Tuesday 12th April 2016

I was low yesterday driving back from the Gay Mother in the Far West. Was it all over for the Rich? As you know, I’ve been wracked about inequality. It comes in bouts like swelling and bloating.  No more shares. No more off-shore funds. Cameron hauled over the coals. How long before the regime of Jeremy Corbyn and a white B&Q front door for all? No matter that it was a lot of wrangling about £30,000 in the off-shore fund and all the tax was paid. Cameron was to appear in the Commons House later in the afternoon. Would he survive? Would the Government have fallen by tea-time?

Well, the worst now seems to be over. They’ve shut up about that further £70,000 of shares that were sold. Cameron saw them off and robust voices spoke up in favour some families being richer than others. This is good for our society and produces people like me who decorate the world. Not that I have a penny of course and could crash to penury at any moment.

Now we can contemplate these tax returns. Apart from Boris, it’s really quite embarrassing how unrich these top people are.  Without their salaries they’d be struggling. Osborne (my relly, you know. The Gay Great Granny left his Granny a leggy. Lady Osborne wrote an arsey letter to the Gay Grandad about it) is doing well enough at the moment. On £200,000, with a wife and kids, he can probably manage the Royal Opera House maybe twice a year and Glyndebourne once. V. little disposable. No servants. His rather ghastly wife, who doesn’t allow her inability to string a sentence together to stop her from writing books, would have to do the Glyndebourne picnic herself and carry it from the car-park. But what if Osborne is kicked out of Office? Then he’d have to go and live in the house he is currently renting out while residing at numero onze and would be reduced to £44,000 of uncertain income from the wallpaper company and his MP’s salary. So he’s surely having to save in his present windfall years. Cameron is in much the same position: massively salary-dependent, wife doing the cooking, much of her frockage probably out on loan for the night from the shop, no jewels of any importance.

People have really got no idea. Boris has questions to answer. With all that money, why are his clothes so dilapidated? Why does he seem to be actually dirty in his person? I know because I see him all the time in my neighbourhood on his bicycle. Of all the people I have seen in the neighbourhood over twenty years, he is far and away the grubbiest. Why is this on £500,000 a year?

The trouble is that so many people earn so little. Salaries must increase and tax thresholds be lowered for middle earners. But you’re not rich on £200,000 with dependents and a mortgage. You’re comfortably awff. That’s a different thing. Rich is £1 million a year absolutely reliable investment income, ideally £3 to £4 million (i.e. capital holdings of £100 million plus), no borrowings, at least 8 staff, two homes, staff in both, car at the door, new clothes from the Collections twice a year, at least 4 Old Masters, important jewellery.  Even then there are things you can’t have. This new Caravaggio, for instance, they’re saying it could be £27 million if genuine. What is one to do?

Yesterday Laura Malcolm said, ‘In the interests of transparency, do you think we should all take our Tax Returns to the cafe opening on Thursday?’ More on that cafe opening later.