Our friends in the North
A few years ago I presented an half hour documentary on free ports, pointing out that they were useless for developing countries, that the UK had abolished them for that very reason years ago and plans to re-create them now would just allow business to dodge tax and cost the country a fortune. I visited Teeside and was massively unimpressed by plans to turn the polluted former steel works into a huge European entreport, it is a pipe dream and a wonderful chance to waste billions of tax payers money, by throwing it at private firms.
Not that it made the government even pause for a second but it is nice to think that at least it was pointed out.
Now we have the free port on Teeside being developed by a couple of local business men who seem to making a fortune from land deals, which the government and the local authority appear to be perfectly happy with.
To be fair Michael Gove has launched an investigation, one where he gets to appoint the investigators and one that is certain to report after a general election.
The business men involved are doubtless lawyered up and have therefore made sure that they have broken not a single law. But the government is so keen to make free ports one of the central planks of its so called economic policy; that it is throwing tax payers money away in huge amounts.
It is a shameless, inefficient, waste of billions of pounds of tax payers money.
But don’t worry every politician will move on long before the facts come to light.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
it's TeeSSide, not TeeSide...