Jimmy Carr's Post-Ironic Humour Masterclass

That Philanthropists’ Begging Letter To The Nev Filter In Full

Nev, sir – It may come as a surprise to your readers – and indeed the government - to learn that the government was, in ways which it is regrettably beyond the scope of this letter to describe, making progress in encouraging us to pass more of our loot through a charity. The insane proposal in the Budget to cap tax avoidance is nothing less than a full-scale war of extermination on philanthropy that would deter Our Good Lord Himself, if He hadn’t been such a raggedy-arsed pauper. It is confusing and dispiriting, and we all feel really depressed. We urge the Prime Minister and the twerp next door to back off pronto, or we’ll switch our main domiciles to Monaco and then they’ll be sorry.

We choose to invest in charities for a variety of reasons: we may have been touched by an issue which reminds us that, tragically, we are as mortal as the unwashed herd; we may be amused to support the development, access to and pickling of Tracey Emin; or we may just wish to give something back to our own little community.

None of us view tax relief as a primary motive, cross our hearts and hope to die (although it may substantially increase our donations until the rebate matches the unspeakably communist 50% rate of income tax). But it is an important signal that the decision to use wealth to help ourselves is recognised, encouraged and supported by society. You see, we only do it to make people love us. Seems they don’t. Fuck ‘em.

All tax reliefs are granted on the basis that the money is spent on charitable purposes and, fortuitously, this happens to be rather liberally interpreted by the Charity Commission. And there are certainly some jolly deserving charities out there which receive precious little consideration from an ignorant and jealous Johnny Public, such as the old alma mater and our family trust funds.

The current proposal will undermine the motivation to give generously in order to receive generously, and we will deprive charities of much-needed funds if comrade Osborne doesn’t resign immediately. Bloody cheek.

Mr Thomas Huge-Rebates 

The Mrs Thomas Huge-Rebates Foundation

The Hon Agatha, Lady Tabitha and The Hon Bagatha Sainsbury

The 3-for-2 Guineas Trust

Mr Grant Relief

The High Society Donor-Charity-HMRC-Donor Circle

Sir David Schoolfees 

The Schoolfees Fund

Mr Miklos Ferens 

The Miklos Ferens (Eastern Europe) Laundry Network

Loss Of Tax-Deductible Donations Could Force Us To Use More Chuggers, Plead Big Charities

If chancellor George Osborne presses ahead with his plans to limit millionaires’ cosy little tax rebates on charitable giving, warned Britain’s best-known charities today, don’t be surprised to find a detachment of pushy students camped out on your doorstep every morning, eager to harangue you into signing your family’s entire income away before you can climb into your car and drive to work.

“Our members are faced with the ever-spiralling cost of supporting a growing army of marketing agencies,” pointed out Sir Steven Blubb, head of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. “Without our help, millions of impoverished students in Britain would starve.”

If you think this has no place in your driveway, call 0207 270 4558

“Please, look into Emily’s haunted eyes,” he implored, holding up a heart-rending picture of a photogenic young student, “Her young life has been blighted by not being able to afford basic necessities which you and I take for granted, like a pair of Ugg boots. The agency we work with locally set her up with a commission-based job to help make her fashionable again and rebuild her shattered self-esteem - but her cruel government says it’s wrong for wealthy philanthropists to claim a nice wad of tax back, threatening to send her back to a pitiful life of scavenging in our shop for uncool rags. Can you help?”

“And spare a thought for poor James, a penniless PhD intern slaving away at our London headquarters,” he cajoled seductively. “For months he’s been sweating on a spreadsheet for up to 14 hours a day, just so his uncaring bosses can put out a big press release every year saying how lovely they are. Without large donations from kind-hearted tax avoiders, his computer could be taken away from him and he’d be forced out on the streets to buttonhole you with a disturbing sob story about having to do long division with his bare hands. Please, won’t you help us to prevent this tragedy?”

Finally, Sir Steven urged the generous British public to call Mr Osborne immediately and pledge to vote regularly against the Conservatives - even if it’s just a small amount at a local level.

