The Prime Minister keeps on insisting there is no such thing as a money tree. While she’s got the tense right, she’s wrong about every other element in the story. The Slog listens in as Theresa Mayormaynot goes back to school.
There’s very little more amusing in contemporary politics than Theresa May in full on ‘Jack and Jill learn about money, tax and economics’ mode.
“Right children, settle down….now today, we’re going to learn all about the Money tree, and why there isn’t one, and then tomorrow we’ll talk about why 5 hrs job – 40hrs job = 40 hrs job. Right Delbert, you go first…..”
As an incompetent infant schoolma’am, she works the role of repetition learning extremely well: so by the end of any election, negotiation or campaign, we’ve got our times-tables off-by-heart – A strong economy = more jobs, me in No 10 = strong and stable, 3 soft Brexits tying us in knots = 1 fairly hard Brexit, 1 money-tree = Nothing…..and so forth.
Her lexicon is pure IABATO, but that last money tree assertion is historically inaccurate. The Prime Minister needs to go back to School herself….
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“Do settle down Theresa and stop fiddling with your pencil. Philip, no whispering the answers….and Boris, wake up. Take that silly smirk of your face Jeremy or I’ll give you extra NHS budget homework…..all of you, pay attention.
“These initials on the blackboard – HMRC – stand for How Much Rent Collected – or sometimes, Hammond’s Money Racket Cops. Stop sniggering, Philip. You see, your electorate has no rights, and they’re not citizens – merely serfs: they pay rent to us for the privilege of living here in Britain, protected by us from all the terrible threats out there.
“To make the whole thing fair, those who earn more get to pay more rent….and that pertains until it comes to us, the teachers. Banks, global business concerns, senior Civil Servants and politicians are all teachers in their own way: how to empty the Treasury, how to live almost rent-free, how to blag unfunded pensions, and of course, how to promise one thing and do another. We’re Us, and they’re Them.
“You can see the evidence for this here:
“Even you can follow this one Boris, and WILL YOU PLEASE LEAVE AMBER ALONE? As you can see, all the very big companies and banks have seen their rents slashed by nearly 35% over the last decade. Or put another way, there are over a third less leaves on the money tree than there were.
“Unfortunately, while small business rents have risen steadily, their income from working hard to compete with globalist teaching academies has shrunk….
…by nearly 50% this century, and 40% in the same decade alone. People earning less pay lower rents, and so that’s more notes disappearing from the money tree. But then, although small businesses are the bedrock drivers of our economy, they’re really just serfs trying to climb out of the ditch, and we can’t have that….we didn’t stop all the poor people going to University just so they could climb the North Face of social demography using lots of ghastly new money.
“Keeping the serfs down is a policy that means we have to take very tough decisions, but as you can see from the opinion polls, we are not trying to win a popularity contest. That’s why, the minute we bought the school off our sleeping partner Nick Clegg in 2015, we doubled the rent-free allowance and abolished the rent paid on the first £5,000 of savings….having first of all ensured that no baby-boomer women or blue collar workers had anything like £500,000 to invest, because not many people can make £5,000 with Zirp interest rates introduced to save the banks:
“Unfortunately, although such people all vote for us, the lazy good-for-nothings breezing through life in the black economy now work even fewer hours for less per hour, or need more welfare to help them buy past-sell-by-date white bread. So because we believe in a fair society, they pay a lot less rent. And more leaves vanish from the money tree.
“In fact, when you look at the retail inflation rate over the last decade, the spending power of the idle renters has dropped by 22%:
“That jolly-well serves them right, but yet more leaves fall of the money tree. You see, this is how feckless lower-class laziness will soon kill the money tree if they don’t watch out.
“It’s not as if we haven’t been generous about rents while in power. See here how, when in power, we have steadily reduced both the top and bottom rates of tax – a trend that continued down to 19% after 2015:
“But would you believe it, despite that generosity, over the last decade the cost of their labour has gone up and up and up and up….meaning our exports cost more, our trade deficit rises, and thus new leaves do not replace the old ones vapourised on the money tree:
“Please Miss”
“Yes Vincent, what is it?”
“Well Miss, when you look at the inflation rate you showed us, their real spending power has dropped by 19%….”
“Ah, now look here young Livewire Cable, we don’t want to be getting ahead of ourselves, there’s a lot more to this than….”
“…..and my Dad sez that crafty weazel Osborne changed the RPI basket and really the loss of spending power is nearer 30%…”
“Yes, well thank you for that Vincent, but as you know Osborne was expelled last term for misbehaviour, so I think we should stick to the facts, don’t you? Now….who knows what defoliation means…?…..yes Jeremy Hunt…”
“Destroying the NHS bit by bit, Miss?”
“No Jeremy, that’s not the right answer….who else wants a go….yes Diane….”
“I’m sure it means the racist destruction of the immigrant community’s right to reproduce by the forced use of fgm, and if it doesn’t then when I come to power it will.”
“That’s a good try Diane, but…”
“Izzit ‘cos I is like black?”
“No darling, it’s because you are wrong. Now come on, who else….yes Boris?”
“It comes from the Latin folium Miss, folium leaf, de to remove but if I know those bloody eyeties they pinched it from the Greeks I see they’re at it again voting for bloody silly Parties that sound like petrol or something, and it means all the leaves falling off the money tree thanks to those grabbing vultures in Brussels and their kraut mates in Berlin and the sooner we tell Johnny Foreigner to naff off the better, including the Jocks, let them float off to Belgium, see if I care, we can focus more on putting all these murderous camel jockeys back in their cage and….”
