Aladdin Trouble

Well hello girls and boys and how are we today?

You’ll have to do better than that! I can’t hear you!

That’s better. Now, My name is Iain Duncan Smith, but you can call me Wishee-Washee – I’ve been called worse. I work all day here at Widow Twanky’s laundry, where we clean up all the money and make it disappear. What’s that you say, boys and girls? Widow Twanky’s a man? Oh no he isn’t! [Stage whisper] Actually he is – it’s George Osborne in drag! Anyway, it’s my job to keep you all up to date with what’s happening. So, the story so far:

Aladdin Balls has been to the Forty Thieves’ Cave to get an old lamp for the evil sorcerer Big Len McCluskey and his monkey, Miliband. But he escaped from the sorcerer and since then he’s been up all night rubbing at his lamp like crazy… he said he had to rub it just the right way, until something came out the end. But all he got was a big poof…

[FX: Green thunderflash]

“Ooh, hello! I am Chris Bryant, the genie of the lamp! My wish is your command.”

ALADDIN: Blimey!

GENIE: I can give you three wishes. Be careful what you ask for.

ALADDIN: For my first wish, Genie, I wish to be Grade 8 on the piano!

GENIE: You sure? You didn’t want to wish for, you know, peace and prosperity and goodwill to all mankind, or something like that?

ALADDIN: Sod them – they won’t be able to laugh at me when I’m Grade 8! And then I will be able to marry Emperor Cameron’s beautiful daughter…

GENIE: She’s nine, you idiot. And besides, what about Yvette?

ALADDIN: Oh, I wish that wasn’t a problem.

GENIE: As you command, oh Master!

The Genie claps his hands. [FX: Blackout and lightning flash] When the lights come up they are standing in the House of Commons. A piano stands on the floor of the house, and as Aladdin approaches it the shouting mob calms down. He plays a virtuoso piece and finishes to rousing applause, apart from Yvette Cooper who scowls from her seat.

ALADDIN: Thank you thank you and on this last day in the house may I wish you all a very merry Christmas! Thank you and goodnight! I love you all!

He gets a standing ovation which slowly fades as the lights dim. The curtain falls to leave Aladdin Balls standing front of stage holding the lamp. He rubs it and the genie appears in a much less impressive flash.

ALADDIN: Where did you go?

GENIE: I’m done here.

ALADDIN: But you said I had three wishes?

GENIE: Yep, you’ve had ‘em. You had Piano, Yvette and Merry Christmas.

ALADDIN: Woah, I thought I’d only used one!

GENIE: It’s a bugger, isn’t it? It’s a bit like what you want to do with the bankers’ bonus tax when you come to think of it. You see, handling a magic lamp is a bit like handling the economy. You can’t always do what you want… Except for a minute there you actually could have done. But you blew it.

ALADDIN: [Sarcastically] Yeah? Just what could I have done? There are millions of starving people relying on food banks. The Tories want to freeze old people to death and evict the disabled to die in the streets. They are dismantling our armed forces and selling off the NHS and surrendering our power supplies to the French. So tell me, oh mighty genie, if you’re so clever, how could I have fixed all that with three measly wishes?

GENIE: Oh, you know, I thought you’d have at least wished for a magic money tree…

Stop Thief!

There's been a fair bit of news these past few weeks. We've had paedos and press mobs and pandemonium at the barricades of the BBC. There have been resignations and accusations and allegations of racism in refereeing. We've had  a brand new Archbishop of cant and rubber bullets in the bull rings as Europe pursues its impossible, jackbooted dream.

Yes, some pretty terrible things have been going on, but forget Savile and Starr and Entwistle and Patten. Put aside fears for the future of France and Italy and Spain. Dixon of Dock Green has far bigger fish to fry, Rebus must face his biggest case yet and Morse must remorselessly face down an evil as great as ever seen in the groves of academe.

