Well said that man
Kelvin MacKenzie: overtaxed South needs its own party - Telegraph
Sick and tired of subsidising folk from the rest of the country?
You belong to a select club – the club of the hard-working, clever and creative people living in London and the South East who single-handedly are giving the rest of the nation a standard of living they can’t, or won’t, create for themselves.
George Osborne, the allegedly Conservative Chancellor, truly loves you. He loves squeezing the life out of your wallet. He loves your pain.
And in his Autumn Statement on Wednesday he will be doing one more time what he does best – taxing the hell out of London and the South East.
There will be much talk of tax revenues being lower than expected, of government spending being higher and the gap having to be filled by those with the “broadest shoulders”.
Frankly I am sick of that phrase. I am not a member of the World Wrestling Federation. I have done my bit and I would like the people of Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and vast areas of the rest of England to do theirs.
Further, I would like somebody, anybody, to fight for me – the middle class of London and the South East. The wealth created through long hours – the area works at least 10 per cent longer than anywhere else in the UK – is truly Herculean.
As a standalone entity, the people of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and London are 18th in the global GDP league, just ahead of Indonesia and just behind Turkey.
If you took this region out of the UK economy, it would be called Ethiopia.
You wouldn’t have to be a genius to suspect the grasping Mr Osborne – the dimwit who increased benefits by 5.5 per cent a couple of years back and then discovered he would have to increase taxes to pay for the rise; d’oh! – will once more up stamp duty on houses.
This is a pernicious assault on London and the South East, since five London boroughs – Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth, Camden, and Hammersmith and Fulham – already raise as much as the rest of the nation put together.
You don’t have to live in Notting Hill to suffer the pain of stamp duty down South.
I looked on Rightmove and discovered that, in the OK London suburb of Wimbledon, I could pay a tad more than £1 million for a clapped-out, three-bed detached house that looked like Swampy had been the previous owner.
Why should I cough up an extra £50,000 so that politicians can spray their largesse in other parts of the country?
The subsidy from London and the South East to the rest of the country is truly astonishing. While the difference between what London spends and what it earns is 10 per cent on the plus side, you go to Wales and it’s 36 per cent on the minus side.
The North East is -32 per cent and even the relatively prosperous North West is -18.4 per cent. Why don’t they live within their means, or move down here and see what it’s like to be taxed until they weep? Frankly, we can no longer keep subsiding other people’s spending habits.
As Ukip has proved, when all major parties agree on a policy (that Europe is a good thing and that we need more of it) there is room for a party that doesn’t. That’s where London and the South East needs help.
This area needs its own party. It needs a leader who believes that the striving classes in the South are overtaxed and overburdened.
I want somebody to argue for me at the ballot box and not look on the ambitious and the wealth creators as another wallet to steal from.
It has become fashionable for all parts of the UK to seek home rule. I support Scotland’s desire to go it alone, not least because I would be delighted to get them off the payroll.
Why should the good people of Guildford have to fund the unhealthy habits of Glasgow? So the Southern Party might even include in its manifesto home rule for London and the South East.
And if you decide to bankrupt yourself to give your children a better education by going private, surely you should be entitled to a tax break because you are not using the union-dominated and useless state system.
Perhaps council tenants would lose their rent subsidies if they took Sky or Virgin, since, if they had any spare money, I would like them to pay the going rate for living in the South.
Not much to ask is it? These would be interesting rallying cries and, at the minimum, would lead Cameron, Clegg and Miliband to offer various blandishments to keep the disgruntled onside.
A natural leader of such a party would have been Boris Johnson, but he has his sights on somewhat larger fish.
If his power grab doesn’t work, he would be very welcome. So, I talk a good game but what have I done? Well, I have paid £9 for the domain name southernparty.co.uk. As Mao almost said: the longest journey starts with the shortest email. Let’s keep in touch.