Movie Review: The Osborne Show

In an world addicted to contrived voyeuristic TV, ratings are dominated by the ultimate reality series – in which an innocent child unwittingly grows up surrounded by hidden cameras and millionaire actors who are only pretending to pay their taxes. Welcome, viewers, to The Osborne Show.

Lovable everyman George Osborne (played by rubber-faced goofball Jim Carrey) enjoys his job and likes everybody inside his artificial bubble until, on day 10919, a strange bundle of used tenners suddenly drops from the sky in front of him in an airmail package addressed to ‘The Cayman Islands’. Later, at his desk in the Treasury, an intrigued Osborne delves into the files – only to find that no such place appears to exist. However, when he checks the tax records, he is shocked to learn that neither he, his friends and family nor anyone else in his entire world has ever contributed a single penny to the economy.

His whole life has been a carefully-constructed illusion

Although the cynical executives who really run the show are initially alarmed, they quickly realise that the fickle viewing public will be easily distracted by Osborne’s emotional turmoil as he descends into fear and paranoia, driven to rebel against everything he has ever known and tormented by the gnawing suspicion that he may be the lifelong victim of a cruel deception.

The film succeeds because, from the very start, the audience knows what Osborne does not, seeing the scheming executives controlling everything for their own purposes, and longs for him to escape his comfortable bubble and break out into the real world.

Ironically, of course, it is only a fantasy. The Osborne Show ultimately fails to drive home the important issues it raises about wealth, the media and the rich men who control our lives, because the audience is too busy laughing to take it seriously.

Democracy Threatens British Way Of Life, Warn Rich People

Listening to the people is the greatest threat the country has faced since Hitler, according to 537 worried captains of British industry who would be losing vast sums to the 50p rate of income tax if they hadn’t got such clever accountants.

Make the bad thing go away

“Penalising high earners through an unfair, politically-motivated tax puts populist politics before sound economics,” cautioned Robert Rawlplug OBE, founder of Bedford’s world-beating Bob’s Discount Rawlplug Emporium. “That grinning little creep Osborne is a card-carrying member of the Socialist Workers, you know. It’s just not British to put the wishes of the many before the need for an extension to my wine cellar.”

“This Bolshevik tax, which is in effect an eye-watering 58p tax after the government’s iniquitous national insurance scam is taken into account, puts wealth creators like us in a very awkward position,” agreed Sir James Yarn, CEO of The Swindon Yarn Centre. “If the budget doesn’t lower it to a more realistic figure – 0p in the pound springs to mind – I may well be left with no alternative but to relocate my entire yarn factory to Eastern Europe, at the cost of up to 5 little people’s jobs. And what comrade Osborne needs to bear in mind is that they actually pay income tax.”

Meanwhile Sir Charles Garden-Ornament, chairman of Gnomes of Bodmin plc, summed up the pain of Britain’s vital entrepreneurs by screaming and screaming and screaming until he was sick.

Barclays Demand Taxpayer Bailout For £500m Tax Bill

An aggrieved board of directors at Barclays is hastily putting together a case for a last-minute taxpayer bailout of the bank to cover its dodged £500m tax bill, after Treasury officials finally put an end to the old regulatory system in which multinational corporations took Dave Hartnett, the head of HM Revenue and Customs, out for a most agreeable lunch and he repaid their largesse by obligingly writing off all their tax liabilities.

Dear, innocent little Barclays Bank

“Barclays Bank is widely respected in the City as a paragon of probity,” explained Barclays’ head of corporate social responsibility, Sir Nick Things, “Which is why, when it became obvious that we were about to get done for years of tax fiddling, we immediately put our hands up and told the authorities about our £500m stash of loot. And we’d have gotten clean away, too, with if it hadn’t been for those pesky meddling kids at Private Eye jumping up and down and pointing to kindly old Mr Harnett for a year or two before the papers or the government finally woke up.”

“However, in our defence it should be pointed out that - unlike our competitors - Barclays didn't go cap-in-hand to the government back along, demanding an eye-watering handout and dragging every man, woman and child in the country into generations of unpayable debt,” he added. “I rather think it’s time to call that little favour in now, don’t you?”

