Tiny Garden?
Ed Balls hopes to be in charge of the country's finances if Labour wins the general election, but he's made a prize prat of himself if you ask me, over his daft comments about getting a VAT receipt for every single item of household expenditure.
Now I suppose Ed could be suffering from OCD in relation to his gardening bills, but as Robert Crampton points out in this Times article if he's only paying £10 a time for the work to be done, either the Balls family has a really tiny garden or the person he's employing is being ripped off.
Robert Crampton: Ed Balls — cut some slack to the guy who cuts your hedge
Peter Anderson / Getty Images
By Robert Crampton - The Times
Ed Balls must have a very small hedge if he’s only paying a tenner to get it clipped. It’s a time-consuming business, clipping a hedge. Getting your edges neat and even, disguising any twiggy patches, remembering not to chop your arm off, sweeping up afterwards — £10 does not buy much footage, foliage maintenance-wise. Not if Balls is paying his as yet unnamed (but surely not for much longer, if I’m any judge of the tabloid press) clipper the minimum wage. Which we have to assume he is, given that he’s such a stickler for the rules.
At £6.50 an hour, the shadow chancellor is buying a mere 90 minutes’ worth of trimming. Less if he pays £8 an hour, which he ought to, that being the rate to which Labour proposes raising the minimum wage if it wins the election. As I say, it must be a small hedge. Tiny. Pathetic. Derisory. Balls might be better off taking care of it himself.
Ed Balls says he always asks for a written receipt for any cash job, no matter how small — and jobs don’t come much smaller than trimming Ed Balls’ risible hedge. He says: “It’s the right thing to do.”
Having extracted his precious receipt from the presumably bemused, presumably grudging underemployed hedge-trimmer, what does Balls do with it? He files it away, no doubt, along with all his other receipts — the grubby, hastily scrawled scraps he demands from barbers, window-cleaners, milkmen, barmaids and Svetlana the skivvy. Plus, of course, the chit his paperboy has to issue in return for his fiver tip at Christmas.
Why does Balls believe that such ghastly, bureaucratic, soul-destroying behaviour constitutes “the right thing to do”? Chuka Umunna, his shadow cabinet colleague, says it is “a matter of good housekeeping” to keep a record of cash payments. That’s a point of view. Most people would say to Umunna: “Hmm, bit anal for me, that. Life’s too short, but hey, it’s a free country and if absurdly zealous household accounting is your thing, Chuka, be my guest.”
Balls isn’t saying that receipts are merely a matter of rigorous personal admin, though — he’s saying receipts reside in the realm of ethics. He’s saying receipts are about right and wrong. He’s saying he has a moral responsibility to get a receipt off the guy who trims his bonsai bush. He’s saying this insistence makes it more likely that his hedge-cutter, knowing the irritating pedantic tubby bloke with the tiny hedge is keeping a record, will pay the appropriate taxes on any transaction.
Balls is saying, in essence, that should the need arise, he’s ready, willing and able to dob his hedge-cutter in to the taxman. And what’s more he can provide any supporting documentation as may be necessary to nail the poor sod to the wall.
What’s going on, Balls? You make this big thing out of being a dyed-in-the-wool tribal Labour loyalist, but if the Labour party is about anything, it’s about getting a better deal for those who through bad luck or bad choices find themselves towards the bottom of the heap.
You’re supposed to be helping these people, Balls. Giving them a break. Cutting them some slack. Getting your paperwork squared away so you can shop a poorly paid manual worker to the revenue is the opposite of what a good Labour man — or a good human being, come to that — is supposed to do.
Ed Balls must have a very small hedge if he’s only paying a tenner to get it clipped. It’s a time-consuming business, clipping a hedge. Getting your edges neat and even, disguising any twiggy patches, remembering not to chop your arm off, sweeping up afterwards — £10 does not buy much footage, foliage maintenance-wise. Not if Balls is paying his as yet unnamed (but surely not for much longer, if I’m any judge of the tabloid press) clipper the minimum wage. Which we have to assume he is, given that he’s such a stickler for the rules.
At £6.50 an hour, the shadow chancellor is buying a mere 90 minutes’ worth of trimming. Less if he pays £8 an hour, which he ought to, that being the rate to which Labour proposes raising the minimum wage if it wins the election. As I say, it must be a small hedge. Tiny. Pathetic. Derisory. Balls might be better off taking care of it himself.
Ed Balls says he always asks for a written receipt for any cash job, no matter how small — and jobs don’t come much smaller than trimming Ed Balls’ risible hedge. He says: “It’s the right thing to do.”
Having extracted his precious receipt from the presumably bemused, presumably grudging underemployed hedge-trimmer, what does Balls do with it? He files it away, no doubt, along with all his other receipts — the grubby, hastily scrawled scraps he demands from barbers, window-cleaners, milkmen, barmaids and Svetlana the skivvy. Plus, of course, the chit his paperboy has to issue in return for his fiver tip at Christmas.
Why does Balls believe that such ghastly, bureaucratic, soul-destroying behaviour constitutes “the right thing to do”? Chuka Umunna, his shadow cabinet colleague, says it is “a matter of good housekeeping” to keep a record of cash payments. That’s a point of view. Most people would say to Umunna: “Hmm, bit anal for me, that. Life’s too short, but hey, it’s a free country and if absurdly zealous household accounting is your thing, Chuka, be my guest.”
Balls isn’t saying that receipts are merely a matter of rigorous personal admin, though — he’s saying receipts reside in the realm of ethics. He’s saying receipts are about right and wrong. He’s saying he has a moral responsibility to get a receipt off the guy who trims his bonsai bush. He’s saying this insistence makes it more likely that his hedge-cutter, knowing the irritating pedantic tubby bloke with the tiny hedge is keeping a record, will pay the appropriate taxes on any transaction.
Balls is saying, in essence, that should the need arise, he’s ready, willing and able to dob his hedge-cutter in to the taxman. And what’s more he can provide any supporting documentation as may be necessary to nail the poor sod to the wall.
What’s going on, Balls? You make this big thing out of being a dyed-in-the-wool tribal Labour loyalist, but if the Labour party is about anything, it’s about getting a better deal for those who through bad luck or bad choices find themselves towards the bottom of the heap.
You’re supposed to be helping these people, Balls. Giving them a break. Cutting them some slack. Getting your paperwork squared away so you can shop a poorly paid manual worker to the revenue is the opposite of what a good Labour man — or a good human being, come to that — is supposed to do.
