Mark Thomas Interview

Rosanna: Explain briefly what you hope to achieve by the whole “Invade Jersey” campaign...

Mark: What I want people to do is to become more and more aware of the fact that actually, under the Labour government, we’ve lost ownership of a massive amount of public buildings... what is happening is public buildings are being leased out, being contracted out to private companies who are taking the buildings offshore. So in effect, here we end up paying rent to tax dodgers and that is just NOT acceptable... we need to be shutting down tax havens rather than encouraging them, which is what happens... and what we want to see is more and more demonstrations where we go ‘round on tour, and show people physically where these places are in their community- it becomes a reality, so people can see that these are actually real things, within their community and that these issues aren’t just something that you’ve read in The Guardian, but are actually happening, and we should be 1- becoming more aware and 2- actually taking action to get this back and to actually say that the market has failed... what now must triumph is democracy.

Rosanna: What is your opinion on The Speaker and what do you think he should have done about the expenses row?

Mark: The Speaker, Michael Martin, what he should’ve done is actually, a long time ago, he should have 1- he shouldn’t have taken the court action. There is an application under Freedom of Information which resulted in the Information Commissioner being called in... at that point Michael Martin instigated a court case... it cost £100,000, it actually resulted in more information being taken out of MPs- which is good- but Michael Martin didn’t want that, so he’s dragged his feet along the hall... then, when the whole thing blows up, instead of actually sensing the anger and the feeling that people have about it, he then tries to cover it up and hide it, and says “no we’re calling in the police officer whistleblower” instead of calling for an independent audit, ‘cause quite obviously, people have made wrongful claims... and it’s not just the big mortgage stuff, it’s all the small stuff as well like the cushions and what have you. This is wrong, and what needs to happen is a full audit, an independent audit, going back 9/10 years and actually those that have been mis-paid, pay it back, those that have committed fraud, they need to be having the police called in. And Michael Martin should’ve done that and he DIDN’T do that. It was his job, as chair of the commission that overseas all of this to do that, and he didn’t. I’ve got nothing against him and I don’t want to go into any of that personal crap... any of that anti-working class crap that people spin on it... he’s failed to do his job properly, it doesn’t matter what class he is, he’s failed to do his job and he actually tried to protect the rear guard of the kind of “club” of Westminster and actually we don’t need that, we don’t want it- he needs to get out of the way, but more importantly whilst he’s still in the job, he should be calling for that independent audit.

Rosanna: Do you think that the way that you put a comedic slant on politics and the economy helps to get more people, especially young people, to show an interest?

Mark: I hope so, I hope so. I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t think... I do this stuff because I think actually it’s important that 1- we know what’s going on, so it’s partly self-education for me, as well as passing information on to others and 2- I want people to be motivated, to get up off the backside and do something and the only when you can do it is if you’ve got a bit of knowledge.

Rosanna: Thanks very much for your time.

THE INTERVIEW-

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FOOTAGE FROM THE PROTEST-

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By Rosanna Pound-Woods