Before 1975 MPs didn’t even have to declare which firms paid them. The Poulson scandal of the late 1960s and 1970s revealed a clutch of MPs using questions, motions, dining rooms and debates to promote the interests of the corrupt architect. One MP had to resign, and the Register of Interests was set up. No one took much notice of it, even during the 1980s as the number of consultancies, directorships and perks showered on MPs, almost all of them Tory, rose to obscene levels. One Tory MP was so bemused by the way in which his colleagues were growing rich that he actually advertised for a company to take him on as a consultant. The private dining rooms of the House of Commons – why are there private dining rooms there anyway? – became a huge commercial undertaking whereby corporations offered their customers the best food and drink, all consumed in an intoxicating atmosphere of democracy. How wonderful to drink a toast to the hierarchies of the Hanson Trust after a glamorous dinner in the ancient seat of parliament!
By the mid-1980s the buying of MPs had become a public and obvious scandal. No one noticed. On and on it went, with the blessing of both prime ministers. Thatcher and Major both used 10 Downing Street as another watering hole to pour booze down the gullets of generous donors to the Tory Party:
If parliament was indeed composed of representatives there should be no ‘outside interests’ whatsoever, MPs should, get their salary and not a penny more. Their perks and trips abroad should be ruthlessly wiped out, and their activities subjected to the most rigorous public scrutiny and disclosure. That is what the new House of Commons Privileges Committee should recommend. But since the committee consists of seven Tory MPs, all with business interests, sitting in secret, the chances of even the mildest restrictions on rampant sleaze are spectacularly low. Paul Foot, article November 1994, ‘Parliamentary Privilege’
This is more than can be said for Geoffrey Robinson, Blair’s first Paymaster General, who has now been found to have been a beneficiary of the generous crook Robert Maxwell – to the tune of £200,000, no less, the cheque which Robinson just cannot find. Robinson’s connections with the accountants Arthur Andersen, which raised funds for New Labour, have been exposed in a recent book by Tom Bower, just in time for the Enron scandal. Enron went bust last year in a spectacular bankruptcy caused by various imaginative accounting devices dreamed up by Andersen. From 1994 to 1996 Andersen’s sister company employed Patricia Hewitt, a rising star in New Labour, and cooperated generously with New Labour before and after the 1997 election. Its main aim in life – to remove the ban on it imposed by the former Tory government because of its dishonesty over the DeLorean scandal – was achieved within seven months of New Labour coming to office. Paul Foot, Corruption: Dirty Business
Your governments and ministers wanted to change society all right. But their power to change things was constantly frustrated by the unelected powers outside parliament. I always laugh when I read in the Tory press about ‘government interference in business’, since the real problem is business interference in government. Paul Foot, 3 Letters to a Bennite, 7th January 1982
Man driving car: I’m starting my own business.
Women in front passenger seat: David, That’s fantastic. 1980s car advert
This is business, not personal. Even the shooting of your father was business, not personal, Sonny. The Godfather 1972 starring Marlon Brando & Al Pacino & James Caan & Richard S Castellano & Richard Duvall & Sterling Hayden & John Marley & Richard Conte & Diane Keaton et al, director Francis Ford Coppola, Tom
Tell Michael it was only business. I always liked him. ibid. Sal
Don’t ask me about my business, Kate. ibid. Michael
The most important thing in business is honesty, integrity, hard work, family. American Gangster 2007 ***** starring Denzel Washington & Russell Crowe & Chiwetel Ejiofor & Cuba Gooding jr & Josh Brolin & Ted Levine & Armand Assante & Yul Vazqez & Ruby Dee et al, director Ridley Scott
I’m a businessman with a sense of history. The Long Good Friday 1980 starring Helen Mirren & Bob Hoskins & Pierce Brosnan & Dave King & Paul Freeman & Eddie Constantine & Bryan Marshall & Paul Barber et al, director John MacKenzie, Harold on boat
This ain’t business, bitch. This is personal. New Jack City 1991 starring Wesley Snipes & Ice-T & Judd Nelson & Allen Paynes & Chris Rock & Bill Nunn & Russell Wong & Bill Cobbs & Christopher Williams et al, director Mario van Peebles, Scottie to Nino
This is big business. This is the American way. ibid. Nino in court
I’m responding to the will of the people ... I’m a businessman. The Untouchables 1987 starring Kevin Costner & Charles Martin Smith & Sean Connery & Andy Garcia & Patricia Clarkson & Richard Bradford & Jack Kehoe & Robert De Niro et al, director Brian De Palma, Al Capone
A reputation for honesty and decency and reliability: you always know what to expect when you do business with a Ferengi. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s2e7: Rules of Acquisiti, Grand Nagus to Kira & Sisko
Rom only has a son to think about; I have a business. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s3e1: The Search I, Quark to Sisko
To an extraordinary extent by comparative standards the United States is a business-run society, which means that human rights are subordinated to the overwhelming, over-riding need of profit for investors. Decisions are placed in the hands of unaccountable private tyrannies, which means that even if formal democracy practices exists as they do, they’re of peripheral significance. The government is ... the shadow cast by business over society. Professor Noam Chomsky, Class War: The Attack on Working People
Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons – specifically to establish, promote and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference. Stephen Kinzer
The true terrorists of our world do not meet at the docks at midnight, or scream Allahu Akbar before some violent action; the true terrorists of our world wear five-thousand dollar suits, and work in the highest positions of finance, government, business. Zeitgeist Addendum, 2008
Somebody has to take governments’ place, and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it. David Rockefeller, Newsweek International 1st February 1999
They gain control of the world by bankrupting their own businesses. The Illuminati owns 99.9% of the stores you walk into, the shops and the gas stations you go to. And they are going to destroy us on purpose. And the idea of taking over is to bankrupt the whole world where nothing is of any value and the currency doesn’t exist anywhere, and then come back and solve all the problems. John Todd
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. Henry Ford
Valhalla, Mr Beale. Please sit down. You have meddled with the primal forces of Nature, Mr Beale. And I won’t have it. Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow. Tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system out of systems. One vast and immune interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multinational dominion of Dollars. Petro Dollars. Electro Dollars. Multi dollars. Reichmarks. Rins, Rubles, Pounds and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of Nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr Beal? You get up on your little twenty-one-inch screen and howl about America and Democracy. There is no America. There is no Democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state – Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beal. The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr Beal. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that perfect world in which there in no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common purpose. In which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquillised. All boredom amused. Network 1976 Network starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Arthur Burghardt, director Sidney Lumet, Jensen to Beale
I will tell you what they are buying CCA for – they are buying it for the Saudi Arabian investment corporation. They are buying it for the Arabs ... We all know that the Arabs control $16 billion in this country. They own a chunk of Fifth Avenue, twenty downtown pieces of Boston, a part of the port of New Orleans, an industrial park in Salt Lake City, they own big hunks of the Atlanta Hilton, the Arizona Land & Cattle Company, the Security National Bank in California, the Bank of the Commonwealth in Detroit ... And that’s only what we know about ... The Arabs are simply buying us. There’s only one thing can stop them – you. You. ibid.
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from the defects of the Constitution or confederation, not from want of honour or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nation, of coin, credit and circulation. John Adams
Business before pleasure. Mid-19th century proverb
The recession had destroyed eleven trillion dollars of Americans’ net worth. A recovery seemed far off. Occupy Wall Street wanted bankers held responsible. Frontline: Money, Power and Wall Street I, PBS 2012
Credit Default Swaps – a kind of derivative that ensues a loan against default. ibid.