Budget preview shock!

I was on the point of offering you some serious pre-budget analysis when into my hands fell the real thing! Yes readers, my Treasury contacts have come up trumps and delivered unto me the most closely guarded documents since David Cameron's horse-riding log.

You'll be aware of the undue influence exerted by Lib Dem side of the coalition, those squealing youngsters who always seem to get the grown ups to give in to their every whim but despite this, you might be surprised at the extent to which the Tory boy par excellence Georgie Osbourne has capitulated. Brace yourselves for here are the main headlines:

Mansion tax: on the grounds that any home owner must have at least some spare cash, the definition of "mansion" now goes down to £150,000. Expect a "progressive" tax regime here that sees an average !0% of your home's value going in tax. Relief available for those able to demonstrate absolute penury.

Hosepipe ban: to last forever. Garden space in any case needed for windmills (see below).

Windmills: compulsory. Every home owner to be forced to erect one windmill for every 100 sq. ft. of living or garden space. Possibility of relief against mansion tax for those exceeding this minimum. 

Solar panels: also compulsory. At least 90% of roof space to be covered by the end of the next tax year.

Guardian to be nationalised: loss-making drone-sheet to be bailed out with public funds. State-owned Guardian satellite TV channel to be launched. 

Banks: to be abolished within the year. HSBC (now the "Hummus, Sandals and Beards Corporation") to be taken under ownership of Lib Dem party with automatic link between profits and party funds. 

Banker bonus tax: to be levied at 100%. Consultation launched on how on earth to make up the shortfall after bank abolition.

Window tax: this long-lost and "much maligned" tax to be reinstated.

Euro to be adopted: pound therefore scrapped, ditto the Bank of England. In order to prop up the euro zone, holidays from now on must be taken only in Greece. But flights to Greece banned, for "green" reasons.

Travel: all other flights to be subject to 30% carbon tax. Petrol duty to be doubled. Complex system of reliefs to be set up related to the amount of walking you do.

Tax avoidance: to be punishable by death. Public consultation on exact meaning of "tax avoidance". Public sector workers to be exempt but anyone else earning over £50k a year to be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

Finally, public consultation on giving Nick Clegg a "proper job" and how to start process of beatification for Vince Cable.

You read it here first!

Rave on time for the Saga generation!

We're just back from an action-packed weekend in London. Amongst the non-stop fun was attendance at White Hart Lane where we saw the near death experience of the Bolton player Muamba. What a weird thing: you have never witnessed such silence in a packed premier league football stadium (well apart from the customary pin-drop experience at another north London ground.) Is it too early for me to enquire about refunds? On a positive note, hospital reports are encouraging, which is amazing in the circumstances.

But enough of this morbid talk. The previous night we were at the South Bank for the BBC Radio 6 Music 10th anniversary bash. It was a good night all round, with sets from the likes of Graham Coxon (Blur) and Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) competing with 6 Music DJs tending the wheels of steel in the foyer and even, in the case of rock stars turned presenters Tom Robinson and Hughie Morgan (the Fun Loving Criminals guy), playing live.

Public Image Ltd topped the bill and good old Johnny Lydon/Rotten set the tone with his quote: "Thank you radio 6 - someone's got to put up with this stuff!" He had to have a lyrics book to prompt his memory and worse, had to wear glasses to read it but I know how he feels. We're none of us getting any younger but thank God we have 6 Music so we can kid ourselves.

If you don't listen to 6 Music then you should. It is really first class and is always wafting round the house when we are in residence at Marshside Acres. Being a digital station means hardly anyone can get it in the car which is a shame but despite this, listener figures are booming and, having been perilously close to being axed a short while back, it's now looking forward with confidence to its second ten years.

                                DJ Liz Kershaw fails to fade into the background at the South Bank

Highlight of the night for me was a brief chat with DJ Liz "sister of Andy" Kerhsaw,  whose Saturday show is a particular delight. Although she must now be of a "certain age", she was living it up on Friday like a 14 year-old on her first big night out (see picture). We rubbed shoulders (literally) with other DJs such as Mark Radcliffe, Stuart Maconie, Lauren Laverne, Craig Charles (Red Dwarf alert!), Mark "Lard" Riley, Steve Lamaq and Jarvis Cocker (no less!) who were all quite obviously having just as a good a time as us humble punters. You can see highlights on the red button and the 6 Music web-site. Do it!

