Even if you have been living on Planet Zog for the last gazillion years you will still have heard that Sir Keir Starmer bought a field for his mum so she could see her rescue donkeys. His mum was chronically ill and loved donkeys. Ah, you might say, what a lovely story. But no, if you are the British media this is a huge scandal of gigantic proportions, akin to Bridget Phillipson’s mum buying her council house and Angel Raynor not paying the correct tax on her flat.
These horrendous ‘deceptions’ are clearly very serious and dwarf the small matter of Nigel Farage’s (sorry his girlfriends) Clacton house, bought for £300,000 and for which no tax was paid by Farage, Jeremy Hunt’s ‘sorry I forgot’ to declare seven luxury flat purchases, and oops, ‘I charged the tax payer for heating my stables’, Nadhim Zahawi. You may also not have heard that Nathan Gill, former leader of Reform in Wales is likely to be jailed for taking bribes from the Russians.
You may also be forgiven for not knowing that Boris Johnson (according to The Guardian) is using the contacts, made as PM and exploited while in office, and as an ex-PM, to sign lucrative business deals; too many to mention here, but of course funded by you, my dear reader. Of course, none of these are serious, according to our media, but that field is a catastrophe likely to bring down the entire British Establishment. How on earth will honest Robert Jenrick cope?
Greed
I’m not here to defend the Labour Party government, just to point out that the majority of the British media are so consumed by the desire to point out their faults, and I admit there are a few, that they are virtually ignoring the impending doom wrought on our nation (and the US) by an avalanche of greed that just continues to grow and is breathtaking in its selfishness and cruelty. The avalanche shows no signs of slowing as it consumes all in its path. Despite the current allegations against Johnson and those against the previous Tory government in the recent documentary, ‘The Covid Contracts, Follow the Money’, no one is in jail.
The case against Michelle Mone and husband Doug Barrowman and their company PPE Medpro, for repayment of £122+mn, has recently been found for the government. Medpro is required to repay the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Admittedly, some of their assets have been frozen by the court, but it is unlikely that the taxpayer losses will be recouped, since the day before the judgement, 30 September, Medpro went into administration with less than £1mn in assets. This is despite the fact that Barrowman made at least £65mn, gifting £29mn to Mone and her children. Mone and Barrowmen are now, of course, claiming the judgement is a ‘whitewash’ and they are being ‘scapegoated’ by the government. They may have a point about scapegoating. What about the £38mn paid to Dido Harding for a test and trace app that never worked, or the contracts given to Matt Hancock’s mate, pub landlord Alex Bourne? Tom Hayhoe, appointed as Covid Counter-Fraud Commissioner, is yet to report and considering his role is only part-time and is a 12-month fixed term, the likelihood of prosecutions remains slim. That is the result of a government driven by venality and greed and not principle and integrity.
Greed, and more greed
Meanwhile, as our bills continue to rise, and the cost of living makes life intolerable for many, the CEO of Barclays, earned £4.6mn in 2023, had an increase to £10.53mn in 2024. Yet despite this he has ‘urged’ the government to ‘limit public sector pay as a way to control inflation and ease pressures on public finances’. You really can’t make this stuff up. Has it ever occurred to him, if public good not corporate greed was the driving force behind the banks, society might benefit, or that outrageous CEO salaries might be fuelling inflation?
Back to greed and the level of wealth, that means some men, and despite Mone, it is usually men, who believe they are both a genius and invincible. Elon Musk, possibly the richest man on earth, has recently called for violent insurrection in the UK, “we either fight or die” he told a crowd drunk on anti-immigrant rhetoric from Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson and that man of the people Nigel Farage. This is Farage with his main home in Belgium, his Irish and German ex-wives and his French girlfriend, leading a party that is allegedly funded by overseas backers with links to tax havens. Meanwhile in 2022 Yaxley-Lennon admitted he’d spent £100,000 on gambling while receiving donations from supporters. He runs off to Spain when things get a little heated for him in the UK. Does that make him an immigrant?
Then to the Tech-Bro’s: apparently, they long for a world that is divided not on the lines of nation states but on the lines of feudalism or ‘techno feudalism’ according to Yanis Varoufakis economist, writer, and former Greek Finance Minister. Varoufakis suggests that the world is slipping into a system where tech-bros function like modern feudal overlords. He suggests this has been happening since the financial crisis of 2008. This new era, he claims, is ‘controlled by tech giants like Google [owned by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai], Amazon [Jeff Bezos], and Meta [Mark Zuckerberg]’. In this new world order, elites control the resources that everyone else depends on. Not everyone agrees with Varoufakis, but this is a persuasive argument as we see the tech-bros fund and enable Trump, allegedly support surveillance in China, and enable Netanyahu as he admits weaponising social media to influence opinion in favour of Israel.