“A little off message there Boris, but sort of on the right track….what about you, Theresa? You’ve been very quiet.”
“Er…well, as I said at Conference to the Police and the Waspis and the Nurses and the young doctors, there’s no such thing as a money tree, Miss.”
“Precisely dear…there used to be a very good one. But now it’s been defoliated by our understandable devotion to Profession Friedman. Yes Theresa?”
“Please Miss, um, what am I going to do?”
“Very good question. I suppose you could phone a friend”.
“I haven’t got any friends, Miss”.
“Oh dear. What does anyone else think..?..yes Philip….”
“She could always change her name to Patsy, Miss”.
(Much sniggering at the back)
“Philip we’re all sick and tired of your silly jokes. Right, that’s enough for today….next week, was the loaves and fishes story a myth? I’d like you to start us off on that discussion, Jeremy….what do you say, young Corbyn?”
The moral of the story: crony tax policies kill trees
john
…any body out there: Have thoughts, as to why they have moved on from ‘love potion No 9 ‘ ?
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Lupulco makes an excellent point:
”At present any cut in benefits and social care is classed as an attack on the minority third wold groups by the establishment. Which if one is to believe the government are all working hard to sustain the UK?”
This is indeed exactly how it is framed and they have powerful institutional heft to do it: https://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/chancellor-must-ensure-his-budgets-dont-discriminate
The Runnymede Trust has huge financial backing and an office in Whitehall. I believe it is a front for globalists.
As I have said elsewhere, the claim that ‘minorities’ suffer disproportionately from benefit cuts is a slight of hand:
1, Some minorities (Chinese, Jews, non-Muslim Indians) do better on average than whites and indeed are absolute pillars of the community (see their brilliant educational performances AND incredibly low prison rates).
2, Other minorities actually BENEFIT DISPROPORTIONATELY from the UK social security system. This is because when Labour opened the border to Africa and South Asia, they allowed the newcomers to have immediate access to the benefits system. As such, around 2 million mainly African and Muslim migrants have made huge claims on the State without ever paying into it.
And the costs of this have been astronomical:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11209234/Immigration-from-outside-Europe-cost-120-billion.html
Just imagine how many elderly Britons wouldn’t have froze to death if that money had been spent on insulating their houses.
Now, I understand the need to not be divided and ruled here: the 3% take vastly more. But this is about decency, fairness and TRUTH. There really is a project to encourage resentment among non-white minorities in the UK and you can see it in Saddiq Khan’s ‘ethnic pay gap’ campaign.
The reality is newcomers to Britain should be glad they are there and our older citizens should not be paying for their own replacement:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migration.htm
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Great idea to call tax ‘rent’. Really illustrates the gross unfairness of it all.
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Interest rate decision from the ECB tomorrow.
Any guesses as to will be announced?
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There’s a Magic Money Tree for some it would seem…
Nurse starting salary 2010: £21,176
Nurse starting salary 2018: £21,909
Increase: 3.46%
MP basic salary 2010: £65,738
MP basic salary 2018: £77,379
Increase: 17.7%
ALL IN IT TOGETHER?
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Hi JW an informative and useful blog.
Looking forward to the loaves and fishes. but that may be covered in the new [proposed] basic tax rate of 10% on all income above £5k for the over 40’s. which will allow the older and more affluent generation to help pay for the cultural enrichment by all the third worlders who are mainly unemployed, in receipt of benefits and are contributing to the rise in the population and the demand for housing of the UK
But how they are going to explain that these third worlders were as a block would be supporting the pensioners [who are a drain on the UK] by their contributions to the UK? Remains to be seen.
At present any cut in benefits and social care is classed as an attack on the minority third wold groups by the establishment. Which if one is to believe the government are all working hard to sustain the UK?
Me-thinks when all the baby boomers start to leave this mortal coil and their is no more bank of Mum and Dad, not too mention the MFI [sorry IMF] The UK is told all external credit as dried up. Not only that but we must;
a] reduce the UK governments expenditure.
b] increase the UK government payments to the IMF, thus reducing the UK debt
c] increase the tax burden to do this.
The UK will really become a third world country, so I suppose all the third worlders will really feel at home.
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There IS indeed a magic money tree. Modern Monetary Theory explains why (and “theory” is used here in the same sense as it is in The Theory of Evolution, i.e. read “fact”). Of all people, John Redwood has admitted as much this week. The Bank of England also acknowledges it.
The main risk of creating vast amounts of new money is inflation, but this is a laughably remote risk at present. Recent UK “inflation” was a temporary adjustment due to Sterling devaluation and had nothing to do with the money supply. Redwood himself now acknowledges that the £700bn of money created by Gordon Brown and Gid… sorry, George Osborne since 2008 had “no adverse consequences on shop price inflation”.
Moral of the story: The UK Government can pay for virtually any public service it chooses to. That people are freezing to death on the streets, feeding their families only with the help of foodbanks, being left to rot in their own faeces, and/or dying if they can’t afford to pay for healthcare is a deliberate choice of this Government. It prefers instead to wage a war against the public sector with the aim of further enriching those who can already afford tax accountants.
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Starting life with a useless degree and 35K debt is how NOT to be successful.
Is it less about politicians, and more about the parents and the so called ‘teachers’ ?
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Dear John
Whilst your style of writing may be deemed humorous, I find that it detracts from your message, that’s assuming that your slog contains a message.
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