A message for Vince

I hear Vince Cable reckons that, if the Lib Dems have anything to do with it, a future government must both increase taxes and borrow more. Why? So they can engage in more of the fiscally intemperate nonsense that caused us to be in the shit we’re in already. Lib Dems; Labour in lambs' clothing and just as dangerous - never forget the Fabians' famous emblem. 

Remember Gordon Brown’s “Are you claiming all you’re ‘entitled’ to?” public service announcements a decade ago? I do; I remember being utterly astounded that any government could be so blatant as to offer such a transparent bribe in return for power. And all paid for by those who could never bring themselves to vote Labour; that’s practically genius in political terms. Or is it? Short term electoral popularity at the cost of the whole ship; free drinks and canapés as cruise liner Great Britain turns turtle and sinks without trace.

It’s called freeloading, living off the efforts of others. ‘Tax Credits’? That sounds like getting some of your tax back, but many people get tax credits far in excess of what they earnestly believe they pay in. Add to that Child Benefit and Housing Benefit and a per-capita share of the cost of the state and it turns out the majority – yes the VAST majority – of working families are net recipients. I’ll say that again – the majority of working people will NEVER pay into the system more than a fraction of what they take out.

So who does pay? Who would Vince punish more for the crime of being a net contributor? Last year I worked out you’d have to earn at least £30k as a single individual, claim no benefits and pay every penny due in tax to just make up your ‘share’. You’d also have to have no kids and never get ill, pay top-whack road tax and never use any public services, otherwise the balance tips back into debit. I think I was way out; it’s got to be more like £50k before you owe the state nothing and start to make a net contribution. (And this does not include a single state worker - the tax-take from public service employees is a fiction as every penny paid to them has already been taken from others.) 

£50k per annum does not make you rich in the UK, but you can live like a king in many parts of the world on that sort of money. Anybody with the wherewithal to earn a half-decent level of salary will pretty soon begin to feel aggrieved when Vince’s sheriff’s men come a-knocking. Those at the top of the earnings league already have the choice and will only pay what they are comfortable with. Some have already chosen to depart these shores; those lower down the scale, the fifty-kickers will pretty soon realise the price for patriotism is too high to pay.

But still Vince would speed them in making that decision. Soak the rich? Eat the rich? Why not just send them into exile? But before you adopt that jaw-jutting, heroic, 'man of the people' pose, Vince, just remember a few little, inconsequential things. Without the rich there would be no welfare. There would be no NHS. There would be no state. Make the rich pay more? The rich pay your salary and that of the Queen; the rich already pay for everything.

A Question of Trust

I’d like to trust people, I really would. But it seems that whenever I’ve tried, whenever I’ve taken people at their word, little if anything is ever forthcoming from their end of the deal. And if I don’t trust people in general, people I have actually met and shaken hands with, what on earth would convince me to trust any organisation whose main aim in life is to hold the reins of power over the entire country? I certainly wouldn’t rely on any government that claimed to operate in my personal interests; that would be very stupid and naïve indeed.

In today’s Autumn Statement there were no surprises and George Osborne pulled no gimmicky flowers out of any worn out sleeves. Unlike the opposition who are frantically trying to both sound tougher on welfare and be Father Christmas all at the same time, the coalition, from the empty begging bowl of The Treasury, are promising to do precisely nothing for me… or you, which is exactly what I want to hear. No tax cuts until at least 2020? Good. I can work with that. At least it’s honest.

On the other side of The House, while the gasping beached whale of Labour’s bloated welfare state coughs up its dying, blood-flecked sputum; while their left-wing purse strings are held so strangly-tight by their Marxist paymasters in Unite and Common Purpose; while the abject failure of their multicultural sabotage threatens to foment open revolt in Britain’s sink estates, they stick doggedly and unapologetically to their ultraviolent horrorshow* script. (*And yes, Nadsat and all it signifies is already here.)

Labour’s only electoral card is the emotive ‘cost of living crisis’, a meaningless rallying cry which they are daily flogging to death in the absence of any real policy or power. Relying on dependency, relying on people taking them at their word because they have done nothing else all their lives, Labour are openly promising to continue the ruin they have for so long wreaked on our economy. People who have never been independent of state subsistence will cling to that rock; the only permanent thing in their life so far. But nothing lasts forever... except the lies.

