Chasing Payments

I read yesterday that Adele – you know, the singer who somehow thinks she’s famous and pretentious enough to get a mononym – has complained about having to pay so much bleedin’ tax.

Speaking to Q magazine, the Rolling in the Deep singer said, "I'm mortified to have to pay 50%! [While] I use the NHS, I can't use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are shit, and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [the album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

This makes me incredibly angry.

As the blog post said, if she uses the NHS as she says, then she’d better damn well pay for it through taxes.

It’s also nice of her to deem herself “above” the public transport us mere mortals have to put up with, it would seem. I’d disagree with her about trains always being late; from my own experience as an infrequent rail traveller, British railways are always on time and efficient. Sure, there was a bit of trouble of an engineering nature on a recent day-trip to Portsmouth which resulted in a missed connection and an arrival home an hour later than expected,  but on the whole, British trains are comfortable, regular and punctual.

I really find the implication that “all state schools are shit” risible. I went to, apparently, one of the best single-sex state schools in the country, and it wasn’t all bad. Sure, I’m finding myself increasingly despairing at the state of the education system and an increasingly-obvious left-wing or politically-correct skew to the whole shebang, but I think that children in this country do get an education, for free (well, paid through, you guessed it, taxes) whereas others in the world have it a lot worse off. Some get no education. All about perspective, Adele.

Think about, instead of how terrible it must be getting taxed 50% – remember, the Beatles, who are arguably better had to pay 95% and how impoverished you are, Adele, how your £4,000,000 in tax will benefit society for a lot more people.

That sounds dangerously socialist of me. But if anyone’s more deserving of a tax cut, it is not necessarily the rick and famous,  but the eternally-squeezed middle classes and those on a low income, to whom every penny does matter.

This whole episode with Adele whingeing about her tax bill doesn’t really endear herself to her fans. How many people at 21 – the same age as I – have anywhere near the fame, wealth and recognition as this spoilt, self-righteous cow does? It’s a shame she had to feel obligated to join the long list of we’re-better-than-you musical “royalty” who are disconnected from their plebeian fans. It’s a shame.

It wouldn’t be so bad if her songs didn’t make you want to kill yourself.

Oh, and send my blogging/Twitter friend Joe some hits; he’s home-alone on exam leave and going a bit mad. Takes me back a few years….