Meanwhile, sweating Treasury officials are desperately pretending to be in meetings today as the phone rings and rings, trying to come up with some face-saving dodge whereby further deepening of the dark fiscal hole in which Britain now sits can be hidden from the taxpayer in some way, possibly involving vast, unpayable loans from Lloyds TSB and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Hilarious Tory Post-Ironic Wartime Poster Parody Craze Seizes Internet

British Public Says Screw You

Welcome to the 21st century

A marked change in social attitudes reveals that the British public object to paying any taxes for anything, according to a survey published today by the National Centre For Anti-Social Research.

“Fuck the NHS. Fuck schools. Fuck the unemployed. Fuck the disabled,” said everybody. “Why should I subsidise all that? I’m the only bugger who does any sodding work round here.”

The survey reveals a widespread belief that everybody should bloody well stand on their own two feet, especially those bastards who haven’t got any.

London Won’t Take It

Millions of struggling poor people defiantly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the bankers of the Square Mile today, after David Cameron heroically denounced EU proposals for a ‘Tobin tax’ on financial transactions as “an attack on Britain”.

We all stand together

“Tobin is a dastardly substance to deploy against innocent civilians, who will in some unspecified way be the real victims of this vicious onslaught against the very heart of our financial empire,” said the plucky PM, moments before he flew off on a desperate attempt to bomb Berlin’s deadly Tobin factories to smithereens. “I hope it will soon be banned forever under an international treaty.”

As his crate left the runway and staggered into the skies, Mr Cameron was last seen waving two fingers at the cheering crowds.

“Those bloody foreigners are up to their old tricks again,” shouted a patriotic pensioner as he huddled for protection with hundreds of other defiant Londoners on a platform of Bank tube station, deep beneath the City. “But they’ll never win, because they’ll find we British are all in it together.”

Turning 50p Tax Rate Into 50p Tax Rebate Would Magic Away Britain’s Economic Woes Forever, Insist Barefaced Liars

20 of Britain’s leading liars somehow managed to keep straight faces today as they confidently told chancellor George Osborne that the one thing preventing Britain from achieving total dominance of the global economy by next Monday was his craven failure to ditch the 50p upper tax band he inherited from the previous communist government.

The game's up, Trotsky

As part of a PR campaign run by professional liars in red-framed glasses, two former Bank of England spreadsheet users whose suits cost more than a year’s Jobseeker’s Allowance were among the signatories to a letter, sent to the Financial Times, which openly challenged the craven chancellor to abandon the punishing top rate of income tax, and maybe replace it with a tax rebate of 50% as a token gesture in recognition of all the sterling effort that very rich people put into awarding themselves massive bonuses.

“This ruinous injustice clearly deters fabulously wealthy investors like Warren Buffet and Lilliane Bettencourt, who have said they would be happy to pay higher taxes in their own countries, from coming here to reap the benefit of our world-beating tax-avoidance experts,” rambled the country’s financial gurus. “If that doesn’t make any sense to you, then you are obviously an economic illiterate who stupidly thinks we earn too much, and you really shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Sort it, Osborne, or you can wave bye-bye to those directorships you fondly imagine will drop into your lap when you finally get kicked upstairs.”

That U2 Glastonbury Set List In Full

The Revenue Still Haven’t Found What They’re Looking For;
Tax Year’s Day Off;
Hide (In The Caymans, Love);
If God Will Send His Accountants;
Get Filling Your Boots;
Two Hearts Count As One For Tax Purposes;
Who’s Gonna Find Your Wild Investments;
Tax Window In The Skies;
Beautiful Don’t Pay;
A Non-Declaration;
Where The Streets Have No Tax;
Sometimes You Can’t Hide It On Your Own;
In God’s Tax Haven;
UK Bloody Uncut;
Tax Me To The Clouds Above (omitted due to overrunning).

UK Eagerly Awaiting Return Of Citizen Dave

The people of Britain are today clamouring for prime minister David Cameron to return and begin implementing the hard-left agenda he has just urged Pakistan to adopt.

Citizen Dave will soon be returning to lead the Eton Popular Front

Wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, the newly-converted PM told his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani: “Fuck the rich, comrade! They’re nothing but a thieving bunch of greedy parasites sucking all the wealth out of your people. Tax their asses off – make the bastards pay!”

