The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire (2017)

Documentary /
7.8/10

The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire Storyline

The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire, is a documentary film that shows how Britain transformed from a colonial power into a global financial power. At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions are the largest global players in the world of international finance. How did this come about, and what impact does it have on the world today? This is what the Spider’s Web sets out to investigate. With contributions from leading experts, academics, former insiders and campaigners for social justice, the use of stylized b-roll and archive footage, the Spider’s Web reveals how in the world of international finance, corruption and secrecy have prevailed over regulation and transparency, and the UK is right at the heart of this.

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The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire Movie Reviews

A Conspiracy to Defraud the Country

I’ve just watched this documentary on the Freeview channel ‘Together’. It’s a fascinating, compelling and well-made film about how the City of London increased its influence through the use of tax havens after the break up of the British Empire.

The documentary is extremely informative and eye-opening, but be warned, it can also leave you feeling angry and disillusioned about how successive governments, politicians, and the Establishment have combined to legally defraud the tax payer.

Sadly, nothing seems to change, probably because the same people who could actually do something are the very people who are enriching themselves through these tax havens. I really enjoyed this well-made film and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in current affairs.

A damning documentary

An eye-opening documentary about just how corrupt the City of London and its offshore tax havens are, how a system of secret trusts and shell companies allows the wealthy and businesses to evade tax, and how their banks and accountancy firms have infiltrated British government, subverting democracy so it works against the interests of the people.

The final narration of the doc sums it up:

“The City of London was the beating financial heart of the British Empire. As Britain’s Empire declined, the City transformed itself from a hub operating the financial machinery of Empire into a global financial centre. Former insignificant outposts of Empire became the basis for a spider’s web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and funnelled it to the City of London.

Today 25% of international finance is conducted on British territory. Almost half of all the world’s secrecy jurisdictions are under British protection. Up to half of all offshore wealth may be hidden in Britain’s offshore havens.

Financial services are how Britain’s elites make their money, and also where former government ministers, senior civil servants and retired spooks from MI5 and MI6 receive lucrative consulting positions after their time in public service. Together they have transformed Britain and its dependencies into the world’s largest tax haven, harming development throughout the world, and turning Britain itself into a country that serves, above all, the interests of its elites.”

It’s a damning documentary. You pay your fair share of taxes. The rich do not. That is the society Britain has created.

Full of novel information it shines light on how the world is run. Can’t do much about it, though.

One of the thrills of my childhood was to watch political thrillers, the French ones in particular, because they would be merciless. In the end the hero would die without accomplishing anything more than our entertainment and the death and suffering of everyone he loves. Americans like to finish with a completely unlikely happy ending (pardon the pun), but the gist of it remains the same: there is no way a normal human being can do anything about this.

Now here comes a documentary that gave me kind of the same feeling when I am an adult, describing how the city within a city, hiding in plain sight and dealing in the shadow, controls most of the planet’s finances through offshore colonies that are getting too fat to ever want to escape colonialism. And it’s not a conspiracy theory documentary, either, it’s just facts. Imagine little ants doing a docu about how brazenly elephants walk around the world, smashing ant hills indiscriminately and with impunity and you get the image of what this film is about. But it’s extremely informative and frankly explains a lot of the behavior of politicians in countries such as the U. K. and the U. S. as well as the mechanisms that led to the current global crisis.

You see, when you are rich and lazy, you stop producing, you just handle the money like a boss. Or like a bank. Or like old decrepit money. It’s called financialization, a new step of evolution for rich countries, moving from industrialization to just shifting money about and stealing, consuming, buying and selling the resources of others. Once the supply chains are disrupted, though, they are as useful as a crusty old lord during a zombie invasion.

Brexit makes sense now, why would a small island want to become even more insular? Because they have the money. Even stuff like the sudden aggression against China are easily explainable now. No one cares what they do to their citizens or who they invade. They do care about becoming an alternative to a virtual and hidden economic system that sustains the great powers. You learn stuff like how Africa has 5 times more resources in anonymous offshore accounts than it has international debt; they are effectively creditors for the world.

Bottom line: a must watch and a good starting point for examining what the world is really about. Also, why you can’t do anything about it.

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