I can take a compliment
the club of the hard-working, clever and creative people living in London and the South East
Kelvin MacKenzie: overtaxed South needs its own party - Telegraph
Sick and tired of subsidising folk from the rest of the country?
You belong to a select club – the club of the hard-working, clever and creative people living in London and the South East who single-handedly are giving the rest of the nation a standard of living they can’t, or won’t, create for themselves.
George Osborne, the allegedly Conservative Chancellor, truly loves you. He loves squeezing the life out of your wallet. He loves your pain.
And in his Autumn Statement on Wednesday he will be doing one more time what he does best – taxing the hell out of London and the South East.
There will be much talk of tax revenues being lower than expected, of government spending being higher and the gap having to be filled by those with the “broadest shoulders”.
Frankly I am sick of that phrase. I am not a member of the World Wrestling Federation. I have done my bit and I would like the people of Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and vast areas of the rest of England to do theirs.
Further, I would like somebody, anybody, to fight for me – the middle class of London and the South East. The wealth created through long hours – the area works at least 10 per cent longer than anywhere else in the UK – is truly Herculean.
As a standalone entity, the people of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and London are 18th in the global GDP league, just ahead of Indonesia and just behind Turkey.
If you took this region out of the UK economy, it would be called Ethiopia.
You wouldn’t have to be a genius to suspect the grasping Mr Osborne – the dimwit who increased benefits by 5.5 per cent a couple of years back and then discovered he would have to increase taxes to pay for the rise; d’oh! – will once more up stamp duty on houses.
This is a pernicious assault on London and the South East, since five London boroughs – Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth, Camden, and Hammersmith and Fulham – already raise as much as the rest of the nation put together.
You don’t have to live in Notting Hill to suffer the pain of stamp duty down South.
I looked on Rightmove and discovered that, in the OK London suburb of Wimbledon, I could pay a tad more than £1 million for a clapped-out, three-bed detached house that looked like Swampy had been the previous owner.
Why should I cough up an extra £50,000 so that politicians can spray their largesse in other parts of the country?
The subsidy from London and the South East to the rest of the country is truly astonishing. While the difference between what London spends and what it earns is 10 per cent on the plus side, you go to Wales and it’s 36 per cent on the minus side.
The North East is -32 per cent and even the relatively prosperous North West is -18.4 per cent. Why don’t they live within their means, or move down here and see what it’s like to be taxed until they weep? Frankly, we can no longer keep subsiding other people’s spending habits.
As Ukip has proved, when all major parties agree on a policy (that Europe is a good thing and that we need more of it) there is room for a party that doesn’t. That’s where London and the South East needs help.
This area needs its own party. It needs a leader who believes that the striving classes in the South are overtaxed and overburdened.
I want somebody to argue for me at the ballot box and not look on the ambitious and the wealth creators as another wallet to steal from.
It has become fashionable for all parts of the UK to seek home rule. I support Scotland’s desire to go it alone, not least because I would be delighted to get them off the payroll.
Why should the good people of Guildford have to fund the unhealthy habits of Glasgow? So the Southern Party might even include in its manifesto home rule for London and the South East.
And if you decide to bankrupt yourself to give your children a better education by going private, surely you should be entitled to a tax break because you are not using the union-dominated and useless state system.
Perhaps council tenants would lose their rent subsidies if they took Sky or Virgin, since, if they had any spare money, I would like them to pay the going rate for living in the South.
Not much to ask is it? These would be interesting rallying cries and, at the minimum, would lead Cameron, Clegg and Miliband to offer various blandishments to keep the disgruntled onside.
A natural leader of such a party would have been Boris Johnson, but he has his sights on somewhat larger fish.
If his power grab doesn’t work, he would be very welcome. So, I talk a good game but what have I done? Well, I have paid £9 for the domain name southernparty.co.uk. As Mao almost said: the longest journey starts with the shortest email. Let’s keep in touch.
I can take a compliment
the club of the hard-working, clever and creative people living in London and the South East
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