When his host expressed surprise at Mr Cameron’s forthright advice, pointing out that he was the millionaire son of a millionaire father, socialism’s new spokesman angrily retorted that this was the sort of typically unhelpful and predictably reactionary comment he expected from a capitalist running-dog.

“I don’t accept any responsibility for being born into a privileged family, comrade - that’s an accident of birth!” he retorted angrily. “I didn’t ask to be rich, I didn’t ask to be sent to Eton, and OK, I may have chosen to go to Oxford but that’s only because I worked really, really hard and did incredibly well in my A-levels and chose to observe the overprivileged parasites in their nest and learn their weaknesses.”

“Besides, under socialism everybody will be a millionaire,” he added furiously. “It’s not about dragging everybody down to the same level, it’s about raising everybody up. So hands off my cash, you horrid little prole.”

Miliband Suddenly Realises VAT Increase Will Make Stuff Cost More

Those large buttons are a big help to little Miliband fingers

Ed Miliband, a little boy who leads the Labour Party, has just worked out that the VAT increase due to come into effect at midnight will make things cost a bit more.

“I got this brilliant calculator from my brother David for Christmas,” enthused Mr Miliband. “I showed it to my uncle Alan the postman this morning – he’s a shadow chancellor in his spare time – and he explained it all to me. Apparently that ‘%’ button isn’t much help at all! You have to use your head a bit, but if you times the price of something by 0.8510638, then times that by 1.2, that’s how much it’s going to cost tomorrow.”

“And it’s a bigger number!” he exclaimed.

Mr Miliband then went on to explain to a room of hung-over journalists that poor people seem to be poor because they don’t have an awful lot of money, and that buying things that cost more will make them even poorer.

“So my advice to poor people is not to buy things any more, and then they won’t be poor any more,” he concluded brightly.

Posh boy chancellor George Osborne, however, replied that his uncle Vincent - who is a bit barmy and goes dancing every evening - had given him a really good scientific calculator for Christmas, and he had worked out how to do compound interest all by himself, with a bit of help from a nice man from the Treasury.

“Apparently VAT is charged on every transaction, not just the point of sale,” he gushed enthusiastically, “So VAT is added when the manufacturer sells his product to the wholesaler, and again when the wholesaler sells it to the retailer and yet again when the retailer sells it to you. That’s why great-uncle Ted introduced it in the first place, apparently, when I was two. Add in their profits, and prices are jolly well going to go up by a bit more than the measly 2½% the dopey proles are expecting.”

“It ends up more like 10%, actually,” he chortled. “Next time little Ed’s mum takes him to Toys’R’Us to spend his pocket money, he’s going to poo himself.”

Chav Tells Topshop Tax Protesters To Stop Eyeing Up Her Fanny

Midgets have been suffering for years

A sit-in organised by UK Uncut turned ugly at the Oxford Street branch of Topshop today, when customer Sammi-Jo Bloggs loudly accused protesters of looking up her front bottom.

“We are occupying the floor of Topshop’s flagship store to draw Christmas shoppers’ attention to the tax-avoidance strategies of Sir Philip Green and his Arcadia Group,” said a shocked spokesman for the group. “Not to cop an eyeful of Miss Bloggs’ hideously self-inflicted attempt at a Brazilian. If she wants to keep her spotty fadge from prying eyes, perhaps she could have put some knickers on. Especially since her idea of wrapping up warm for the sub-Arctic weather seems to involve a skimpy Santa outfit, a bra at least two sizes too small for her and nothing else but a pair of four-inch heels.”

“I’ve seen sights today that nobody should see sober,” he moaned. “After this, Philip Green’s offshore wife is the least of my worries. I’ll be waking up screaming for years to come.”

British Government In Secret Talks With Tax Havens - Presumably Not Those Owned By British Government

Don't worry, Lord Ashcroft, it's not your money they're after

The government is today refusing to identify the three tax havens with which it is negotiating in efforts to claw back £10bn from individual tax evaders, but it is thought unlikely that any of them are among the 18 notoriously lax regimes which it runs itself via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

“If the British government really wants an end to the secretive financial practices of Crown dependencies like Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St. Vincent & Grenadines, and the Turks & Caicos Islands,” explained City analyst Rob Blind, “All it has to do is order their governors to tell the locals to commit economic suicide.”

