Money Bags

So, Peter Mandelson made an offer on an eight-million pound house. The Blairs are filthy rich and Jacquie Smith is once more in the news for using prisoners on work detail to work on her 'second' property, while her husband makes more money using her contacts in high places. Is anybody surprised at the money-grubbing of the champagne socialists?

Nobody objects to people bettering themselves, but there's a limit, surely? Quite apart from anything else there's the look of the thing. Do these people have no shame?

So, when I'm king, what do I propose to do about it? Well, it's easy. Everybody pays the same percentage of income tax, which begins above a living wage. Ten percent should do it, I reckon, because the mechanism of state will cost a fraction of what it used to. For a start, there will only be me instead of the whole of parliament and my needs are pretty cheap.

As for local government and services, easy.

Central government coffers will cover the cost of basic services such as roads, basic public transport, refuse disposal, armed forces and the health services. And instead of paying an army of bureaucrats, a much smaller number of administrators will do as they are bloody well told..

We have to have rules so the rules will be simple. If you're genuinely sick we'll take care of that. If you just don't like the size of your nose or your ego, you'll have to tough it out or pay privately.

We'll empty your bins and dispose of your trash just so long as you don't take the piss. And if you create a mess beyond what we will clear, you will sort it out yourselves or else we will do it at your expense - I'll leave you work out how we might pay for that.

And if you get on the wrong side of my magnificent and intransigent police force you will pay your perfectly reasonable fines or go to jail. And you wouldn't like to end up in jail, trust me. Because that would mean you would be held in primitive conditions. Hunger strike? You'll starve to death. Dirty protest? You'll learn to stay clean or live in your own filth. Human Rights? Sorry-oh, they'll be left at the door. Prison will be a really cheap option for the new state, so don't tempt me, okay?

What about the likes of Mandelson? Like I said, I have no problems with free enterprise - in fact the new regime will only provide the basics, so private businesses will flourish - but there will be no opportunity for state-sponsored free-loaders.

As for flaunting it? If you poke your greedy snout too far above the trough, don't be surprised if you get it slapped.