green

the soundtrack to the coalition government is one sea shanties and marching songs reminding us that in the new politics we are in it together.
david cameron’s big idea is of ‘the big society’. simply put the ‘big society’ is volunteering writ large. so praise sir philip green for showing us how it is done. sir philip is an unpaid (though i suspect he gets expenses) financial trouble-shooter for the government. he is going to see where efficiencies can be made. sir philip green is going bring the expertise that made him a billionaire in the business world and use it to make government that much better. oh yes he will.
(oh do you remember the times when there were criticisms of labour for all the unelected experts that they were using to run the country? i guess when you are an unelected government it seems a little churlish to just pick on the one or two (or three or four) unelected experts you are using. besides we are all in it together so don’t get your panties in a tizzy big fella.)
sir philip has stepped up to the plate to show that even a billionaire can find time to do his bit for the country, and if he can do that in his busy schedule (which includes flying off in his private jet at the weekends to spend the weekend with his family who live in monaco) then matey you sure the hell can spend some time doing something in your local area, so stop being a fucking nay sayer. the big society is going to work.
if top shop’s boss can show himself to be a top bloke – then so can you.
so what if sir philip green has indulged in some tax avoidance, it is not like it is illegal or anything.
let’s be fair here – if you want the government to save money and be more efficient you really do want someone who knows all the angles and can get out of paying his share of taxes, if he can do that imagine how good he is going to be slashing and burning government budgets. so while he is paying as little as he can (and remember it is legal) he will be looking to make sure that some of the less well off in society are potentially less well off.
but remember we are all in it together, so we should forgive sir philip his indiscretion, after all we have forgiven the bankers and they are not giving up their time to help the government, not like sir philip. besides we know who are responsible for the mess we are in it isn’t anything to do with a global financial crisis caused by bizarre financial arrangements that made sense to three people, it is to do with civil servants/ public sector workers/ scroungers/ immigrants (delete where applicable). the rest of us? well we are in it together (though some of us, say for instance sir philip green, david cameron, george osborne (just to pick some names at random) are slightly better off than the rest of us).
i am sure when sir philip returns to his monaco home at the weekend he thinks about the potential damage he will cause to the lives of many in the country in the name of efficiencies safe in the certain knowledge that david cameron’s big society will step in to help those much less fortunate than he. sir philip may not pay his taxes like the rest of us, but he is giving his time.
just remember we are in this together and the rich feel our pain.

(oh and did you know that tax avoidance means losses to the exchequer of some £25bn a year, while benefit fraud and error costs the government some £5bn a year. guess which one is a target for the con/dems, guess which one of them is going to be used to allow credit rating agencies to look at the accounts of people?
shit you guessed.)