Fair's FAIR

Sourced from facebook friends who read the papers:

1.2 bn: annual cost of benefit fraud
40bn: annual cost of tax avoidance

Banks will avoid paying £19bn on tax of future profits by offsetting their losses against (your) tax.

6bn: Tax avoided by Vodafone after negociating with Inland Revenue
2bn: Amount 15 million tax paying individuals must pay (averaging £1500 each) after Inland Revenue mistakenly over charged them last year.

4bn: Estimated value of retail tycoon (Topshop owner) and Government "waste tsar" Sir Philip and Lady Green's collective assets.
40p: Average hourly wage paid to Topshop workers in Sri Lankan sweat shops

The opportunities of Disaster Capitalism the Tories have been waiting for: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/18/conservative-financial-crisis-opportunity

23 milionaires out of 29 in our cabinet of 'we're all in it together' slash and burn politicians.

It's clearly stiggers desire to depress you this morning....

Keep Calm And Carry On

This is for Jen over at the Cigarette Diaries
For you too
And me
Oh and repeat after me:
I am a millionaire
I am a millionaire
I AM A MILLIONAIRE

Now Panic And Freak Out

The coalition's Comprehensive Spending Review today.

My (red) Keep Calm And Carry On mug was still dirty from yesterday so I had to pour my still hot (discounted, thank you!) double expresso into my (blue) Now Panic and Freak Out mug (both a gift from my old Shit School Acquaintance).

I couldn't sit staring at the blue mug so I put the red mug next to it.

The political colour of these mugs has not escaped me.

Billionaires

If a billionaire was to give one million pounds to each person in the country, he or she would still have millions of pounds left over.

Repeat after me:
I am a millionaire
I am a millionaire
I am a millionaire

I am with you in spirit

A protest march against Government cuts this afternoon from Lincolns Inn Field to Whitehall. Everyone is assembling at 4.30pm.

"Shall we go?" I say to son.
"No, I don't like marching," he replies. "Let's watch it on the TV."
"OK."

We live in a mini democracy in our little flat. He's only won this vote because Lincolns Inn Fields is a bugger to get to from here.

Number Crunching

Families on benefits

All: 5,917,560
No kids: 2,482,830
1 child: 611,120
2 kids: 401,540
3 kids: 184,750
4 kids: 70,740
5 kids: 22,760
6 kids: 7,510
7 kids: 2,520
8+ kids: 1,050

(Daily Telegraph, Friday 8th October,p.4)

The article does not state if these numbers include families who are working but are in receipt of housing benefit.

I'm not one of those but mum of one upstairs is, though she's just had her £98 housing benefit a week cut because she earns £430 a month.

Cuts delivered by the Cabinet

Did you know, for I didn't before the Sunday Telegraph informed me, that of the 29 members in the cabinet, 23 of them are millionaires?

Yes, as they wield the axe, they will not get hurt at all.

More galling perhaps, if you don't find that galling, is that the security, minders, bodyguards they need to protect them from the new wave of burglars and muggers we will see, are paid from the purse of the 'squeezed middle', the 'working poor', you and me.

Repeat after me:
I am a millionaire
I am a millionaire
I am a millionaire

(Law of Attraction... You have any better suggestions?)