Astronomical figures

[cosmolinguist]

For someone like me to process news like Ken Livingstone avoiding £50,000 in tax takes leaps of imagination like those required to understand the scale on which the universe is built (you know: where you go from an atom to a sugar cube to a star to a galaxy or whatever).

First, £50,000. A number like that is already probably about as much as I've made in my (admittedly not as many as it should be) years of working life.

Then, £50,000 in tax. Having so much more money than this that one is expected to part with that much.

Then, of course, how much you have all together now that you've kept the £50,000 that you were meant to pay in tax.

This is where my thinking makes me queasy, like looking down at an Earth the size of a sugar cube, and I have to stop.

Of course that's where I see Ken quoted as saying "These rich bastards just don’t get it. No one should be allowed to vote in a British election, let alone sit in Parliament, unless they pay their full share of tax." Apparently the standards for being mayor of London aren't even as high as those for sitting in Parliament then? And have you seen some of the bastards in Parliament?!

Ah, now I'm right back to Earth, business as usual.

Comments

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

Ken Livingstone is an odious shitweasel. This is why he is happy to come and speak to Stonewall, and equally happy to play to the ethnic religious right when making asinine comments about the tory party 'crawling' with poofs; happy to declare himself a feminist but equally haoy to endorse and welcome those who issue a fatwa against Ayan Hirsi Ali.

[gominokouhai]

No argument with any of that, but isn't he still the lesser of two evils? A "least shitweasel" if you will.

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

Nah, just a differently shitweasel.

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

Blimey. I hadn't seen that story. Blimey.

-x-

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I still haven't seen that story until it appears somewhere other than the Torygraph (https://news.google.com/news/story?gl=uk&pz=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=ken+livingstone&ncl=d-G6-XY5XRg-OaMi5Oi4uhgFX_UbM)

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

It's been in the Sun, London Evening Standard and Daily Mail. None of those really *add* to the credibility of a story, of course, they're all about as reliable as the Guardian - being best read following the principle of "read final paragraph first, ignore the headline".

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

It could happen to a nicer man.

[canifftadu.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMzgVshG6CI