Sunday, March 9, 2008

Mr. van der Veer I just don't believe you!

In the early seventies Edward Heath, probably the last "One Nation" Tory prime minister, called Tiny Rowland, (a horrible little shit in charge of a company called Lonrho), "an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism".

35 years I would like to give that title to the boss of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer. While we are giving out this title let's give honourable mentions to the US oil companies and the pharmaceutical industry who are all doing so well by being so bad.

What upset me was watching Mr. van der Veer go on TV and defend their massively increased profits against any talk of a windfall tax by arguing that most of their profit was made outside of Europe. Does he really think we all fall for that legend they created of their retail operation losing money while the overseas production operations made all the profit. His bean-counters can put the profit where they want and of course they put it in countries with the lowest taxes and most corrupt governments.

What a surprise that Wikipedia tells us that van der Veer was awarded honourary doctorate from the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria.

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