At least now we know that anybody who is a net contributor to the state will not see a penny back for their efforts as long as the Conservatives are in power. That’s better than it might be though, because if you listen to Labour’s rhetoric, the more you pay in the less you are expected to complain about it and they want even more yet. Given that the outcome of the next general election is by no means settled, the mere possibility of a return to Labour’s profligate idiocy and envy politics should signal a move, for those who are able, to leave this economy in whatever way they can.

More work for accountants as cash-strapped sole traders decide to minimise their exposure to income tax. More work for accountants as fewer and fewer limited companies declare any significant operating profits. More work for accountants and tax lawyers as every loophole in the code is exploited to the full. Lest you think it is all happy days for accountants, expect to see more and more cash-in-hand, under-the-counter dealings as taxable transactions go unrecorded and watch the black economy flourish as never before.

But whether it’s Labour or Conservative, either are powerless to resist the rule of the EU, and only real difference is how long it will take before the inevitable happens and British Socialism finally runs out of other people’s money. And you really don’t want to be here when that happens. I don’t see Greece and Spain clubbing together to bail you out when the government raids your savings.

A lot of people say they would vote for the party which tells them the truth. But you won’t. I don’t believe that. Only one party is telling the truth about Europe and that is UKIP, who you say don’t trust. But at least they have raised the debate, raised awareness and made it clear how futile the talk of reform is. You do have a choice, but you probably won’t exercise it wisely.

BRExit - one way or another

So, despite saying you despise them all you will still end up voting for the party that you think is most likely to put a pound or two a week in your own pocket – yes, it really is as petty as that. And if you do that, if you vote for same-old-same-old, you know what we’ll get? Conservative or Labour, the balance of power will end up in the hands of the LibDems. Do you really want that on your conscience? 

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

The great con trick pulled by experts the world over is to make their expertise appear beyond the wit of mortal man. Thus shamans the world over claim a direct connection with a world inaccessible to the herd, religious leaders proclaim themselves the keepers and protectors of the sacred word and alternative healers publish mumbo-jumbo masquerading as science and let the placebo effect do the rest.

All it takes is to fool enough of the people enough of the time and your place in history, society or the head of the paying-in queue at the bank is assured. The first objection you have to overcome is your own; there is none so zealous as the flag bearer for the cause and once you've brainwashed yourself the rest is relatively easy. Of course, KNOWINGLY misleading people is called fraud, but once you've convinced yourself of your mission it is simply called delusion. Fraud is a crime, but delusion is legal.

Luckily, in the real world our wackier delusions are often brought down to earth by a heavy dose of common sense. If I tried to borrow money from a bank for a business idea I hadn’t properly analysed I’d get short shrift. If I tried to convince listeners that I’d received the word of god at three o’clock on a Saturday morning following a night of excess I’d rightly be met with scepticism. And if I concocted a miracle cure in my shed and tried to flog it in recycled jam jars at the car boot sale I somehow doubt I’d be retiring any time soon.

But package any of those ideas up in the right way and you have the latest stock market darling, a whole new faith and GlaxoSmithKline. Research (by experts) shows that if you say it often enough, commission studies to arrive at a pre-ordained conclusion and get the price right, people will buy any old shit. Which brings us to politics.

Politics has nothing whatsoever to do with producing useful outcomes for ordinary people. It isn’t about the best way to run the country and it certainly has nothing to do with whatever the electorate says it wants. The alchemy of snakes like Mandelson is to gently tell you that what you believe isn’t the right thing to believe and that he’ll be gentle with you as he makes you nicer. The prestidigitation of a Cameron is to talk tough medicine for all, while privately bending over for big business and special friends.

No wonder people are disengaged with politics. If you buy a can of fly spray that doesn't kill flies you get your money back. If you buy a vacuum cleaner that sucks – or doesn't  as it were – you exchange it for another one. And if you order a blue car you don’t expect to get a red one delivered. Yet in politics, if it doesn't work or it’s feeble or you don’t get what you voted for, the Sale of Goods Act just doesn't apply.

Here in real life if you don’t like cheese you don’t buy cheese, if you can’t afford to heat your house you don’t pay to heat your neighbour’s house and you don’t continue to pay for membership of a club you never go to, that your dad signed you up for forty years ago. It’s that simple, yet the power of the political shaman lies in making it complicated.

