There’s something about a Harley Davidson. Something wonderful. Something big. Something very shiny. Something very very very loud.

My mate popped over yesterday on this rather splendid toy. Its a fat boy. No, not the geezer sitting upon it, he is The Perfect Man, but the bike. And as my mate is in more of a mid-life crisis than most, strapped to the back of the Harley is a Fender Stratocaster. Every biker should have one. Helps with the aerodynamics. In fact he’d just bought the guitar and was going to pick it up in a car, which would have been, sort of easy, convenient, sensible. But mid-life crises aren’t about sensible. They’re the antithesis of sensible. So the bike it was, 47 little bungee cords holding the beast in place and stay off the motorways or the ‘sail’ you’ve created causes all sorts of horrible and destabilising effects.

So now I want one. The Harley. Just think how great it would look on the drive, next to ‘the car’ which also does a lot of sitting on the driveway during an average week as I can’t fit it on the Tube and there’s nowhere to park it even if I was prepared to undertake the ‘traffic jam to madness, suicide or murder’ every day, which I’m not. So maybe I should just exchange one seldom used crisis for another? Maybe I should have neither and get a new pushbike? Or just give up and buy a wheelchair in readiness for ‘the day’. That’s depressing.

Another ‘star’ found guilty (by public opinion, if no-one else, yet) of tax avoidance. Chris Boardman, old Olympic cyclist, joins the named and shamed who put money into strange and complex vehicles (like the Harley really) of a twisted and purely conceptual nature, for the purposes of sheltering money from the tax man. The other day they actually listed lots of rich stars who would never cheat on tax. They pay loads, give lots to charity and are fine, upstanding, holier-than-thous, if e’er there was, and I wanted to punch each and every one of them. Because for JK Rowling, she can afford to do lots of ‘giving back to society’ with half a billion in the bank and a big ‘KER-CHING!’ every time Harry Potter is on tv or some new kid is introduced to the joys of wizardry.

Everyone I know ‘pays enough tax’. We all do. We pay fucking shit-loads. And more. And when our mates, or accountants, or the papers, say: take out an ISA; that’s fine and cool and shelters (a little bit) of money from tax. And when its pointed out that certain payments made are tax deductible, we bloody deduct. And yet when people with loads of money are advised to do things that are NOT ILLEGAL but which shelter some of their money, they are lambasted by all and sundry. No-one makes anyone take out an ISA. If we’re so fucking righteous, we should all decline such things and insist on paying the government as much as we possibly can. But we don’t. We pay too much already. So we look for ways out, for small savings. Really we shouldn’t be so quick to ‘j’accuse!!’ those who try to save a bit more. They are heroes. Though indeed fun to ridicule and pillary as immoral bottom-feeders.

If we pay more tax we can have more public inquiries. And you can never have too many of them.

Happy Thursday,

Born to be Wild.

A xxxx