EU moves to introduce transaction taxes

With the disastrous situation in Greece and today's public sector strikes in the UK, it seems to me that the EU's proposals for introducing financial transaction taxes are a particularly interesting development. There are articles in the Guardian both today and yesterday about the EUs proposal to use a bank transaction tax to raise revenue.

Of course, the UK government immediately moved to block such moves. Why? If this sort of mechanism was in place, the Greek debt crises would be relatively easy to fix, without having to go borrowing yet more money from the markets and getting tax payers even more in debt. But of course, the UK government is being paid by the City to protect their interests even when the vast majority of the public are suffering as a result.