There is no limit to membership of the 6 Music club so come on in: point your browser, DAB radio, Freeview/satellite TV at 6 Music now. For groovy people of all ages (which means you, groovy reader), it has become a vitally important institution. And guess what? It's free! 

We don't need no educashon - Part II

Do you think that education has been "dumbed down" a bit? Think that teachers seem to lack some of the basic skills that they used to have in your day? Or are you one of those who believes this is all nonsense and that stratospheric pass rates and multiple A grades are all down to that brave bunch of men and women who daily battle on the assault courses of the nation's schools? 

Well here's a great story that might help you decide. It seems that some bunny-boiling female was after revenge for caddish treatment (as she saw it) by some chap she'd been carrying on with. This chap did have a pregnant wife by the way, so you may think she was being more optimistic than usual but such is the tempestuous path of the ship called love when tossed on the stormy sea of emotion.

Anyway, she wasn't taking the end of this affair lying down. (Or could that be she wasn't taking the end of the lying down, lying down? Or perhaps she was going to stand up for herself when the lying down finished? Please yourselves.) No sir. She resorted to graffiti on his house and car. She also opted for the slightly unusual tactic of having catalogues and take-aways sent to their place. (This would get you nowhere with us: my other half loves catalogues - almost any catalogue - and we're both partial to the odd takeaway.)

But getting back to the spray-painting, here's the really good bit. With her anger aimed squarely at the bloke's missus, one of the pithy comments she daubed on the house of her former paramour read: "Fat **** get out, he don't love you." Fantastic! You couldn't make it up. It's all the better for having to guess what the missing 4 letter word was; play around with a few and see which fits best. Did she write "don't" automatically or, as she was about to write "doesn't", did she have a sudden pang of doubt as to the location of the apostrophe? Perhaps, fearful as to being targeted by the apostrophe police and pilloried by her local education department, she panicked and plumped for "don't"? I fear we will never know but I do wish the magistrate had asked her. Certainly, this appalling piece of prose should be considered an exacerbating factor when it comes to sentencing.

Despite the success of "Eats, shoots and leaves", there is no sign of respite in the battle for good grammar. I read tons of documents written by highly paid "professionals" which contain language to make you weep. I referred above to the apostrophe police; I don't think they exist but they should do. For my part, I long ago stopped worrying too much about apostrophes as it was playing havoc with my blood pressure and shortening my life expectancy. And I was getting through too many red pens.

I don't know what this woman taught but I do hope it wasn't English, although the whole thing would be even more deliciously ironic if she did. In the meantime, I hope this case may move us closer to tough punishments for crimes against the English language: this sort of thing is much more serious than bombarding someone with the odd chicken bhuna and an Argos catalogue. 

Public sector tax avoidance - they're all at it!

Readers of this blog will not be surprised by the story in today's press that there are armies of people in the public sector being paid via personal service companies, rather than through the payroll. Who'd have thought it? We've already seen that there's nothing illegal about this but I feel this won't stop most people missing the point: it's not about the tax it's about the cost of these people.

Take Nick Johnson. He's head of housing at Hammersmith and Fulham council. You may think that this seems like a pretty boring job and one that could be done by any reasonably competent administrator who knows a bit about housing matters. But if you think that, then you are, like Chris Farlowe, way out of time. No, this cannot possibly be the sort of dullard's sinecure that you might reasonably imagine it to be because (gird yourselves) he has been paid more than £900,000 over 4 years! Or rather, his personal service company, one Davies Johnson Ltd., has.

Wow! This is the job for me. Clearly it must involve incredible risk-taking and entrepreneurial flair. He must have added zillions in value for the burghers of this part of west London. He must know more about housing than you ever thought it possible to know and he must be a dynamic young thruster. Goodness knows how many applicants (or other companies?) he had to fight off to land this top top job.

Well actually, old Nick was a pensioner. Yep, he'd retired as head honcho of Bexley council a while back. Before that, he was head of Bexley social services. Not sure if he ever worked in housing but perhaps this company, Davies Johnson Ltd., is not actually a brass plate affair at all but a major enterprise with years of experience in the housing sector and Nick just happens to be one of its many well qualified employees. OK calm down, I'm only kidding.