For a monster stalks the halls of Westminster. A rapacious phantom strikes, then fades into the shadows to bide its time and strike again. Such an audacious crime has rarely been seen outside the campuses of the bright young things. A disease which formerly only affected young people living in crowded, unhygienic ghettos, or lowly office workers crowded into cubicles, has spread its deadly tentacles into the very heart of government.

And the first of its victims spoke out yesterday. Shadow Minister Liz Kendall, MP for Leicester, wrote "Someone has stolen my lunch from this fridge." She went on to say, "I do not appreciate this and warn other people don’t leave anything in here unless you’re happy for it to go missing." In a sane and normal world the travesty would end there but no, the nightmare continues, for the wrongdoer is without shame or decency and replied, "I took it… AND I’D DO IT AGAIN!"

Oh. My. Fucking. Good. God. She is forty-one years old! She's a member of bloody Parliament Has she never seen The Thick Of It? She's the shadow Shadow Care Minister? CARE? There's a minister for care?  It's easy to see what she cares about; well I bloody well don't unless the culprit turns out to be Gordon Brown, leading a Phantom of the Opera existence in the secret places of the palace, living off scraps and feeding his soul from the despair of his party.

You never see them in the same room, do you?

The Daily Mail calls the note 'hilarious'. I think it's downright hysterical. Anyway, whoever would have dreamed there could be dishonesty in the Houses of parliament?

Taxing times

Well I've read a lot of stuff over the last two days regarding the so-called "cash-for-access" affair, like it's any sort of news. One side calls out names, the other side replies, "Yo' momma!". Then the newspapers get in on it and, of course, it's a free-for-all which has the delightful effect of utterly obscuring right and wrong whilst simultaneously polarising opinion further. 'The Left' gleefully points and shouts, "same old Tories", 'The Right' starts naming Labour millionaires and counter attacks with "cash for honours". And of course, just as one columnist argues for the status quo, more or less, another argues for public funding.

Amid the din the losers are always the same losers. The people paying for the party, whichever party they believe in; the tax payer. Income tax, national insurance, corporation and capital gains taxes. Import taxes, export taxes, road fund licence, VAT, stamp duties,  television licence, council tax... Then there's the tax you pay on income you've earned from savings and investments (if you can afford to save) from money you've already paid tax on and even when you're dead there are numerous ways the exchequer can get its hands on your dosh. If you die with no net worth then your ultimate tax rate was 100% as every penny has gone back into circulation.

We pay public servants out of taxation and then take back some of that pay... as tax. We pay tax on purchases of goods by those same departments. We tax private sector workers to pay pensions, then tax those same pensions. And the state employs extra people to collect the taxes from people paid by the state, which includes themselves. And on top of all that the treasury takes in tax from every possible source, then hands it back to the very same people as tax credits, child benefits, etc, and employs still more people to work out how much goes where. And it's all Napoleon's fault.

So, what went wrong? Why do we pay so much frigging tax? The first question, surely, has to be, if it's not for fighting Napoleon, what is it all for?

"From each according to his ability," plagiarised Marx, "to each according to his needs." A laudable sentiment, you might think, coming from a time when peasants were starving (although the soundbite was an alteration of an earlier call for rewards to be commensurate with effort). This seems to have transmuted into "You work your balls off, because you can - and we can make you - while he sits on his arse because he feels like it."

Instead of thinking "what can we spend all these taxes on?" governments should be thinking,"Is Napoleon still out there and can't we cut back a bit?" When 'need' covers such things as TV subscriptions, the classification of obesity as a disability and broadband for all, something radical has to change. And, yes, we're neatly back to population control.

Given that a large part of the tax take is spent paying people to pay it back to people who gave it in the first place. And that large government departments spend fortunes on themselves, their advisers and their advisers' advisers. And a large part of government time seems to be spent on justifying how they got the cash, where it's gone and why, isn't the solution obvious? The tax burden can reduced across the board by reducing the part of the population most responsible for wasting it.

So, a call to arms against a sea of troubles. Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Yes, my loyal subjects, in the United Dingdom there will be no need for big government. The cull begins in Westminster!

Follow me! I'll be right behind you!