I was walking down the Strand yesterday morning when I heard music. Not just noise, but music. Chanting. Drums. It was a protest, I could see as I neared. Or a support group. I couldn’t tell. What was fantastic was that this merry little group of Rwandans were chanting along to drums in unison and it was very pleasing. You wanted to dance. Most of the Rwandans were, in fact, dancing. Some of the police were even shuffling their size 13s as well. Their banners seemed to declare love and support for their president. Who, I can only assume, must have been staying at the Savoy Hotel just opposite.

There’s a protest going on somewhere in London every day. Outside the High Courts there’s always groups with posters, sometimes chanting, but always in a dull and dreary manner. “WHAT DO WE WANT??” “MUNNNEEE!!!!” “WHEN DO WE WANT IT??” “NAAAAHHHHH!!!” (repeat ad nauseum). Maybe Rwandans are just inherently more rhythmic than nurses from Cleethorpes, Council Workers from Blackburn, librarians from Southwark, but this little demonstration was great. Put a smile on the face of the passers by and brightened our Monday mornings.

Unlike Ed Balls. Our Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Or, ‘NOB’ for short. Maybe ‘TOSSER’; I’m a bit dyslexic when it comes to acronyms. He wrote a column in the Evening Standard last night about the proposed ‘mansion tax’, should Labour (heaven forbid) win the next election. Assuming they have a majority and always dependent on whether their Scottish contingent will be allowed to vote on such a south of the border issue. Because there are no 3 million pound houses in Scotland. Only Balmoral. And there aren’t many outside the M25. Thus Unlikely Ed wrote in the London newspaper to ‘explain’ this most unholy of taxes to those who it actually affects. Most of whom have their butlers read the paper to them. And, trying and obviously failing to be clever, Balls tried to equate the mansion tax with the survival of the National Health Service. Implying that any resistance to this new tax can only be by the sort of bastards who would want extended waiting lists in hospitals and bleeding coal miners (do we have any coal miners any more? must check) to sit in corridors outside jammed full A & E units (do we have A&E unites any more? must check) contracting MRSA during their 84-hour wait to be stitched up.

Houses between 2 and 3 million will ‘just’ have to pay about 3,000 a year. Just. Above that and it gets really heavy, up to about 28,000 a year, so they reckon. Or about 50k a year has to be earned by a UK tax-payer just to pay the extra tax for living in a nice house. The lower rate, for homes between 2 & 3 mil, will raise, they estimate, 162 million a year in tax. What is known, in our age of ‘billions’ as ‘a piss in the ocean’. 0.16 billion quid. Massive though that seems to impoverished scum like you, to the government its actually of no value. The cost of paper clips for 7 weeks in Westminster.

The only redeeming feature is that if you assume that a massive proportion of very expensive homes are owned by people who don’t pay UK tax, this will be a way to at least recoup something. They avoid income tax here, they avoid stamp duty on buying their properties by purchasing through offshore companies and they rarely even occupy their homes. They just collect them.

Basically, I’m all in favour of taxing rich foreigners but leave hard-working Brits alone. Or what happens to aspiration?

Happy tuesday

A xxxx