Here’s a classic example. Everybody is banging on about tax. The tax code in the UK is so complicated nobody – literally NOBODY – can fully understand or explain it. So, the common sense answer is to simplify it. Do the sums, work out how much we need to collect, decide who is going to pay how much of it and there you go, done. In a household we call it a budget. The politicians’ response? Make it more complicated still… Oh and bung some more Europe into the package.

Walking - as designed by politicians

The reason people are drawn to Nigel Farage is because he doesn't seem to offer false hopes and he doesn’t appear to offer all the answers. Whether the reality ever lives up to the hope is up to the future to reveal but maybe political naivety is exactly what we need right now. He doesn’t play the political game because unlike the others maybe he’s seen through the smoke and mirrors and realised something many of us suspect. We’re told there are no easy answers? Of course there are! Politics – it’s only hard because they make it hard. 

The Last UK Budget... Ever

It's budget day so I'm going to keep this short. The Chancellor leaked to me the contents of his desperate plans to keep his job save the country and I feel that despite Hugh Grant's storm troops it is my duty to divulge them to you. Here goes.

We're broke; deal with it.

That's pretty much it.

Oh, you want detail? You sure you can handle it? Okay then, I'll give you a few highlights.

For years you whining, inadequate leeches have suckled at the teat of our glorious, benevolent government as it has slaved away tirelessly on your behalf. No more. That's it. They've had enough. So this is how it's going to be.

Families:
Despite every benevolent measure of past decades you bastards continue to have families free, gratis and for nothing, expecting the state to care and to pick up the tab. No more. Child Benefit is being abolished - it's long overdue - from now on you will need an annual paid licence for your progeny, working on a sliding scale. £5k per year for the first child, £10k per year for the second and if you want a third you will have to adopt one of them 'Asylums' at your own expense.

Health:
None of you can decide how to pay for the NHS so, fuck it. It's abolished. You brought this on yourself. I hope you're all happy now. I'd stock up on paracetemol if I were you.

Defence:
What's the point? I mean, really? We're doing what the old USSR did and letting the troops take their armaments home with them in lieu of pay. We can see no downsides to that -see how well some of those fellas did?

Transport:
All infrastructure projects are to be cancelled forthwith. We're all in Europe now, so if it's good enough for Bulgaria it's good enough for everybody. Besides, donkeys make both good pack animals and a delicious, nutritious stew.

Tax and Welfare:
Well, you won't believe the amount of shit we get over this. One lot moaning about welfare, another lot moaning about tax. So we tried to put all of you on both, but some of you wouldn't work and some of you wouldn't pay the tax, so fuck the lot of you. From April the government will neither levy tax nor distribute benefits. No income tax, no VAT, no Housing, no DLA, no JSA... Sort it out between yourselves. We can't see how you could do it any worse.

Banking:
See Cyprus

And that's about it. The borders are open, the planet is fucked, we're running out of everything... it's every man for himself.

Citizens celebrating with a glorious firework display

(The budget announcement will be broadcast from Bermuda.)

Mansion Polish

So Labour’s Mansion Tax motion is defeated. Champion of he poor and downtrodden, Saint Polly Toynbee, must be devastated. She talks in The Guardian about the ‘gilded few' “siphoning off national wealth into palatial properties, gold-plated pensions, bulging share portfolios, fine wines and fine art” Well, so what? They genuinely are ‘a few’ and they already paid plenty.

Those who create such wealth pay huge amounts of tax and provide employment and thus more tax payers on the way up and those who inherit that wealth tend to spend and squander it like drunken monkeys over a few generations until they’re broke and the ‘spoils’ are redistributed anyway. Wealth is already penalised, but the Toynbees of this world will never be satisfied until it’s a pants-down-in-public punishment.

Tax high earners unfairly on the way up and you will lose their enterprise and their money. Try and tax them on the way down and they'll just find a way of disappearing all that wealth by such measures as, say, buying property abroad, eh Polly? Then it’s gone for good.

