Successfully Subsidised

You know, our BBC news programmes love to tell us about the profits made by various companies.

I'd like to see how much government subsidy these companies receive all of it, including free school meals to the kids of their employees) and how much tax they paid at the same time!

Wouldn't that be revealing?


Perhaps we could have all those so-called business experts declare tax paid and subsidies received as they allow us to hear just how successful they really are by imparting their great knowledge.  Would they be seen as successful and wise if we had this information? 
 
Now why do we talk of subsidies to businesses but 'benefits' to people?  Why is one OK but not the other?

UPDATE:
After I turned the machine off for the night, I was thinking that perhaps I should write about the true costs of the oil business. Bophal is back in my mind too with the paltry sentence handed out to the local managers employed by Union Carbide.  I remember walking past their very ornate-looking front door on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.  The student I was with at the time pointed out the building, declared it was beyond belief that the company was still trading and then spat on the pavement.  From the look of that pavement, he wasn't the only American with that opinion and I've no doubt BP is held in contempt by many, many Americans across the world.  Our environment is important, but we should never forget many, many more died and many, many more suffered in Bophal.

Monbiot has beaten me to it, and has written far more concisely than I'd have managed.