Charles Butler @BrickieChaz - Twitter Profile

This is a masterclass in sounding righteous while saying nothing that survives contact with arithmetic. Let’s start with the £4 billion figure you’re throwing around. That’s not an annual tax bill Ratcliffe dodged. It’s a one-off estimated saving on a capital restructuring — the potential capital gains and income tax on extracting his equity from INEOS. You’re presenting it as though HMRC is missing £4 billion a year from its budget because Ratcliffe moved to Monaco. It isn’t. When Ratcliffe was UK tax resident in 2019, he paid £110 million in income tax in a single year. How much income tax did you pay that year, Zara? Now let’s test your central thesis: that if “parasitic billionaires paid what they owe,” our public services would be fine. The entire UK billionaire class — every single one of them — holds combined wealth estimated at around £650 billion. If you confiscated every penny — not taxed, confiscated — it would fund the NHS for approximately three years. Then it’s gone. No more billionaires. No more money. And of course you’d also have destroyed the companies they own, the hundreds of thousands of jobs those companies support, and the tax revenue those employees generate. INEOS alone employs 26,000 people globally and turns over £45 billion annually, generating enormous tax receipts through corporation tax, employer NICs, and income tax from its workforce. The NHS costs approximately £190 billion a year. Schools another £115 billion. The welfare bill runs to over £300 billion. Total government spending exceeds £1.2 trillion annually. You cannot fund this by squeezing billionaires, because there simply aren’t enough of them and they don’t have enough money — even collectively — to cover more than a rounding error on the annual budget. This is not an opinion. It is mathematics. The bulk of UK tax revenue comes from ordinary working people through income tax, NICs, VAT, and council tax, and it always The working class are perfectly capable of holding more than one thought simultaneously. They can recognise that tax avoidance by the wealthy is a problem and that unprecedented levels of net migration — 900,000 in a single year under this government’s watch — place genuine pressure on housing, GP appointments, school places, and wages at the lower end of the labour market. These are not “far-right talking points.” These are the lived daily experiences of the people you claim to represent. You know who doesn’t struggle to get a GP appointment? You, Zara. You know who isn’t competing for social housing? You. You know whose children aren’t in a classroom with 35 kids and a supply teacher? Yours aren’t. The people on the housing waiting list in Coventry — my neighbours — aren’t angry because Jim Ratcliffe lives in Monaco. They’re angry because they’ve been waiting four years for a two-bedroom flat while the population has grown by three million in half a decade and nobody built the infrastructure to absorb it. And speaking of parasites — your word, not mine — you’ve been a member of the party that has been in government since July 2024. Labour has had every lever of power available to it. What has your government done about billionaire tax avoidance? Nothing. What has it done about non-dom status? Watered down its own proposals. What has it done about net migration? Presided over the highest figures in British history. You don’t get to tweet like you’re in opposition when you are the government. You’re not “speaking truth to power.” You are power. And you’re failing. Ratcliffe’s language was clumsy and his population figures were wrong. But your response isn’t an argument — it’s a slogan dressed up as analysis, designed to harvest likes from people who mistake moral indignation for economic literacy. The working class don’t need you to identify their enemies for them. They need houses, functioning public services, and an honest conversation about trade-offs. You’re offering none of these.

221

4K

720

507

162K

Charles Butler @BrickieChaz

7 months ago

@andygoldstein05

adam.

@utdAdams

7 months ago

More Ballon d'Or winners have played for Charlton Athletic than Arsenal; and Manchester United lost less games in their treble season (4) than Arsenal did in their Invincible season (6).

54

11K

1K

795

694K

0

48