Mark Thomas Presents the People's Manifesto - Mark Thomas [17]
The global market for currency transactions is worth about $3.2 billion a day.31 That’s right, a day. It is untaxed and all we seek to do is set a tax rate of 0.005 per cent.32 That is all. A global tax even of this size would raise between $30 and $50 billion a year.
Britain could introduce a Tobin tax on sterling without waiting for the rest of the world. Wherever sterling is sold we would simply apply this small tax via a global banking computer system that already exists. As the tax is applied only to wholesale currency markets (the inter-bank market) it does not affect the retails market, so there is no extra charge for converting currencies for sending money abroad or holiday cash. So your holiday pounds will still be worth as little tomorrow as they are today. A British Tobin tax would raise approximately $5 billion a year, money we could use to improve health and education. And the following year, when everyone is better and can read, get really pissed.
The Tobin tax is supported by Lord Adair Turner of the Financial Services Authority, the billionaire George Soros and French president Nicolas Sarkozy – but don’t let that put you off.
31
ALL MEMBERS OF
THE BNP SHOULD BE
FORCED TO TRACE
THEIR FAMILY
ANCESTRY AND
MAKE IT PUBLIC
IF THERE IS one thing the BNP dislike more than foreigners it is finding out that they themselves are foreign. What is the point of being a racist if your fellow racists are from the wrong race? It makes a mockery of the whole thing.
Over the past 2,000 years Britain has become a delightfully mongrel nation comprising of a good mix of French, Italian, Danish, Irish, German, Jewish, Romany, Asian, West Indian … all sorts really. Over time and generations, things can get mixed up. This policy means the BNP will have to find out the exact racial make-up of those members from ‘indigenous British ethnic groups’. I am sure they would appreciate it too. Isn’t it important to know if a BNP member is stealing British jobs, taking British houses and shagging British women?
32
ALL MPS’ SECOND
HOMES ARE TO
BECOME STATE
PROPERTY AT THE END
OF THEIR ‘CAREER’
(SECOND HOME = THE
ONE CLOSEST TO
WESTMINSTER)
THE AUTHORITIES CAN take the proceeds of crime from a criminal, so we have an established principle to retrieve the ill-gotten gains from MPs. Expenses are the reimbursement of legitimate costs, not perks, and no MP should personally profit from them. Westminster is set to phase out the payments for MPs’ second homes, but it leaves two questions remaining.
Firstly, where should they reside when in London? One popular solution, which was voted into the Manifesto in Norwich, was to put MPs in a ‘halls of residence’-type building when Parliament is sitting. As a solution it might seem tempting: relatively cheap, utilitarian and has a dash of rubbing the buggers’ noses in it. Then you realise that if you shove 650-odd MPs in a dormitory together they will breed. This is a horrible thought, though the objection is not moral, it is purely a matter of taste. If you want your imagination hijacked with images of two old Labour backbenchers lustfully thundering to climax in their vest and socks, or want to visualise Tories dressed in Bullingdon club attire smeared in lard and amyl nitrate.
Another suggestion is that MPs should live in council houses, but there is such an enormous shortage of council housing that it would be unfair to take so many flats out of circulation. If an estate for MPs was created you just know it would be a beautifully kept gated community with a high security presence and the only graffiti would be a commissioned Banksy. Essentially it would be a state-funded luxury health spa with a Vauxhall Vectra on bricks in the forecourt for appearances’ sake.
That leaves only one option left for the MPs: the