanthropist. He founded the Virgin Group in the 1970s, which controls more than 400 companies in various fields. According to Wikipedia his net worth was a staggering US$4.4 billion (April 2020). Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age. His first business venture, at the age of 16, was a magazine called Student. In 1970, he set up a mail-order record business. He opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records—later known as Virgin Megastores—in 1972. Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he started Virgin Atlantic airline and expanded the Virgin Records music label. In 2004, he founded spaceflight corporation Virgin Galactic.

  According to the Guardian newspaper it wrote “from his private island in the Caribbean, Sir Richard Branson is trying to convince the UK government to give his Virgin Atlantic airline a £500m bailout to help it survive the coronavirus pandemic and the economic fallout of the lockdown.

  Virgin Australia, which is 10% owned by the billionaire’s Virgin Group, is also seeking a £700m bailout from the Australian government. (Virgin Australia went in to administration in April 2020, so only time will tell if it can survive).

  Branson has the backing of bosses at Airbus, which makes Virgin Atlantic’s planes, and Rolls-Royce, which makes its jet engines, who have warned ministers that if the airline collapsed it could drag them down too.

  Due to the Coronavirus all airlines are in financial trouble but there were a lot of raised eyebrows when Sir Richard asked the British government for £500 million bail out. Yahoo finance stated, “Rival airline boss Michael O’Leary of Ryanair accused him of trying to “fleece” the taxpayer and told the billionaire to “write the cheque himself.” Christian leaders in Britain also hit out at large firms and the wealthy for using tax havens during the crisis and warned offshore companies should not receive bailouts in a letter to the Times.

  Why the super-rich live in Monaco.

  Basically, there are three methods to become resident of Monaco: 1. You are offered an employment contract by an authorised Monegasque employer. 2. You intend to set up a business activity in Monaco or the favourite way for Non-dons is number 3. You can demonstrate that you’re wealthy and have enough income without engaging in any gainful employment. You will need to open a bank account with a bank in Monaco, deposit minimum EUR 500,000 and acquire a bank reference of that bank stating you have enough funds to support yourself in Monaco. Once you have purchased (or
rented) a property in Monaco you can then stop worrying about paying taxes as there aren’t many. Income tax in Monaco was abolished in 1869! All foreigners officially residing in Monaco can benefit from these zero personal income tax regimes. The Principality of Monaco doesn’t levy capital gains tax nor a wealth tax. Inheritance tax and gift tax are payable, but only regarding assets situated in Monaco. In other words, these taxes don’t apply to assets situated outside Monaco (money in a foreign bank account for example). Clever individuals know how to benefit from this.

  Roy Wilson went on to state that the government should get rid of the Non-don status and make any person who holds a British passport pay taxes to the UK (including money banked offshore) like most people do. If they decide that they don’t want to play ball, then they can forfeit their British passport and reside wherever they like. If they want to return to the UK, then they would be treated like any foreign visitor and must apply for a visa. The government would have the right not to offer a visa which could be awkward for the likes of Mr Hamilton as he may have to miss the race at Silverstone.

  The message to all these Non-dons is that if they want to be known as being British then the country expects them to pay UK taxes like the rest of us. To make this happen legally government would have to widen the scope of the law known as “Conducive to the public good” which could be extended to take into account these blood sucking leeches. I placed Roy on our drug rehabilitation program, but he will struggle as he was on some heavy drugs when he got caught and he is finding it hard to come off them. I wouldn’t be inviting Roy to the heist in Bedford as he isn’t reliable whilst he is still drug dependent.