Blow me!

Well, what could be better in the week where Labour brandished a blank sheet, policy-free manifesto once again and exposed their desperation by clinging onto their most sacred principle of taxation based on envy, than to end on a happy note?

Can't pay your tax bill? Fear not because hope comes from the country of Labour's true affiliations. A broke Siberian sex shop owner has settled up with bailiffs working for the Russian taxman in the hard [snork] currency of two blow-up dolls in partial payment of his tax and pension contributions. I can't help but wonder if they said "Dad'il do!"

Of course - barter! What better way to settle those debts than by payment in kind? You could pay the piper with, er pipes and the ferryman with... no, that's not gonna work. How about I rewire your house and you install my central heating? What do you mean, they're not worth the same; looks about the same to me... And what if you don't have anything of value to me? No good, for instance, the butcher paying a vegetarian decorator in meat.

What we need is a method of accruing some token representing the value of our labours. Some form of, for want of a better word, currency. That way you wouldn't have to rely on a tit-for-tat arrangement, like the Siberian fella and then - I'm warming to my theme now - you could, like, swap your tokens for my goods or services and vice versa.

But how do we decide who gets how many tokens? I dunno, I guess it would depend on how many hours you work and how rare your skills are - just throwing some ideas in the mix now. So, for instance, a doctor saving lives would obviously get more tokens per hour than somebody digging holes; anybody can dig a hole.

There you go. Sorted. I can't for the life of me think why nobody thought of this before.

Come and get it Mr. Taxman!

Of course,it will never happen, but when Labour get back in, for no other reason than that the electorate has no imagination and little courage, at least we will all be able to pay our taxes in turnips.