[Peace-discuss] Interesting actor on an interesting campaign

[Robert Naiman]

plus the video is way funny.

http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 4:08 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
>        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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-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

Change.org: End the war in Afghanistan
Timeline for Withdrawal and Political Negotiations
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/end_the_war_in_afghanistan_establish_a_timeline_for_withdrawal_and_begin_political_negotiations

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