Book of the week
Reviewed by Matthew Partridge
During World War II, Britons grumbled (in the words of comedian Tommy Trinder) that the Americans were “overpaid, oversexed and over here”. The GIs responded that the British were “underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower”. Not much has changed in the years since, at least according to Angus Hanton. American troops may have helped save us from Hitler, but American economic domination and ownership of British firms rips off British consumers, stifles the growth of British companies and generally makes us subservient to our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic.
Hanton begins his argument in the supermarket, where he points out that a whole host of brands, including those we tend to consider “British”, are actually owned by American conglomerates. He then broadens his argument to other industries, before looking at the statistics on American ownership of UK assets. He goes on to consider some of the sharp practices pioneered by US tech firms and the financial sector, aimed at maximising the amount of money extracted from the wallets of UK consumers (and the government), while minimising the amount of tax that they have to pay to the Treasury.
https://gb.readly.com/magazines/moneyweek/2024-04-26/662a61f81f8ac6e414f9e43b