Everything's going to hell in a handcart (Cipriano argues for higher taxes on "hard-working families")

Now that all capitalism’s chickens seem to be coming home to roost, and the Government is collectively cowering in the face of a shitstorm, it’s interesting to see where the blame is being laid. Of course for the Tories it’s all the Government and Brown’s “imprudence”; actually there is something in that, in that it was indeed imprudent of him not to rein the banks in. It is entirely their fault, although to say so is our equivalent of dissing Uncle Mo in Sudan.

Northern Rock obviously; it must now be nationalised pour encourager les autres. The £1.3 trillion of personal debt – all thrust at vulnerable and relatively impoverished people by the bloodsuckers. The horrors of London, with BANKERS AND LAWYERS ONLY signs going up around all the nice bits. Having told us for years that essential financial expertise would be driven away if taxes were raised above 40%, we are now being told that essential expertise like private equity sharks and the Russian mafia will be driven away if they have to pay tax at all. Tax them to buggery, I say, and reclaim the West End.

And don’t stop there. What’s with the canard that all monies subject to taxation have been earned by “hard-working families”? What’s a hard-working family when it’s at home? I am sure there are yuppie families in North London who collectively give off enough kinetic energy to power a small city, so on-the-go are all their members with swimming, violin practice, running the voluntary sector etc. But these, gentle reader, are a minority. To comment from knowledge I will have to go back five years or so, to when I was part of a normal, mum-dad-two-kids nuclear family.

I had a job in government service; quite a senior job, and so subject to occasional periods of serious pressure, but on the whole I couldn’t really complain if you were to add “’Nuff said.” My ex-wife was self-employed, which I do admit takes some doing, as there, unlike in most of the public and private sectors, no-one pays you a regular salary just for turning up. But, as her income wasn’t absolutely essential for our survival, she worked only when she wanted to and spent about four months a year on holiday. As for our then teenage sons, only in a context of sledgehammer irony could the term “hard-working” be contemplated. But for the Tories and the Daily Mail we were, I suppose, a “hard-working family”. The real family income at that time, like that of most other middle-class families, came from the appreciation in the price of our house.

No doubt it makes political sense to champion the people who “earn” money by turning up to work and otherwise watching their house prices explode, as there are an awful lot of them, enough to turn an election. But in actual economic terms they are a deadweight. It wouldn’t harm the economy to tax them off the face of the earth. And then maybe we could all afford somewhere to live.