But who are the so-called super-rich you and the voracious Labour Commissars want to punish so much? You will never really touch the properly super-rich, those you describe in such envious tones; they can afford to piss all over your punitive plans or else just piss off somewhere where they are welcomed. You must know this, so you must have your sights set somewhere lower – on altogether easier targets, such as those who genuinely want or need to stay in Britain. You’d prey on the very people Peter Mandelson praised?

Hypocritical Champagne Socialist poster-girls like Polly don’t ever seem to grasp the essential relationships between effort and reward, aspiration and the accumulation of wealth.

We create a poverty of effort when there is nothing to be gained by working harder – the higher tax rate is an insult to those who find that their reward for finally earning enough to have the same take home pay as a benefit capped feral family of deadbeats is to have their tax rate actually raised for daring to work harder or smarter, or be luckier. That’s like the attitudes in the old nationalised industries; the jobsworth mentality where a curtailed tea break becomes a national strike.

We create a poverty of aspiration if - having put up with being continually robbed by the state we nevertheless manage to live frugally enough to save for an uncertain future; investing, building and spending wisely in fear of old age, frailty and that rainy day - we are still in danger of being plundered. Having survived income tax, national ‘insurance’ tax, stamp duty, capital gains tax, corporation tax, council tax, road tax, fuel duty, value-added tax, beer tax, tax tax and carpet tacks, we are still not safe and our little Englishman’s castle, is broken into, broken up and taxed yet again.

Tax is theft, but it’s a theft we tolerate because we like to think we care about society and besides, there but for the grace, etc... But as tax taking becomes a mission, then tax avoidance becomes a game worth playing. And the people who MAKE money are inevitably better equipped than those who can only TAKE it to circumvent the taxman’s schemes and come out on top. And the ultimate tax avoidance scheme is to flee the coop.

Polishing off our wealth for generations

Polly Toynbee’s version of Socialism is a tax on one of our nation’s former finest resources, our character. Let people improve themselves in a modern economy and you will get prosperity and yes, fairness. Try to force them to be ‘equal’ and you will lose everything. We very nearly have. Polly, the champion of poverty creation talks about people hoarding “pyramids of gold”. The only place those pyramids are ever likely to stay safe is tucked up inside another pile. In Tuscany, perhaps?

Taxing your brains out

You learn a lot of things on social media. On Monday Iain Dale tweeted, “Am I really alone in being an unashamed believer in lower, simpler, flatter taxes? Are there others out there?” and obligingly provided a link to his always thoughtful blog: Why the right needs to spread the gospel of low taxes.

Well, Iain, you’re most certainly not alone. What constantly escapes the grasping begging bowl mentality of the left is that under a flat rate the vast majority of the tax burden would still be borne by the higher earners. Add in the fact that personal allowances significantly reduce the tax paid at the lower end of the earnings scale and that higher earners rely less on the services provided by the state and the rich contribute far more than what I would consider a fair share. No wonder then that legal tax avoidance schemes are eagerly adopted. 

My response to Iain’s question was, “Everybody should pay the same, fixed rate of tax. 20% and no more and the country should live within its means.” (I’d go farther and say that we should aim eventually for an even lower rate of no more than 10% to starve governments out of their over-arching socialist ambitions and make them the servants, not the masters of the electorate.) 

This elicited a third party interjection: “So someone with taxable income of £10k pays £2k has 8k left. £1m pays £200k has 800k left.” Correct. (He must have had private education.) But then he added, “Even Thatcher saw that's wrong.” Did she? Did the sainted Mrs T really believe it was right that somebody who paid one hundred times the tax of another, should be taxed even more simply because they would end up with more than a lower earner? 

In other words, if you manage to earn a higher income by, say, working harder for longer, perhaps to feed your family or provide a better life for them or to save for retirement or fund decent education, or to pay for your elderly parents' care, or to maintain the crumbling pile you now wished you’d never shackled yourself to, you should be penalised by being robbed more robustly than somebody who was happy enough to slouch along in a part-time burger-flipping, clock-watching existence, with ambitions extending no further than happy hour, fags and the promise of casual sex? 

Would it be fair that, in return for your diligence at school, your considered career choice, your graft to attain professional qualifications and deferred gratification while you worked all hours climbing the greasy pole should be rewarded by finding, on the adjacent pole, others had reached the same giddy heights by doing none of these things? Because that’s what he seemed to be implying. (The pejorative "Thatcher" was always a clue.) That some inherit wealth is a happy accident of their birth - somehow those who succeed by their own efforts are not unduly exercised by this.

