The President of the Liberal Democrats had a fit of the vapours earlier this week when he learned that George “Tiger” Osbourne, our timid little drip of a Chancellor, was thinking of dropping the 50p tax rate for those earning over £150,000 a year. Like some Victorian maiden hearing details of what Oscar Wilde had actually got up to with his rough trade chums, Tim Farron (no, I’ve never heard of him either) said such a move would be “phenomenally immoral”.
I’ve no idea why: I had thought that taxation was about everyone paying their fair share, and since the top 1% of earners stump up 24% of the UK’s income tax, we can deduce that rich folk are doing their bit. Besides, the Laffer Curve and experience have shown that the most likely result of dropping the 50p rate back to a still eye-watering 40p would result in the rich paying even more – which is an outcome I would have imagined a party of confirmed spending junkies like the Lib Dems would have welcomed. But, no – despite the fact that quite a few of them are as rich as Croesus (which atheists might take as conclusive proof that God doesn’t exist, and which also suggests there is absolutely no connection between the ability to make money and common sense), making money is evidently an immoral act in itself. Or perhaps it’s having sufficient means not to have to rely on the state for help that’s intrinsically wicked.
Who knows what passes for moral logic among Lib Dems?
But I do know there are many things I would consider more worthy of the description “phenomenally immoral” than a proposal to level out the UK’s punitive tax rates.
Such as a married man enjoying three-in-a-bed sex romps with male prostitutes and having one of them defecate on his chest.
Like a minister using public money – illegally - to pay rent to his boyfriend.
Like a party leader cheating on his wife with his secretary.
Like a party leader denying they have a problem with alcohol when everyone knows they are being economical with the actualité.
And then, of course, who can forget “Bunnies can and will go to France”?
No, on the whole there are a lot of things far more “phenomenally immoral” than expecting the rich to pay the same rate of tax as middle-earners - including a miserable little joke of a party with less than 10% of the seats in the House of Commons dictating how the people of this country should lead their lives.
But the remark which really had me twitching was this one from Lord Oakeshott, a former Lib Dem Treasury Spokesman: “The last thing we want to do is give a handout to the top one per cent in the country.”
A hand-out? A bloody hand-out? I know, of course, that left-wing politicians view our earnings as wholly the property of the state, some of which - if they’re in a benign mood - they let us keep. But it’s nevertheless a surprise to see this totalitarian concept stated so baldly.
What an arrogant arse!
As a truly great Conservative Prime Minister once said, “It’s our money!”Try not to forget it!
How today’s Tories can bear being in bed with this lot is beyond me.Perhaps Cameron and his chums have learnt to enjoy having grasping sleazeballs regularly defecate on them.
Your fixation with Marc Oaten continues [and with the Lib-Dems generally]. You have forgotten that he has been officially pardoned by no less a person than Shami Chakrabarti on national television [a few years ago they both appeared on "Question Time" and the sainted Shami took it upon herself to forgive him on behalf of us all while Oaten sat there with a "shit-eating" smirk]. So please lay off. The man had just suffered major hair-loss. With a bit more luck he could have been at the heart of the Cabinet to-day.
ReplyDeleteYou omitted to mention other Liberal odd-balls: William Gladstone's "attempt" to save young prostitutes [he was having a laugh, right?]; H.H. "Squiffy" Asquith whose poor wife had to "relieve" him in the back of cabs before they attended social gatherings in order to restrain his libido; and the old Welsh Goat himself who to-day would be carted off to the Priory for a spot of "sexual addiction" re-hab.
No, give me "the old swinging by a rope round your neck in a ward-robe with the proverbial satsuma stuck in your gob scenario" any day of the week.
Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 10:23 AM
As my hair has just started thinning at the front, I am looking forward to an old age of inconceivably swinish debauchery, followed by public forgiveness from God’s representative on earth, Shami Chakrabarti –
ReplyDeleteThe Sainted Shami: “Forgivest Thou this foolish old man, MY Lord, for he hath been afflicted with a Dome of Chrome which madeth him do filthy things, yeah even unto asking a rent-boy to… “
The Supreme Being: “Yes, all right! Thank you, Shami – I get the picture.”
The ex-satsuma sucker was Tory MP Stephen Milligan who I worked with for a bit when he was the BBC’s Europe Correspondent. Oddly enough, he never once mentioned his predilection for auto-erotic asphyxiation to me.