There's actually three things wrong with this business and none of them has anything to do with tax. The first is that Nick's cosy corporate arrangement has more to do with the fact that to earn this kind of dosh himself might jeopardise his Bexley pension, so it's avoiding the rules of the pension scheme, as well as (maybe) tax. (Due credit to Private Eye for pointing this our some time ago.) Second, it's just not fair is it? We've discussed before how this personal service company lark could, in theory, work for anyone but dontcha just know it's always the guys at the top who seem to be accommodated in this way; how many of H&F's housing officers, toiling away in the council estates of Shepherd's Bush, have personal service companies I wonder? Truly, to those who have shall be given.

But third and most important by a mile is, how on earth is it necessary to pay someone so much to do this kind of job? I'm not holding our mate Nick solely responsible for the UK's dire financial position but quite obviously there are an awful lot of Nicks around plus even more deputy Nicks and so ad infinitum and it all adds up to a figure not unadjacent to £far-too-much. The plot has been well and truly lost at some point during mad Gordie's reign and the fact that the public sector feels it reasonable to throw money around like this is one of the main reasons we've run out of cash.

Finally, back to the tax-avoiding angle. This is actually the only bit of good news. How so? Well you may remember that we pointed out how paying a company rather than an individual means no employers' national insurance. So well done H&F for saving us all a few bob here! It's just a shame that this widow's mite was offset, many times over, by the undue generosity to a certain Bexley pensioner. Oh, that and the fact that the employers'  NI would have gone to the Treasury so those of us not lucky enough to live in 'ammersmith are subsidising those that are. Onwards and upwards!

Jeremy Clarkson ate my lobster

Or...don't let the truth get in the way of a great column. JC was on the radio this morning and quoted the late great Keith Waterhouse as saying that if, as a columnist, you had to make a phone call, then you'd failed. in other words, what people want is to be entertained by your witty writing and outrageous opinions; they don't want to be distracted by boring things like facts.

That's exactly the sort of "mission statement" that guides this blog. I'm not going to let minor quibbles get in the way of opining, for example, that a 10 year-old could do the England football manager's job as well as anyone else. Who cares if it's true or not?*

So here's another thing to outrage those who like facts: smokers are better people than non-smokers. They are more tolerant, wittier, cleverer, better cooks and better lovers. Willie Rushton (another "late and great") once said that if you do give up smoking, don't be a non-smoker - be a smoker who isn't smoking. He clearly recognised this definitive distinction between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the smoker and the non-smoker.

Be wary of non-smokers. They are usually small minded people and are often mad, suffering from the delusion that if they don't smoke, they will live forever. Remember that giving up smoking doesn't necessarily make you live longer - it just feels like it. I'm sure I'm not offendiing anyone here because only right-minded people, i.e. smokers, read this blog.

The tax treatment of smokers and non-smokers is perverse isn't it? Smokers are forced to pay huge amounts of tax by way of tobacco duty despite the fact that they probably will die younger (there - I've resorted to a fact) and therefore be less of a burden on the state. Logically, it is the bed-blocking non-smokers who should be the ones forking out the extra tax and we should start lobbying George Osborne to introduce this new tax which I am calling SNOUT (Sanctimonious NOn-smoker Umbrage Tax) in the forthcoming budget.

How would Jean-Paul Sartre have survived without tobacco to fuel his gloomy existentialism? Would the books of Martin Amis be worth reading or the food of Marco Pierre White be worth eating had they not regularly partaken of a nicotine hit? And as for smokin' Jeremy Clarkson...I know some of you don't like Top Gear but do please read his excellent nicotine-inspired words before you write him off. Then close to the top of the tobacco-inspires-greatness chart is of course Stephen Fry. Yes I know he doesn't smoke these days but I refer you to the Willie Rushton guidance quoted above.

I'm trying to ignore the one gaping flaw in my argument: Nick Clegg smokes. Oh well, I shall resort to the "exception that proves the rule" get-out clause.

I conclude that without tobacco the world would be spiritually and culturally impoverished. Financially too: the world economic crisis occurred ominously soon after smoking bans became the trendy cause de nos jours in the Western world. Never mind all the financial wrangling to get us out of this mess, do away with the smoking bans and we'll soon be back to the days when we were lighting cigars with tenners, rather than printing them by the shed load and chucking them at Greece. Do they go in for smoking bans in China? Who has all the money? I rest my case.

And as for sex: do I smoke after sex, I hear you ask? I don't know, I've never looked.

*It is true of course.