I responded that his was the politics of envy, to be told in return “...and your response is the politics of greed.” I countered, “It isn't politics. It's fairness. Those who can should not be robbed by those who can't.”. His last sally, “You can call it envy or theft if you want I still say redistribution (backed up by force) from wealthy to poor morally justified.” nailed his colours squarely to the mast. Enforced extraction of the fruits of your labours – the more you earn the higher you are taxed – as a moral issue. 

And there, in simple terms is Socialist economics. By extending that logic you get to the ludicrous 98% effective marginal rate for some under Harold Wilson’s government. We may as well do away with earnings altogether and just make everybody work for the state until they drop, while doling out equally to all – earner or not, striver or shirker, success or failure - the same thin gruel and hovel-poor housing. I believe that's exactly what Marx intended: "From each ... to each..." blah,blah, blah...

If that sounds like hyperbole then consider this: Just how do you decide when you've done enough redistributing? When does an Alan Sugar reach an acceptable wealth equilibrium and at what point of penance has he earned his place? Does it depend on his allegiance? Should we tax more highly those people who don’t give it up willingly? 20% for Labour voters 50% for Conservatives? Or 10% for social workers, 80% for bankers? Wilson’s taxes were largely responsible for the brain drain, whereby the more able simply quit our shores for regimes happy to pay for their expertise; or rather not to penalise their success. 

While we ship in more low-skilled, low-paid, low-tax payers and then pay for the idleness of the displaced former workers by higher taxes on some nebulous ‘the rich’ (which now begins at £35,000 p.a.) it’s happening all over again. In fact, judging by the lack of rioting, we may already have taxed out of domicile those sufficiently sentient to have worked it out. 

I summed it up with one last, exasperated tweet: “Socialism, as taught to me today. Don't bother working harder; we'll tax you so you're only left with the same as everybody else.” I think we’re already there. 

Dedicated follower of fashion

Every now and then it’s good to spend a bit of time organising one’s wardrobe, after all, spring is on the way and a king needs to look his best. So that was one of my jobs at the weekend, following my recent castle move. When I say wardrobe I mean a few shelves and a hanging rail to accommodate my small collection of... well, when it comes down to it it’s mostly tee-shirts. And being a chap of a certain age, they’re mostly black. 

I eschewed fashion decades ago, when I learned that I will never see being trendy as being worthwhile. Following the herd; expressing my individuality by wearing the same uniform as everybody else - that was never for me... although, for eight years in the navy, that was exactly what I wore, on and off duty. It was the law. 

But driven by preference I refuse to wear obvious labels and scoff at the prices of high street fashion. Man at Matalan – that’s me, but in its own way that is still following a trail blazed by other fat balding middle-aged blokes. At least in my defence, neither my mother nor the missus buys my clothes... that’s why they are mostly black tee-shirts. 

Let’s face it, few of us are attractive clothes horses and with the exception of formal business wear, making a sartorial effort often falls well short of the intended impact - fellas are not made for fashion. Oh, it’s fine for the Beckhams of this world, but admit it, if you see a fashionably dressed bloke over thirty you assume he’s gay. You have to cut your cloth to suit and I’m more a fashion acorn than icon. 

Of course, the politicians are no stranger to fashion and are quick to follow a trend, or to drop it as soon as it attracts the wrong sort of attention. The current trend seems to be to dream up more ways of taxing the bejasus out of all of us, but as in the rag trade there is little that is actually new. Labour, having dropped the10% rate under Gordon Brown are now trying to sell it as the Emperor’s new clothes, but we can all see through its flimsy attempt at selling a Tory principle (low taxes) as their own. 

At the same time, Tim Montgomerie seems intent on reclaiming a LibDem spring fashion standard of taxing acquired wealth; if I was a squirrel I’d be well hacked off that my year-long effort to hoard nuts was to be raided to feed lazier squirrels. Good luck with selling that to Conservative voters, Tim. 

It all comes down to sales. To sell stuff you have to pass it off as desirable, new... different. If you can get people to eat horse sold as beef I’m sure you can get them to swallow poo dressed as policy. In politics we don’t call it marketing, however, we call it propaganda. When fashion gets desperate it panics and does this:

They seek him here... he's in hell.

