Where is Jimmy the Dodger?

Jimmy "The Dodger" Ratcliffe in front of Ineos' former HQ in Lyndhurst, Hampshire

This is the question being asked in Scotland as they search high and low for Jimmy Ratcliffe who owns 70% of Ineos which has closed Grangemouth refinery and petro-chemical plant, where is Jimmy?

Don't let appearances fool you! This is the Hampshire estate
where Jimmy doesn't live although he keeps his lawnmower
collection here!

Union leaders are to meet managers at the giant Grangemouth site in a bid to save thousands of jobs following the shock decision to close the petrochemical side of the business. Unite said it had made a number of recommendations to owner Ineos, which yesterday announced the closure of the petrochemical plant with the loss of 800 jobs and potential 2,000 more among contractors. A union spokesman said: "Unite has made recommendations to Ineos as way to save jobs and prevent needless harm to this plant and the local community. "We meet with the company today and will hear then if they share these objectives." The company insisted it had no alternative but to close the business after it failed to persuade its staff to accept a survival plan, which included a pay freeze, ending of a final salary pension scheme and other changes to terms and conditions. The Grangemouth conflict with the Trade Union Unite is entirely engineered by Ratcliffe no doubt encouraged by Cameron and Osborne who he has met. Wages are less than 2% of the total cost at Grangemouth and the supposed unprofitable petrochemical plant there posted profits of £7M last year! Organ Grinder and Monkeys are the key words here?

Rolle, Switzerland where Jimmy and de Ineos Massive
really live. 

Ineos Group Limited is a privately owned multinational chemicals company consisting of 15 standalone business units, headquartered in Rolle, in Switzerland, and with its registered office in Lyndhurst, in the United Kingdom, near which "non-resident" Jim Ratcliffe has a £6 M mansion. Refused VAT deferrals by the UK government during the credit crunch, he already moved Ineos’s headquarters to Switzerland where he and 80 key executives transferred to Rolle on Lake Geneva. Can I just run that past you again. He had collected VAT as agent of HMRC to the tune of £340 million from other UK customers of his operation and because he was not allowed to hold onto other people's money at great risk to the public purse for over a year he spent a spiteful fortune buggering off to Switzerland and paid his top management substantial relocation costs to do the same.

Hey!! 600 Banks own this!

It gets worse; The move to Switzerland was designed to dodge £100 M of British taxes a year and was approved by a consortium of banks who were owed £6 Billion ( yes, billion) by Ineos. Lead banks in that consortium included RBS (81% owned by the British taxpayer) and Lloyds Banking Group (41% owned by the British taxpayer). Now, I think we understand the first principles here - Free Marketer wanted to use taxes he had collected on behalf of you and me to float his boat. When he was refused permission to do this he spitefully pulled out of Britain. To do this he had to get permission from British Banks bailed out by British taxpayer who have guaranteed the loans Ratcliffe's over leveraged group needed to survive. Oh, did I mention when Ratcliffe's company took over ICI's Chlorine operation in Cheshire it received subsidies from the British taxpayer he so assiduously shuns of £50 million?

Grangemouth Refinery

Perhaps Jim Ratcliffe could now come out of hiding in his tax exile in Switzerland (another Tory too patriotic to pay British Taxes) or from his yacht Hampshire II and explain himself instead of hiding behind the hired help. As he owns 70% of the indebted financial House of Cards called Ineos he could explain how in his greed and arrogance he feels he can blackmail Scotland - a place which has comprehensively rejected the Tories and their toxic policies. One further point, this indebted swashbucklers plans for Grangemouth if it stays open call for £150 million of UK and Scottish Government aid and £9 million of employment subsidies to adapt the complex to import Shale Gas from America. Jim Ratcliffe is an experienced Chemical Engineer which is a respected profession. He then went on to devalue this by doing an MBA. Now these are the magic letters you find behind most spectacular business failures as they breed arrogant overconfidence and an unreasonable belief in the alchemy of Financial Engineering, or trying to make a silk purse out of a pigs ear, as we used to say in old money.

The gun Ratcliffe is able to hold to hold to Scotland's head

Many Tories understand tax very well and know that it pays for the common goals, welfare and defence of the people of Britain and for the critical infrastructure our country needs which the private sector time and time again has demonstrated its inability to provide. Because they understand this so well, whilst keeping their British passports and privileges, they feck off abroad, mainly to the 23 British controlled tax havens, or even more ridiculous on a contrived pretext they become Non-Doms a fiction originally invented in 1799 to facilitate Slave Plantation owners and White Nawabs returning laden with stolen treasure from India. In the past, the German-born Tiny Rowland, the Czech-born Robert Maxwell and the Cypriot Asil Nadir were all entitled to this enormous break.

The workers who don't matter

Today, the UK accepts non-domicile status for Greek shipping magnates, Saudi princes, American corporate heirs, Mohamed Al Fayed, the controversial owner of Harrods, Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian steel magnate and an assortment of foreign business executives. Apart from the Republic of Ireland, which inherited the rule, there is no other country in the world which allows any of its residents to claim that their real home is elsewhere. The United States says it does not matter where you were born, if you qualify as a resident of the US, you must pay US tax on all your income and capital gains all over the world. If you are a US Passport holder you pay US Federal taxes, period, so there are no US  "Tax Exiles." Give up your US passport (US does not recognise dual-citizenship for those born in the US) and you can only get it back if you pay the taxes you would have paid.

So these tax-dodging sybarites can stick their snouts deeper in the trough whilst displaying their business end to the rest of us aka "The Suckers". Tories, too patriotic to pay British Taxes: eg; PR Dave's Dad and Grandad, Lord "Belize" Ashcroft, Phil "I trousered a Billion" Green, Union Jack Hayward, Jim Ratcliffe, Jonathan Harmsworth ("Patriotic" owner of the Daily Mail and PR Dave's Bestie), etc; etc;

The Tories, founded by the 1% for the 1%!

Jim Ratcliffe's £130 M yacht "Hampshire II" from which he engineers conflicts with his
skilled Grangemouth workforce for his hired help to put into action.
It's a Feadship for those who know about such things, just the best Dutch quality you can buy.

For an insight to where Jim Ratcliffe dreams up these wizzy schemes to exploit the workers here is a promo video for his £130 M yacht "Hampshire II", the name no doubt an ironic tribute to where he and his company used to live?

Yacht Hampshire II (PS; Jimmy also owns Hampshire I)