pumpkinstrokemarrow

This after a visit to an outfit calling itself the Chinese State Circus at Hook Road Arena, a name presumably judged to cash in on the reputation of the circuses which commy states run. Ironic that commy states are supposed to be good at circuses but to be bad at pretty much everything else. Anyway, this state circus turned out to be one of the branches of 'The Entertainment Corporation', headquartered at Malmesbury, the oldest borough in our green and pleasant land. Not to be confused with the place with a similar name in Australia. The corporation also operate a Russian flavoured circus and a German flavoured circus. Presumably no connection with the Chinese or any other state at all.

The ground crew appeared to come from Eastern Europe while the artists and artistes were indeed from China or somewhere nearby. Their accommodation looked to be fairly basic; none of the grand four caravans you used to get up on the downs on Derby Day before they were evicted to make way for the police enclosure. Dormitory vans rather than private suites. Accommodation notwithstanding, a fairly small number of them - maybe 30 - managed to put on a very varied and nicely paced performance. The six ladies, some not so young at all, were particularly versatile. Good clean fun - some of it requiring much strength in unusual places. FIL very pleased to be reminded of the visit he paid to the Beijing version.

My second error touches the difficult business of making cuts. I find that my standard pub line of 'if you want to get more revenue you have to get middle England to pay more income tax. They provide the government with most of their income and if the government wants more it is just going to have to hit them a bit harder. Whacking the rich might make you feel better but doesn't help much' is fairly wide of the mark. I shall have to get up a new one.

In the first place, about two minutes on the helpful budget site put up by the Treasury, tells me that income tax is just over just a quarter of total revenue and direct personal taxes taken all together are just over a half. So direct personal taxes might not be the whole answer.

In the second, some helpful tables from those helpful people at HMCR, tell me that both income and tax is a lot more skewed than I had realised. So the top half of the population pay nine tenths of the income tax and get three quarters of the income. The top twentieth pay half the tax and get a quarter of the income.

So the government is not whacking middle England, it is whacking the top half of England. And while tax is fairly regressive already, there might be room for whacking the top quarter even harder. A catch being that you might scare them away to Ireland, to the Cocoa Islands or into the welcoming arms of expensive tax lawyers.