When politics gets extreme you need a modern day Joseph Goebbels...or Peter Mandelson to sell your shit.

But why can’t politics be innovative, rather than just, you know, a bit ‘stealy’? Here’s something new for government: live within your means. And here’s a new and exciting way to be fair about taxation and discourage under-reporting of income. Why not set an earning level above which you pay LESS tax? It is manifestly unfair that the busy squirrels lose the most nuts; why not actually reward success for a change?

That’s a trend we could all be comfortable with, unless you’re still stuck in the miserable Marxist mode of hating anybody who has more than you do.

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.

Moira and Me

It’s a tough old life, this being a beacon of hope and enlightenment in a dim and dismal universe, but what’s a future King to do, eh? A couple of days ago, a random visitor to my blog - we’ll call her Moira - had this to say, by way of comment:

“…you appear to be a merciless, pitiless person.”

So far, so good. But Moira had more:

“With all your rage against [the world] I came to the conclusion that it is YOU who feel the self-pity you so readily scorn,”

Nah, not really, love, you’re kind of missing the point. What you don’t like, my dear, is me having opinions which don’t chime with your chakras.  Although she did then redeem herself by signing off with:

“I expect you will reply to this with your usual rapier sarcasm…”

Oh good. At least she’s sort of getting it. But you should never assume I don’t mean what I say; I prefer to think of my rapier as being more sincerely sardonic than merely sarcastic. You can make up your own mind, but maybe Moira cannot. She came over not so much despairing as simply humourless. A bland and predictable response to a world she fears, full of merciless, pitiless people spoiling it for everybody. Maybe she believes in the human spirit, free of reality and deadly earnest in its mission to bring peace and contentment to all?

And that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Had she read further she may have seen that I harbour little in the way of spite (way too much effort) more a resignation to the simple and often humorous realities of human frailty. You want nobility? There’s plenty of bloggers regularly posting feelgood, aphoristic nonsense out there; happy, clappy, hippy shit about being lovely to one another. If it only it were true. Life in Britain may have taken a downward turn but not because people are nasty, rather because people have let themselves become helpless.

The DPP, Keir Starmer, has had to be brought in to give his verdict on Twitter prosecutions – the more followers you have, the more guilty you are, apparently. Of what, you ask? Of causing offence, naturally; the big crime explosion of the decade. Since when did the police and courts system become our moral shepherds? I thought their role was to nab the bad guys, not police our beliefs – that’s the job of community, not coppers.

Yesterday I heard Labour’s Margaret Hodge on Radio Four bleating on about tax avoidance being unfair and an abuse of the system. I’m sure the many who owe their livelihoods to the tax regime in the UK, or are directly involved in assisting and advising companies and individuals would be delighted to hear her wringing condemnation of their legally playing by the rules. Who makes those rules in the first place? What a pity Labour didn’t have the luxury of office in order to bring about the great social changes they now demand. Oh, wait…

The BBC is current undergoing a period of hand-wringing self-immolation over the McAlpine affair for which George Entwistle has paid the ultimate sacrifice of having a wad of cash stuffed in his back pocket. The ensuing expensive inquiry circus will conclude, as everybody else already has, that the BBC should stick to reporting the facts, unadulterated by partisan views. The Beeb should be the voice of the nation, but why does it feel the need to be our conscience as well? (I much preferred it when Mr Entwistle wore a skeleton costume and played bass for The Who!)

The NHS is full of willing, dedicated staff who will cut you open, take out stuff, put stuff in, stitch you back together and ply you with ‘care’ until you get better. But, just like any other bloated behemoth it is also somewhat self-serving. The job of any industry is to find new markets and medicine is no different. As the list of physical illnesses nears a finite total, there are much richer pickings to be had on the mental bandwagon, where barely credible research ‘discovers’ things for people to feel bad about. Is the medical profession partly the CAUSE of mental illness?

Whatever happened to Individual responsibility? It seems to have sunk beneath a sea of collectivism, where what we do and what we say and how we feel about things is no longer in our hands. The more we expect other people (society) to direct us and protect us, the less happiness and freedom we achieve and far too many people now rely on the state to take care of every aspect of their lives. (I believe they tried that in Russia in the last century… how did that turn out?)

