Brain Dead Britain builds Spaceport
By Charlie Mullins OBE
I think the blazing heat of the UK’s hottest summer since the fabled heatwave of 1976 has done a number on the brains of half the population which, with the other half already ‘on the sick’ signed off with mental health problems, doesn’t leave many sane heads to keep our little island afloat. Sometimes it feels like the only people happy to be here are the ones who come by rubber boat from France.
Other notable examples of seasonable brain rot a bunch of Brits pushing prams getting rescued 8,000 feet up the Alps and sightings of the Loch Ness monster have rocketed to new levels. But my favourite silly season story this year has to be the chancers who talked the UK government into parting with 30 million quid to build a space port on Shetland. There’s no money for fixing rail travel, but a space port… fill your boots lads!!
Speaking of boots, hats off to the senile peace-loving warmonger, aka the 47th President of the United States Donald Trump, for his retro fascist fashion statement, jackboots included, that’s clearly the inspiration behind new uniforms of his US Space Force. For those who’ve never heard of it, the Space Force is the 6th branch of the US military, created by Trump in 2019 after watching (and missing the point) of 1998 sci-fi flick Starship Troopers. Rumours that Elon Musk is being groomed as the force’s new Grand Dragon have been denied by the Whitehouse, but Space-Ex workers have reported strange noises reminiscent of goose-stepping coming from Musk’s office late at night.
Moving to another high-profile individual with a penchant for a smart Nazi uniform news of the strategic retreat back to the UK of Prince Harry and family… yes, she’s coming back too, has led to an unprecedented response from his, err… father, the King. In a royal proclamation HRH informed his subjects that his chancer son and attention seeking daughter-in-law were not part of his firm and anything the pair did in public was most definitely unroyal.
It’s a bit confusing as to why Charles felt the need to publicly disown the Sussexes but perhaps it was something to do with rumours of a BBC reimagining of the 90s hit show Men Behaving Badly, with Harry and his uncle Andy in the lead roles. Instead of a grimy west London flat the new version’s plot, set in a five-bedroom farmhouse on a large country estate, would be based on the unloved bluebloods’ ill-fated get rich quick schemes.
Returning to King Charles and his revolutionary style of ruling his kingdom - he has, since coming to the throne - broken with tradition and gone public with how much tax he pays on his vast wealth. It turns out that last year HRH paid £12.9 million into the revenue and customs service named after his royal self. Personally, I’m all for transparency whether it involves pricing a new boiler install or the taxing of vast Crown estates inherited from ancestors who took them in much the same way as ‘Settlers’ appropriate Palestinian land in the West Bank. All I have to add is I hope this current revolution works out better for King Charles version 3.0 than it did for his distant ancestor Charles version 1.0.
And now after a few diversions into silliness, we have neatly arrived at the subject I really want to talk about, tax. Specifically, who should be getting hit up for more dosh and what ways a fair and sensible government should use to get people to cough up their share.
One method that keeps coming up is some kind of tax on individuals’ net worth. We’re told new Prime Minister Andy Burnham is a fan, Gary Lineker is all for it and there’s a bunch of sanctimonious busybodies who call themselves ‘Patriotic Millionaires’ and see it as their mission on earth to lecture the rest of us unpatriotic types on how much of our hard-earned (and already taxed) money we should be allowed to keep. The thing that gets me the most about this bunch of hypocrites is they haven’t thought it necessary to ante up themselves.
To be honest I don’t really understand how this bunch of alleged businesspeople came to be successful in the first place. At least Andy Burnham has the excuse of being a lifelong socialist to explain his Robin Hood instincts.
I wouldn’t be so passionate except it’s just a stupid, unworkable idea that has been tried in the UK and elsewhere and didn’t work. In fact, historically it has backfired, with its wealthy targets either leaving town or placing their assets where the taxman can’t see them.
As evidence I give you the aborted recent attempt to make a wealth tax work in France, and England’s ridiculous 17th century window tax that drove owners of large houses to brick up their windows.
William The Conqueror had a bash at counting up all the wealth in the country in 1086 with his Doomsday Book, but he wasn’t foolish enough to do it again. Imagine how many civil servants it would take to count all the wealth in the country every single year.
The truth is that all that will happen is people like the UK’s third largest taxpayer Chris Rokos who paid £330 million in tax last year will leave the country for more business-friendly countries (as he has) and with them go massive amounts of wealth and investment.
Wealth taxes are no laughing matter.