Heterodox macroeconomist and campaigner Richard Murphy has produced a Taxing Wealth 2024 report to show how wealth can be taxed fairly in comparison to wages. His worked example restating Rishi Sunak’s tax bill is bang on.

Rishi Sunak’s tax for 2022/23: a Taxing Wealth Report 2024 case study:

The additional tax owing would be £761,378. This is a tax rate of 57% […] The resulting tax liability is fair. What Rishi Sunak paid in 2022/23 was not and was instead an insult to all people who worked for a living and paid much higher rates of tax than the prime minister.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak paid around 23% tax on £2.2M income because most of his income is capital gains and dividends. Investment income enjoys a huge tax subsidy. Had Sunak “earned” a £2.2M wage, he’d have paid roughly 56% tax1 including student loan repayment.


  1. back of the envelope. ↩︎

So far this year - as of 4 February 2024 - on my daily walks, and every single day since 1 January, at least one car has run red lights on a pedestrian crossing.

Wryly amused at our blundering elite who spent the last 45 years doing more damage to our productive industrial infrastructure than Hitler lecture us that we are moving from a post-war to a pre-war status.

The UK political class has used WhatsApp to avoid democratic scrutiny. They weren’t bamboozled by the tech or confounded by advice from their private office. They knew what they were doing. They knew it was wrong. They did it anyway.

Funny how aging TINA neoliberals accuse the kids of being intolerant of diverse opinions

An occasional series of East London chicken shops. Peck! Peck! by Sutton and Sons, Graham Road, Hackney, London E8. Sutton and Sons is a chain of North-East London chip shops.

Two takeaway food shops on a Victorian street in East London with rental e-bike in front and a food delivery rider.

It seems to me British politics reached its nadir some time ago. And now, various Tory wannabees are wrestling in the muddy slops below the bottom of the barrel.