Yes! We are ALL individuals!

THAT, Moira is what happens when you lose your sense of perspective, your sense of humour, your grip on reality. I see my role in all this as the small boy in the crowd, pointing out what is plain to see if you only look properly. Merciless and pitiless, Moira? I prefer to believe I’m being cruel to be kind.

Budget Regard - Going Cheep

How about this for a radical idea: Instead of government deciding what it wants to do, producing a ridiculously under-estimated budget, going ahead without proper consultation, going ten times over that budget and then increasing our taxes accordingly to pay for it all, how about WE decide how much tax we're going to pay and the government has no choice but to spend within its means. How about that, eh?

In my dreams, I know...

When William Pitt introduced income tax to pay for the Napoleonic wars it was levied at tuppence in the pound (Old pounds. So it started at 1/120 - for the modern scholar, that's less than 1%) ) rising to 10% for those with an income over £200 a year (about £17k at today's rates, but with none of today's modern fripperies to pay for). It was abolished in 1802, only to resurface once more between 1803 and 1816.

Sir Robert Peel brought it back for good in 1842, since when it has been up and down like the proverbial yo-yo and a constant source of tension between government and the governed. As government ambition has soared and spending risen through the ceiling, successive administrations have found ever more inventive ways of taxing you to the hilt. If you die without leaving any realisable assets - that's most of us - you have, effectively been taxed at 100% of your life's income.

So here's my plan. Reduce income tax to a 20% flat rate and cut the fuck out of public spending (for real this time, not pretending to, like they are at the moment). Then, if they want any more, ministers have to personally come to the door of each and every tax payer and explain nicely what they want it for.

Then, they have to stand still for a full minute while you laugh in their face.

Comments are always very welcome.

Ain't you got homes to go to?

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Hot on the heels of his condemnation of Jimmy Carr's tax affairs (somehow commentable-upon where Philip Green's were not) Shiny Dave floats a raft of ideas for welfare reform. And predictably enough the shrill notes of righteous ('lefteous'?) indignation echo across Twitter like banshee wails for the dead. Not content with the ever-rising social tariff the flag-wavers for totalitarian statism will rest at nothing until the entire country is yoked to the despotic wheel of welfare.

David Cameron has a tricky budget to balance. He wants people to pay more tax, but he also needs people to claim fewer benefits. Only a fool could believe the two are not linked in a desperate spiral of positive feedback. In the boom years the high tax take was spent bribing ever more families to become reproductive rather than simply productive. Labour's time in office has seen the rise and rise of procreation as an industry and a not unprofitable one at that. Under the socialist creed, sacrifice and endeavour have been punished by ever-increasing tolls, while the cult of idle individualism has been feted and rewarded.

It simply cannot last forever. If Jimmy Carr has paid 1% tax on £3m, he has at least paid £30,000 into the system while almost certainly taking very little out - I am pretty sure he doesn't rely on subsidised housing, public transport or hospital services. In the same period an idle household has been granted the same amount in welfare payments, plus they will have liberally helped themselves to schooling, medical care and anything else going without any thought other than that it is their due.

Choosing welfare dependency over work is as much an abuse of the system as tax avoidance - in fact it's worse. The tax avoider is intelligently - if slightly immorally - using the wealth he has earned to buy himself the expertise to avoid the penalties levied on those who do well. It is outrageous to demand that those who take virtually nothing from the system pay an even higher percentage of their income, so that those without the wit or wisdom to earn their daily bread can continue in their infantile state of dependency.

So we should welcome the fact that we have a Prime Minister at least willing to acknowledge the formerly unsayable - that some people simply do not deserve the free ride they've had for the last thirty years (the Conservative Party has been just as guilty of appeasement of the masses as Labour) and that it has to end. But it's all just empty words because the part of the population that contributes the least is growing the fastest and the part that provides all the funding is shrinking.

Those who can are getting the hell out, one way or another and as always it's the backbone of our society - ordinary working people - who are taking the strain. How many more straws can this particular strained backbone take?

