I’m a big fan of taxation. I love it. The more I pay the happier I feel. I’m contributing to the national pot. Helping the NHS to survive. Allowing the government to help those less well off or unemployed to thrive. Keeping all those Latvian child-molesters and Romanian pick-pockets flooding to our shores in search of benefits. Its a win-win. I work like a dog so they don’t have to bother. And that’s the way of the world. My world anyway. Or so it seems.

So every penny I earn is taxed. Fair enough. The country needs to be run. Albeit not very efficiently. Then every penny I spend is also taxed in vat. Then, with what little is left, I pay my council tax, which is local, so therefore ‘different’. They should spell it differently really: ‘council tacks’ so we know its a different thing altogether. And council tax is linked to the price of your home, so that’s fair. Ish. Should you sell your home, you pay up to 5% in stamp ‘duty’. Not tax, no, duty. Because it is your duty to pay it otherwise they lock you in jail.

But now Ed Balls, he of the flailing elbows, the shadow chancellor and very clumsy centre forward, informed the Labour Party conference yesterday that should Labour win the election they will implement a ‘mansion tax’. Or ‘theft’ as it is otherwise known. All homes valued over 2 million quid will pay 1% per year in mansion tax. That’s 20 grand. £20,000. Enough to pay Wayne Rooney’s wages for about 10 minutes (plus stoppage time).

And this is unfair. Ok, all taxation is a little unfair, which is why we call it ‘tax’ and not ‘sweets’ or ‘football’ or ‘hot sex’. But this is not a transactional tax. Nothing’s happened, no money changed hands, nothing bought, sold or transferred, no income, no outgoings. Just: you gotta nice big house, mate, ergo you’re a rich, probably London, bastard, so give us 25 grand or we’ll reposess your mother-in-law. (If only.)

Ironically, it doesn’t have to be a ‘mansion’. There are thousands of flats in London that regularly sell for over 2 million quid. But ‘flat tax’ lacks the accusatory tone, the divisive requirement that will have every slum dweller in the land smirking and grinning as they sup their flagons of mead in mud-floored taverns; ‘yeah, fookin’ rich shites’.

London already pays 93% of the country’s tax. I made that up, or maybe read it recently. Either way its not far from the truth. And so now they’re inventing a new tax that is almost exclusively for London. So we can pay more. We’re just not pulling our weight. So to fund the NHS, they want 1.2 billion quid a year and so some cash-poor widow who bought a sweet little house in 1973 for £1,472.86, is now sitting on 2 million pound pile in Chelsea, has fuck all in her bank and has to find 20 thousand a year.

Is it any wonder that people find exotic loopholes to avoid paying tax?

Ed Milliband is speaking today. I can hardly wait to see what that hapless fucker has in store.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx