DEFICIT REDUCTION WAS BASED ON SALES OF 'BETWEEN THE WARS', ADMITS DARLING
19-01-10 CHANCELLOR Alistair Darling has been forced to scrap his deficit reduction plan, admitting it was based entirely on sales of Billy Bragg's Between the Wars EP.
Britain's 14th biggest pop-folk shouter is withholding his income tax in protest at Royal Bank of Scotland's continued insistence on being a bank.Bragg says some RBS executives can now afford to buy a house as big as his
Bragg said: "The RBS bonuses echo the kind of backstage rider demands I never get to make at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. I just hope I can make a difference before the Murdoch press hires someone to assassinate me."
But the Treasury warned it will be forced to make even deeper cuts in public services, including those council-sponsored equality and diversity festivals where Bragg turns up and makes BMW-owning management consultants feel like students again for 20 minutes.
Tom Logan, chief economist at Madeley-Finnegan, said: "This is potentially very serious. Five year gilts are currently being sold on the basis of guaranteed revenue streams from William Bloke and the ones he did with Wilco.
"We don't want to have to use up the tax revenues from the Kirsty MacColl version of New England. We need that in case we go to war with China."
Other left-wing musicians have supported Bragg's stance, with Paul Weller only declaring income from his last three solo albums and all that Style Council rubbish.
Weller added: "But not Stanley Road or All Mod Cons. I'm not some fucking mug."
A spokesman for the Inland Revenue said: "I've actually got a copy ofTalking With the Taxman About Poetry. Maybe he should do a new album called Talking With the Taxman About Spending 18 Months in Jail for Being a Marxist Twat."
Meanwhile Bragg demanded that all banks should be run like the Co-operative with its green investment policy, fair trade mortgage refusals and the ethical way it charges you thirty quid whenever you go 1p over your limit.
You can read Billy Bragg's pile of disingenuous horse manure here, if you really want to. Some of the comments underneath it might make it worthwhile, I suppose. Like this one from 'unionjackjackson':
Or this excellent one from the multi-posting Lefty-basher 'stevehill':I similarly am withholding my tax from HRMC until we have a tory government and my money will be spent wisely.unlike these labour tossers pissing it away.
I'll visit you in prison Billy. Maybe.Perhaps there is hope for Britain after all - so long as we all club together now to ensure that Bragg and his ilk never have any influence on the running and the future of our country again!
Starving schools, hospitals, pensioners, benefit claimants etc of funds to make a protest is a particularly infantile form of toy throwing.Most bank staff are on or below the national average wage, their bonuses will be in the order of £1,000 or so, and they depend on this to pay their bills. The bank's assets - which you and I own - are essentially its people. They walk out of the door every night. You seem to accept that you can't veto HSBC or Barclays or Goldman Sachs bonuses. So how do you plan to stop the best people at RBS joining their rivals, causing the bankruptcy of RBS, the loss of 141,000 jobs, and a total write-off of the taxpayers' investment?
No, you're not an anarchist. But you're not being very smart.
Then we can deal with the bankers properly. They'll keep.
And his music is crap too.
ReplyDeleteThat is a given.
ReplyDeleteBragg. Such a perfect name for him.
ReplyDelete