I registered my monthly tax payment to the Inland Revenue a day late last month and got a patronising letter yesterday for my trouble. As Diane Porter, Brian Keane and Karen Langer will recall (or perhaps not) we got stupidly pissed on Diane’s birthday on Wednesday 18th of April and when I tried to do the monthly calculation the next day, such was the extent of my hangover, I came up with a different figure every time my shaking hands touched the calculator, so I left it until the following day. Any small business people reading this blog will be well aware that the due date for tax and NI is before or on the 21st of the month, but as this was a Saturday, my money did not arrive to the revenue until Monday the 23rd of April. Oops!

I was a little irked by this letter to start with, but the fact is, it wasn’t the tax man who got me pissed on the 18th of April (he was probably getting pissed with the bosses of Vodafone) so I had no one to blame for this sarcastic letter apart from myself. Like most of the people in my varying peer groups I pay tax, it is the accepted thing to do as common sense tells you that there needs to be a distribution of money back to the revenue to pay for schools, hospitals, universities, transport networks, defence and the wonderful Jubilee celebrations so desperately required to lift my spirits. So then, why the Hell are idotic middle and low income earners like me the only ones who actually pay what is due?

For those of you who are like me and only possess a basic grasp of the world of finance, here are some simple bullet points.

• Unpaid tax by corporate giants is 12 times the £1.5m lost in benefit fraud
• All but two of  the FTSE 100 companies invest in overseas tax havens
• The four big high street banks have 1,649 subsidiaries in low-tax based havens
• The multinationals listed on the FTSE 100 have a total of 32,216 subsidiary companies

Nice if you can get away with it I guess. What really gets me is that we have somehow got ourselves in to such a state as a nation where it is almost a hobby to pour vitriol all over benefit claimants, but at the same time we do little and say little about the corporate giants who are fleecing the country of billions and billions of revenue each and every year!?!?

Why is that?

It is the press of course and in the last thirty odd years the dominant force that was the Murdoch media empire (and the Mail Group to be fair on Rupert). How many times have you seen something in the tabloids that says “MEET THE McSPANGLES, THEY HAVE NINE CHILDREN & SIX DOGS…THEY CLAIM £900.00 A WEEK IN BENEFITS!!!!.” These headlines have everyone fuming with anger at the audacity of these chavs who are ripping off the state.These type of headlines become all the talk from the self righteous on building sites, in factories and offices or down the local pub. It is classic easy rant material to go along with immigration and why Harry Redknapp didn’t get the England job.

Meanwhile, as the rant rabidly continues, Vodafone get a £640 million pound tax bill written off and McSpangle trousers five grand cash in the hand off some shabby hack from The Sun or The Mail for saying obligatory incendiary strap lines such as “I aint never gonna work” or “It’s not enough money and we need a bigger house.” It is entirely understandable that people fizz with anger when they read that sort of stuff, but the fact is, it is just a cover for the robbery that is going on in the financial industry. Making people angry is the classic way to deflect from the real crimes taking place by people in Armani suits and braces in the City. That is why the links between the Old Etonian front bench, the Murdoch’s and the financial industry is so strong…….they all in it together. We are not.

What has happened in “Great” Britain is the exact opposite to the legend of of Robin Hood, the rich are now robbing the poor to feed the rich, it is happening everywhere you look. I have been absolutely staggered by the amount of these pay day loan companies turning up and preying on the vulnerable with staggering interest rates that should come with a DIY guide to simplistic suicide. Who is allowing these utter bastards to exist? I can’t remember the APR rates, but one I saw was something like 1750%. No wonder the strap line is “It’s so fast and simple.” There was one I saw called something like slit-throat.com where a lady/poor actress, claims to have started off a hairdressing salon with a year long loan at about a gazillion per cent. If she is making a profit, she must be one fucking good hairdresser, at a guess, charging roughly a grand a time for a short back and sides, I’m glad I am bald at that rate. Perhaps she does pay day loan haircuts? “EasyCut.com, It’ is  so fast and simple. Borrow a fifteen pound short back and sides on Wednesday and pay me forty pounds on Friday.”

Of course the biggest tragedy, dare I say irony of these quick loan adverts is that the actors in them are unwittingly in the process of battering the final nails in to the coffins of their faltering careers. It wont be long before they are desperately borrowing back money from the very people who paid them two hundred quid to say “Quickcash made my life so happy and simple.” When the work dries up and the agent can’t be contacted, I wonder how happy and simple quickcash will seem as they walk off with their flat screen TV or batter their kneecaps in to oblivion.

Soon there will be an advert on daytime television what says ” Have you Ever been in advert that wasn’t your fault?”