[Peace-discuss] Interesting actor on an interesting campaign

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Nighy stars in ‘Robin Hood’ drive to raise billions
	Actor Bill Nighy and writer Richard Curtis
	join forces to make Tobin tax a reality
	BY SOPHIE TAYLOR
	LAST UPDATED 5:23 PM, FEBRUARY 10, 2010

Has the English comic actor Bill Nighy, playing a nauseatingly supercilious bank 
executive, just given the performance of a lifetime? Several charity and aid 
organisations are hoping so - because the short film he's made is to promote a 
campaign launched today for the introduction of a "Robin Hood tax" on financial 
institutions.

Nighy was roped in by Richard Curtis, the man who wrote the scripts for some of 
Britain's most successful recent comedy films, including Four Weddings and a 
Funeral and Love Actually, in which Nighy famously played the ageing pop star 
Billy Mack.

As the Curtis-Nighy film (above) argues, a tax of just 0.05 per cent on global 
transactions between financial institutions - five pence for every £1,000 traded 
- would be enough to raise hundreds of billions of pounds to help fight poverty, 
protect public services and tackle climate change.

Nearly 50 organisations, including charities such as Oxfam, unions and green 
lobby groups, have joined forces to urge the government to push for what it 
calls the Robin Hood Tax - but is traditionally known as the Tobin Tax, named 
after the American economist who first suggested the idea.

Launched today, the campaign argues in a letter sent to the leaders of all 
political parties: "You could ignore the big problems facing the world ... or 
you can work to find an innovative, modern, regular way of accumulating a fund 
of money.

Bill Nighy stars in the Robin Hood tax campaign advertisement
"We would ask you to seriously consider the Robin Hood Tax as that radical new 
option - a small tax on bankers that would make a huge difference to the UK, to 
the poorest countries and to our planet. Let's turn the crisis for the banks 
into an opportunity for Britain and the world."

The idea of a Tobin tax, first proposed in 1972, was floated again last year by 
both Prime Minister Gordon Brown and FAS chairman Lord [Adair] Turner as a way 
of raising funds to insure against another bank collapse. Brown eventually 
dropped the proposal under pressure from other politicians and banking 
executives who - just like Nighy's character in the campaign film - treated the 
idea of any further taxes on the banking sector as nothing short of preposterous.


http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/59536,people,news,nighy-stars-in-robin-hood-drive-to-raise-billions

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