“Of course, if they try to put out feelers via the Commonwealth to former Imperial possessions with a relaxed attitude to financial transparency - like Barbados, Belize, Brunei, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Nauru, Seychelles, Singapore and Vanuatu - they will be politely told where to put the flag they ran down the pole for the last time years ago,” he added with a smile. “As for the rest of the dodgy banking world, well, they’ll just make the usual jokes about pots and kettles.”

Homelessness Will Be Easy To Bear Knowing That The Wealthy Might Be Paying Their Full 32.5% Tax, Assures Clegg

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg today promised faithfully to do something or other about rich individuals exploiting tax loopholes - which will fill victims of benefit cuts who lose their homes through stepped reductions in housing benefit with a nice warm glow, as they wrap themselves in old copies of the tax-dodging Sun while they huddle in the doorway of their local tax-dodging Tesco.

“What could possibly be fairer than rich people paying the full whopping 32.5%?” smiled Mr Clegg to a beaming Andrew Marr. “I’m sure it will be a great comfort to the poorest people in our society to know that, just as they are having to make economies by not eating for a couple of days every fortnight, some chap I went to school with is sharing their pain as he comes to the unpalatable conclusion that he’s jolly well going to have to hang on to the new Maserati for three years instead of two.”

The rich will just have to put up with this for a bit longer

Meanwhile, at a safe distance from the Lib Dem conference, rail union boss Bob Crow (salary: £133,183) was failing miserably in his efforts to promote his alternative scheme to the party’s rank-and-file membership, in which any posh geezas wot torks proppa gits their ‘eads slang dan the karzi an’ all ver bladdy assets confisculated gorblimey innit.

Government Writes New Community Chest Card

Don't bother taking the wrapping off it

Britain erupted in uproar today when the government produced a pink card proclaiming ‘COMPUTER ERROR IN YOUR FAVOUR - Collect £1500 from every other player’ in black biro, and began sending out tax demands immediately.

“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry about this,” smiled a jubilant chancellor George Osborne, who also happens to own the bank. “Cough up.”

The massive PAYE mistake was made by defective socialist software installed by a previous player, insisted Mr Osborne, and was only picked up when tax officials ran a new conservative program which is guaranteed to be 100% error-free.

“Oh, stop moaning,” laughed Mr Osborne, as impoverished players desperately mortgaged their meagre properties to the bank. “Look, here’s another Community Chest card I’ve made up which says, ‘TAX REFUND - All players with two Xes in their surname receive £5’. It’s just a matter of give and take, you know.”

Lord Ashcroft Admits To Living In Britain

Hours before a midnight deadline by which non-domiciled Lords had to either give up their preferential tax status or give up their right to sit in Britain’s second chamber, Tory party owner Lord Ashcroft has finally admitted that he lives in Britain – bringing to a close a decade of ducking questions on his tax avoidance.

Five fellow Lords, including world meccano expert Lord Foster, have chosen to keep dodging tax by abandoning their flimsy pretence of living here, and will be allowed to keep their titles for impressing-Americans-at-dinner-party purposes.

Lord Ashcroft – who has given over £4m to the Tories in recent years - is thought to have had plenty of time to spirit his fortune away so he can cheerfully inform the taxman that his total income from UK sources miraculously falls below the minimum threshold for taxation. Conservative insiders are now beginning to wonder how their deputy chairman - who is now, on paper, some sort of tramp with cufflinks - will continue to bankroll their party’s extravagant spending, given that political parties are now no longer allowed to accept money from overseas.

Sources close to Lord Ashcroft, however, suggest that the peer is already owed enough favours, on the strength of past donations, to get pretty much anything he wants from the government.

“Of course I’m happy to confirm that I live in Britain,” beamed Lord Ashcroft, standing outside his luxury mansion, which by pure coincidence becomes the new UK-registered office of the Bank of Belize at 11.59pm. “Why shouldn’t I? After all, I own it.”