Carrm Down

I've been out of town and out of touch, but even I know that David Cameron has considered himself hard enough to come and have a go at Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements. Is this a wise move, I ask myself considering the long history of successful entertainers and tax avoidance? Surely everybody remembers the case of Ken Dodd and his famous Diddy Men - Diddy Pay and Diddy Fuck.

But maybe it is a good tactical  move after all, because it poses something of a problem for the left. It shines a feeble sort of light on the hypocrisy of show business, which is almost entirely populated by folk who declare themselves the epitome of caring socialism and the enemy of what they think of as conservatism. Show business attracts the young and hopeful, who often earn little throughout their lives and live in an extended, often ill-educated, mutually supportive peer group as they struggle to make ends meet by dressing up to make the grown-ups laugh and clap.

The grown-ups, of course, are happy to pay to keep performers in their juvenile and starry-eyed state, in the hope that they'll continue to entertain them for next to nothing. Sounds a lot like Socialism to me, where a ruling elite keeps the poor barefoot and helpless, while pulling their strings and offering crumbs of encouragement in place of real wages.

But all the sweet bonhomie does little to disguise the fact that in the fiercely competitive world of entertainment the big breaks are few, far between, fought-over and favour the hardest-working and most persistent. (What's that? A capitalist work ethic?) Your time in the spotlight - if it ever comes - may be short-lived and could be the only chance you get to build a nest egg. The question shouldn't be, "How dare you?" but more why wouldn't you avoid paying tax?

Many years of "progressive" politics have led us to be forced to hand over ever more of our earnings to support experimental policies of social engineering, touchy-feely (failed) multiculturalism and an infantilisation of the entire population - we're all in show business now. Which of us wouldn't - given the opportunity - pay an expert to allow us to legally avoid that high price and put something aside for those rainy days ahead?

Breaking free of the bounds of mediocrity, it is rarely long before achievers in all walks of life seek to separate themselves from the masses. Give a lefty a bit of money and pretty soon he or she buys a secluded house with security to keep the little people outside. Let people improve themselves and see how long they continue to espouse their former quaint notions of equality.

Jimmy Carr is only doing what most of us would do if we could. If there is fault here it is that the tax burden is too high, to pay for things that we don't need and ultimately don't really believe in. The irony is that the showbiz masses are natural Labour supporters - somebody has to pay the welfare bill for when they're 'resting' - but quickly reassess their priorities once they've made it. It's called human nature.

Who's laughing now?

The Human Race

So, last night’s BBC Question Time was a hoot. Baroness Warsi ably swinging the handbag for the Conservatives against the feebly flapping hands of Labour’s plain old Miss Cooper (double-entendre intended), who had the temerity to engage in a tit-for-tat battle over the respective performances of this and the last government.

When the last administration was under Gordon Brown’s leadership, the best you can do is apologise, surely? But maybe she has something in her arsenal, something to deploy to land a knockout blow? Wait for it, wait for it… here it comes… And there it is, the emotive but tired and ultimately meaningless statistic that the 5% reduction in top rate tax means a £40,000 tax rebate for somebody earning a million pounds a year.

Meaningless? Of course it is. Is that the only thing Labour has? It must be; it’s the only thing I ever hear from them. Again and again and again. Steal from the rich to feed the poor. It won’t work and you should really read this excellent article to see why. Squeezing the rich is an utterly futile exercise which demonstrates that those who propose it really don’t understand either money, or human motivation.

Everybody should pay their share, of course, but nobody should be taxed at a higher rate in return for their industry or their good fortune. It’s called the human race and at a million squids per annum I would most definitely be winning (or at least I’d be through to the play-offs). Trying to take my prize off me is envious and stupid and anyway, you’d have to catch me first. And I’m winning, remember?

Which gets me on to the other big race, the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix. I have no idea what’s happening. I don’t care. I don’t follow the sport and I have no real interest in whatever the Bahrainistas are up to, but I do know that it will make not one iota of difference to the prosperity of Britain whether the race goes ahead or not. For all the bleating and whining hot air that whooshed out of George Galloway's lying, hypocritical gob I'm sure that not a single B'rainie of influence lost a moment's sleep.

 You see, the Grand Prix is about rich people. And rich people really don’t care what you or I think about them. If we think too hard and get cross about them being rich they’ll just move – to Bahrain perhaps – and then we’ll never see another penny of their tax money again. Who will pay for everything then?