In the UK, the government awarded Palantir, run by tech-bro Peter Thiel, a contract worth £480 to run a data platform, potentially giving a foreign company unprecedented access to sensitive patient data. Fujitsu, despite its publicly recognised failure with Horizon, gained a further £220mn UK government contract in 2025. Yet despite making profits that defy all logic, you might question why they pay little, or sometimes no tax. Amazon paid no corporation tax in 2022 despite making a £222mn profit and receiving £7.7mn in tax credits. Meanwhile others do not declare how much tax, if any, they pay in the UK.
Greed in utility companies
While banks and tech companies seem to dominate the profit race, let’s not forget the water and energy companies. Call me old fashioned but surely two industries, utilities, absolutely essential to life should not be driven by profit. Alas dear reader, wrong. Only profit and competition, we are told, will drive the prices down and push up quality and service. This has got to be the biggest con of the 20th and 21st Centuries (I’m prepared to be informed to the contrary on this). The UK pays the highest energy costs in Europe and our water industry, privately owned, often by foreign STATE governments, is expensive and incompetent. ‘No single stretch of river in England or Northern Ireland is in good overall health’ (The Rivers Trust). Yet despite this the industry is raising bills, failing to fix leaks or build reservoirs. At the same time, it continues to pay out enormous dividends and bonuses often attempting to hide the fact, the CEO of Thames Water Sir Adrian Montague, for example, even ‘mis-spoke’ to a parliamentary committee about payouts to the bosses. Debts in the water industry are spiralling out of control – the solution of the bosses is to pay themselves more. Meanwhile, the CEO of British Gas, who couldn’t justify his salary of £4m in 2022, was paid £8.2m in 2024. Make this make sense please! Yes, profits are up for British Gas, guess why? Our bills are higher. Why? Presumably to pay O’Shea. No, you cannot make this stuff up.
Let’s talk about taxes
According to ‘Equality Trust’ the poorest 10% of households paid 48% of their income in 2022/23; the richest 10% paid 39% of their income (on average). Council tax is a key reason for this with the poorest 10% paying 7% as opposed to the richest who pay just 1.2%. Added to this VAT hits the poorest 10% as opposed to the rich who pay just 3%. Meanwhile the super-rich are shifting more into wealth, where the taxation system is even more uneven. In 2022, Rishi Sunak paid only 22% on £2.2m, while in 2024 James Dyson paid even less at 0.68%. Basically, the super-rich are paying less in tax than their cleaners. Warren Buffet famously said this, and clearly it has not improved. With good tax lawyers, capable accountants, and a shedload of money the super-rich are laughing all the way to the bank, possibly one of the numerous ones off-shore.
There is a better way
However, all is not lost, there are still people out there fighting to improve things. Despite the rantings of the right-wing press, there has not been an exodus of millionaires, it currently stands at near 0%, according to the Tax Justice Network. ‘Patriotic Millionaires’ are calling on the government to tax them, companies like Richer Sounds, originally founded by Julian Richer is now an employee-controlled trust, committed to ethical principles and giving back to their communities. In 2019 Richer published ‘The Ethical Capitalist’ on ‘how to make business work better for society’. Perhaps a few more corporate CEOs should read it? Just a thought. There are, of course other companies whose focus is contributing to their communities, be they local, regional, national, or global. People and companies who are driven by principles, not simply profit.
Then of course across the country people from all walks of life are working tirelessly to support their families and their wider communities. People volunteer in foodbanks, hospitals, the Samaritans, cancer charities. They raise money and donate time. There is an army of unpaid carers who look after vulnerable family and friends. And the kindness of strangers remains one of the most important examples of a society that actually cares, not just for those closest to it but those who are strangers. People who opened their homes to Ukrainians, people who are bringing attention to the horrors of genocide, protesting, raising money, or even working in Gaza, or proclaiming that ‘Refugees are welcome here’ when faced with an angry mob. And the simple kindness of offering your seat to a stranger on a train or a bus, or buying a homeless person a cup of coffee, or the train guard who opened-up the disabled access without being asked as I approached on my sticks! Or the school kids who parted like the Red Sea when they saw me hobbling down the street. When you are awaiting knee surgery, or maybe lost and alone, such kindnesses are the things that can make you smile and remind you that there are still good people in the UK.
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