Creative Genius Emin Ponders Move To France, Realises Some Effort May Be Required, Goes Back To Bed

Britain's leading intellectual, Tracey Emin, woke up briefly yesterday and texted the Sunday Times whilst taking a dump to say she would move to France in protest against the upper tax rate of 50%, if only it wasn't so fucking far away.

"i workt fackin ard rite 2 git 2 were i am 2day init," explained the nation's foremost artist. "i shagd me fany red ror 4 munce n got fru 6 or 7 majick marcas ritin me fukbudys on da tent wot git me notist orl them yers aggo me rist urt lik fuk 4 daze i telyer!!! then i ad 2 spen weaks rollin rand in bed, pissin orl ova it like n wen it wen on exerbishun rite sum cheaky chinky cant onely wen an maid it!!! nex i drored sum nekid wimin u cud tel it wus wimin cus they ad tits an flict sum maw drorins at a camra so it lookt like sum burd wankin it wuz orl abat luv init aw xxx"

After a nap, Ms Emin later remembered to send the second part of the text message, which read: "me acuntent bin rand 50% tax fak me??? im orf 2 frarns there like rilly inta ART and i wudnt arf 2 shav me armpits eva agin brilyunt!!! fack u godrun bran u facist CANT"

A spokesman for Eurostar later confirmed that the company had received an enquiry asking about times and fares to Paris, but added that when the caller asked if there was a discount for 'interlexul slebrities' and was told no, she was cut off by the call-centre operator after being warned about swearing.

Just before the paper went to press, a courier arrived with a package containing a fresh turd from Ms Emin's creative end, inscribed with the message "pannick ova me acuntents sawtid me a swiz bank acunt"

A spokesman for the leading creative thinker of her generation said that Ms Emin's considered verdicts on the economy, the political classes, Britain's ongoing involvement in Afghanistan, the 2012 Olympics and the shocking price of a packet of fags these days would be available to the media shortly, once she had finished digesting a curry and several pints of lager.

Darling Discovers Obscure Economic Theory: Socialism

In a budget speech which sent the last remaining Britons hurrying for the airports with hastily-stuffed suitcases, a desperate Alistair Darling today announced the long-dreaded return of radical hard-left socialism.

"I was just running this speech through the spell-checker this morning," the Chancellor told the House of Commons, "When I heard something about the death of Jack Jones on the radio. Apparently there was a Labour Party long before Tony Blair came along - and even more surprisingly, I remembered that I used to belong to it. I dug out my scrapbook, and found all sorts of stuff I'd long since forgotten, like having a beard. I used to look like Noel Gallagher in a Moss Bros suit, I tell you! Ha ha - er... anyway, I remembered that back in Lothian in the year dot we all used to have a high old time chanting 'Tax the rich!' and I thought - well, why not? It won't make a bugger of a difference to the enormous yawning chasm of debt which the grumpy sod next door's dropped us all into, but it might look good in the Sun tomorrow - after all, it's not like Rupert Murdoch pays tax, is it?"

"The only problem I could see was: where do you draw the line?" continued Mr Darling, as MPs yawned and nodded off on the back benches. "Who can you hit for more tax without the Daily Mail screaming blue murder and calling the middle-class rent-a-mob out onto the suburban streets? Then I remembered that I'm on the standard ministerial salary of £137,579 - which might still go up a bit, if we can slip it through while nobody's looking - and in a moment of inspiration it dawned on me that anybody on more than 150 grand a year is a thieving capitalist bastard who deserves to be hit for half he's worth."

At this point the Prime Minister (salary: £188,848pa) suddenly leapt to his feet with an inarticulate cry and tried to wrestle the Chancellor of the Exchequer from the dispatch box. Mr Brown was swiftly seized and dragged from the chamber, screaming, "You tufty-faced communist bastard!"

As guffawing Tory MPs linked arms and sang the Internationale, sweating members of the Labour front bench were seen to be nervously texting their offices to check how much they were getting paid for their various declared interests.

Mr Darling, meanwhile, spent the rest of the afternoon drawing meaningless graphs on a flipchart and referring Britain to the tables in Appendix C.