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  • Jan.22.2019: Companies press Brexit panic button in further blow to Theresa May. P&O Ferries opts for Cypriot flag, Sony confirms HQ move, and Pets at Home stockpiles cat food. James Dyson, the Brexit-backing billionaire, dealt a further blow to the govt by revealing he is shifting his company headquarters to Singapore. Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s richest person with a £21bn fortune, was reported last year to be planning to leave Britain for Monaco. The CBI said the litany of business announcements should send politicians a clear and simple message: "a March no-deal must be ruled out immediately". Rupert Neate, The Guardian.
  • Nov.09.2018: Dyson says EU energy tests ‘game the system’. Sir James Dyson has accused Brussels of helping German companies to “game the system” and mislead consumers on household goods after his company won a key legal battle with Europe. He criticised EU officials for giving in to German lobbying over a European product testing regime that gave a false impression of how energy efficient certain goods were. The European Court yesterday ruled in favour of the British inventor who had argued that the tests put Dyson’s bagless vacuum cleaner at a competitive disadvantage. The court ruled that the vacuum tests, which are used to give each product a rating from A to G, are flawed because they are conducted when the machines are empty of dust. Models that use bags and filters can become clogged, meaning they are less efficient because they need more power to compensate for the loss of suction. The ruling led to calls from politicians and consumer groups for wholesale reform of Europe’s product testing regime. There are claims that efficiency tests on boilers, fridges, TVs and other goods also do not reflect real life usage. Andrew Ellson, The Times.
  • Sept.19.2017: Why is James Dyson hoovering up land? Boy, does Sir James own a lot of land. In 2014 the Daily Mail reported that Dyson “now owns more land in England than the Queen”; by July 2017, Farmers Weekly was reporting that Dyson’s empire had grown to 13,355 hectares, or 33,000 acres. Dyson professes the reason to be his love of the countryside, having grown up in rural Norfolk. But £1.8million farm subsidies must surely help. And he’s also benefitting from other subsidies, introduced in the past decade, to incentivise the production of electricity and heat from Anaerobic Digestion (AD) - increasingly, farmers are simply growing vast fields of maize to use as fuel for AD plants. Lastly, various commentators suggest that Dyson’s investment in land is a good way to avoid inheritance tax. Lancaster Guardian columnist Gary Rycroft opines that “what Sir James is doing is buying up a very handy tax shelter.” The Evening Standard’s Home & Property section, reporting on one of Dyson’s purchases, commented: “The savvy move may mean that his three children could avoid a substantial chunk of inheritance tax, as it is not incurred on farmland.” Farmers’ Weekly, in an article on Dyson’s investments, has stated: “Buying farmland is popular with many wealthy investors because it doesn’t incur inheritance tax. Some critics feel this unfairly bumps up land values, pricing ‘genuine’ farmers out of the market”. Viewed from this angle, it all starts to make sense. Dyson’s vast investments in prime farmland, his political support for hard Brexit and turning Britain into low-tax Singapore, all share a common aim: maximise income, minimise outgoings. I find a number of things about James Dyson admirable. His farm business at least talks the talk of sustainability and in some ways appears to be practising it. He’s clearly committed to encouraging engineering talent and his support for renewable energy and battery technology is much-needed. But Dyson’s vision of post-Brexit Britain as a tax haven for the rich where taxpayer subsidies nevertheless still flow to big landowners? Now that really sucks. Who Owns England?.

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