RT @jamesro47: Guardian and Observer journalists have voted in favour of holding a strike ballot this PM as NUJ tries to save jobs at papers—
Media Guido (@MediaGuido) December 13, 2012

The Guardian NUJ chapter have voted to ballot all staff on whether to strike over forced redundancies. That could be a £100,000 day saving for the management.

Guardian insiders say it is “odds on” that the strike ballot will pass.

All out…

If you’re about to launch yourself into an almighty rant about people you do not like being “inept” , it’s probably a good idea to make sure you get your facts right. Guido meant to complete this take down of Tuscany’s finest earlier, but got distracted. Polly Toynbee’s diatribe this morning was riddled with more mistakes than she owns houses. The entire premise of the article was a half-time review of the coalition, which Polly states is tomorrow, it seems pretty much everyone else disagrees. The Guardian‘s very own Patrick Wintour set it at  the beginning last month. He even wrote his own half time report…

She talks of “cutting into a slump has killed demand, paralysed investment and choked off growth”, wilfully blind to the fact that the ONS say retail was up 1.6% in October on the year, and 4.9% since 2010. Consumer confidence is also up – seven points in one month – and the UK currently enjoys the highest business confidence in the EU. It’s hardly much to write home about, nevertheless you could be forgiven for thinking Polly is ignoring the fact that GDP increased by 1% in Q3. Note that she can’t explain what is going on with the employment figures either.

Polly concludes: “This is the world of Smythson of Bond Street, headed by Cameron’s wife”. A basic fact-check from a sub would have thrown up the fact that SamCam quit “heading up” Smythson in May 2010. The whole thing is wrong from top to bottom.

Did anyone even read it before it went to print?

Somehow Sky beat the Media Guardian to the story in their own backyard – GMG are selling their remaining 50% stake in Auto Trader for up to £600m. Things must be getting really bad…

Of course it was the sale of the first chunk of the car classifieds goldmine that employed the finest tax avoidance techniques known to the Cayman Islands. Guido will be watching this sale closely…

The frontpage of the Guardian says that by opposing the Hacked Off campaign’s  demand for statutory regulation the Prime Minister is defying the victims of press intrusion. Odd, since the Guardian’s own leader on this very subject was

Our own position remains as we argued it before the inquiry this summer. We believe in independent regulation, both from politicians and the press itself. We do believe in a contract system – not the use of statute – to secure participation.

So the Guardian “defies press victims” as well…

To mark the Guardian’s ‘Offshore Secrets’ week Guido has been exposing some home truths of their own over the past few days. On Monday GMG’s Cayman Islands company was shown to still be active, while yesterday a special Guidorama investigation revealed that their King’s Place offices are owned by a tax-exempt offshore investment trust. Guido can now reveal that last month the Guardian hosted a seminar in which attendees were openly advised on how they could avoid tax:

“Guardian investing’s seminar will introduce and explain the principles, benefits and risks of investing and help you determine whether you could be making more from your money, with the aim of helping you achieve your financial goals. During the seminar we will also introduce our unique proposition Monitored Informed Investing (MII), discuss what you could do to mitigate Inheritance tax and protect your estate from a potential 40% Inheritance tax bill and look at how you can effectively plan for retirement.”

The seminar, held at the Guardian’s tax efficient offshore-owned York Way offices in October, was organised by Guardian Investing, GMG’s personal finance advice team. This is no third party operation, the Guardian has approved, condoned and even put its name to helping people avoid inheritance tax. Their high-minded journalists wax lyrical about hiding money from the Treasury’s coffers, all the while encouraging tax avoidance on the quiet. There is no end to their hypocrisy…

Day two of the Guardian’s ongoing Offshore Secrets investigation focused on “who is buying up London: the real identities behind Britain’s secret property deals”. Apparently some 100,000 tax avoiders have been purchasing British properties and offices using offshore companies, hiding their dealings in the UK and reducing their bill to the exchequer. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Guardian’s very own offices were owned by an offshore company? Surely not…

Guido can reveal that 90 King’s Place, the Guardian’s offices in central London, is owned by a tax exempt offshore investment trust managed from Germany:

If and when the trust’s owners ever decide to sell the property, bought for £234 million and now worth considerably more, the owners could sell the trust offshore rather than the property itself and avoid all UK taxes. The trust itself is exempt from corporation tax in Germany. The Treasury will be denied millions of pounds.

It is incredible that the Guardian is paying millions to an offshore trust which is structured in such a way that it pays no corporation tax anywhere in the world. Guidorama tried to contact James Ball, the Guardian investigations journalist at the forefront of the Offshore Secrets series, he said he was too ill to speak to us, the Guardian Media Group’s press office claims that all the press officers are abroad. Caught on camera Patrick Wintour, the paper’s political editor, pleaded ignorance.

The hypocrisy of the Guardian moralising about tax-avoiding offshore owned properties when it is actually based in one is priceless …

In 2011 Guido produced a video highlighting Guardian Media Group’s financial hypocrisies, provoking a rambling article from editor Alan Rusbridger and another self-justifying piece in the paper blaming the decision to place hundreds of millions in assets offshore on their investment partners Apax.

Rusbridger argued essentially that it is a tough world for his newspaper so they can’t be pure in their business practices. A transparently self-serving argument. It remains the case that despite the Guardian’s high-mindedness it has tax dodging in its DNA. The original trust structure was set up by CP Scott to avoid inheritance taxes. That was wound up in 2008 to exploit a loophole enabling them to pay zero capital gains tax on £307 million in profits. But they haven’t stopped there.

Guido checked with the Cayman’s company registrar yesterday to see if a certain controversial tax-exempt corporation was still operating. In 2008 The Guardian claimed GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited, a GMG-owned company, would be transferred into their investment partner Apax’s offshore structures, normally when this happens there is a name change. The name is unchanged to this day, strongly suggesting the ownership is unchanged. In the spirit of their Offshore Secrets investigation into tax havens, sham companies and nominee directors, perhaps it is time the Guardian explained why

• If GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited holds no assets, why have its owners continued to pay registration fees since 2007 so it can remain an active company?
• If it does hold assets what is the total present value of GMG and associated companies’ assets held via the Cayman Islands or other offshore tax havens?
• Does GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited have “sham” nominee directors, if so, who are they?

There may well be an innocent explanation, these are the sort of questions they ask of others…

Further reading on the Guardian‘s tax hypocrisy:

• The Guardian: Uncut and Full of Cant
• Guy News Special: Inside the Guardian’s Tax Dodges
• Tax Avoidance Firm Slammed By Guardian Advises Guardian
• The Guardian’s Poll Tax Moment
• Guardian Attacks the Tax Status of the Guardian
• Guardian’s Tax Hypocrisy is Ridiculous

What will they write about next week…

Via @MillDollarSlide

The Guardian website published George Monboit’s deleted Tweets revealing Lord McAlpine as the Newsnight paedophile suspect. Monbiot deleted the offending tweets and grovelled as soon as McAlpine declared he was going to sue the entire internet. However Guido can now reveal that they appeared on the Guardian website during the height of the Twitter witch-hunt at the beginning of the month and, as of 1300 Monday, are still there:

As many re-tweeters are about to find out, re-publication is just as serious as publication. Indeed, far more people will have seen this on the Guardian’s high-traffic pages than on Monbiot’s somewhat niche Twitter feed. The Guardian are not paying any of Monbiot’s legal fees as apparently he was  publishing in a ‘personal capacity’. The liability here is direct…