BENEFITS MEWS – CHELSEA

Benefits Mews, Chelsea of course, is a far cry from that vile, run down rat hole of a street in Birmingham that’s full of working and underclass loafers and benefit scroungers featured in the Channel Four documentary series for the wrath of Daily Mail readers. Oh no, Benefits Mews Chelsea let me tell you is a very different kind of place altogether. Full of splendid bijoux style cottages each with its own garage and the entrance naturally gated. Not really the place to have outsiders wandering in. And the people who live here are decent. Hardworking. Not the kind who’d scrounge off the State. People you might call the best of British not the worst! I know what they’re like because I live among them. Let me introduce you then to some of my friends.

Living at Number Three are Lord and Lady Mungo and their son Giles. His title and estates in Berkshire go back five hundred years! Gerry chairs a private equity company based in the City though for tax purposes it’s registered in the Bahamas, courtesy of advice from the Inland Revenue that is. Friends at the top and all that. Only pays tuppence in the pound on all those billions he makes but even then he’s still doing his best for the economy in these rather tough times. I mean, all those billions of tuppences really add up, but then he’s a bit of a dog on the quiet. Stops by the Lords every day on his way to the City, signs in and out for ten minutes and picks up three hundred each day. That’s fifteen hundred a week! Most of the money I hear goes into an Education Trust Fund for Giles, now at Eton. Even that’s tax deductible of course and helps pay for the fees. Oxford too when he gets there.

Lady Mungo of course does her bit, lending her name to various charities, so naturally no unemployment benefit for her. Can you just imagine! Someone like that, having to go down to the dole office on a regular basis… Being offered work as a chambermaid or doing the washing up in some restaurant on a minimum wage. It’s just too dreadful to contemplate. People like that would rather die!

Next door at Five there are the Porkinoffs, Boris and Olga. He’s one of those émigré oligarchs with banks and oil in Siberia. Lives all over the place thanks to his permanent British residency status, courtesy of the Foreign Office. Helps with the Child Benefits they pull in for their kids. True, they shouldn’t get it at all with all the millions he makes but then it’s all in his grandmother’s name, only she’s long dead and buried  in Moscow! So it’s all straight and above board you see. Kind of! I mean, you can’t call it scrounging. Getting a bit extra a week was his right as an Englishman I remember him joking last Christmas at the champagne party they gave. Why, they were just as needy as anyone else he gave me a wink! Got it paid straight into his bank. I mean, he owned the bank after all!

Two doors down at Number Eight are the Sinclairs. The Major, ex Scots Guards, owns a mobile phone company registered in Ireland. Operates big time in Britain but pays his tax over there. A fraction of what he might have done here but then they give people work in the Call Centres. Zero hours contracts and minimum wage and all that but at least they’re employed and ought to be grateful. He’s a major benefactor to the Conservative Party. Always reliable for a generous contribution to Party finances at Election time so the Treasury leaves him alone! Besides, he knows a whole lot of people from way back. Old friends at Oxford you know. George and David went into politics while Maxwell went into mobiles!

Splendid couple, the Sinclairs. Their eldest boy doing wonderfully well. After finishing business studies in London his father got him a job at one of the big investment banks in the City. An Internship with one of his friends. Bit like an apprenticeship in industry only this one’s in finance. Listening and learning how deals are fixed up and how to get along with all the right people. First rate opportunity for someone young. None of this wretched applying for jobs stuff, writing CVs or filling out forms. That’s for the Benefit Street kids. I mean if your father can get your feet on the ladder you’d be stupid to turn down fifty thousand per annum and driving a Porsche.

Across from the Sinclair’s there are the excellent Cardews. Roger’s just got himself knighted. Services to banking and all that. Designs Investment Portfolios at one of the biggest. A most remarkable fellow. They kind of lost ten billion last year but never mind that. It’s publicly owned so the taxpayer picks up the tab! As for Roger, with all that hard work of his he picked up a serious bonus. Two million or more for helping organise the ten billion loss. Of course it was only a fraction. He’ll need to work harder losing more next time round. And yes, there are people who always complain. All those millions out there on zero hours contracts or getting the minimum wage let alone teachers or NHS types getting their annual one percent.  What do they contribute to the economy? No, Roger’s part of the Financial Services Sector, not one of those benefit scroungers out there. The type who phone up the Payday Loan Companies needing a fix because they’ve squandered their money on a Premier League Season instead of putting it by for the rent. I mean talk about benefits! You’ve got to earn it before you can spend it and people in banking know all about that! A nice little earner that bonus of his.

Yes, people in Benefits Mews Chelsea know all about earning money, not like the scroungers on television.  Birmingham? They must all be having a laugh. Doing their drugs then down to the social with their hands out for taxpayers’ money. Better if they got up before twelve and got on their bikes, and furthermore stopped permanently claiming a Sickie. The Tories thank heaven are putting a stop to all that. If they’re not dead or dying they won’t give them a penny. Not anymore!

It’s not me alone that’s saying it but just about everyone else in Benefits Mews. Good, decent, hardworking people like Arabella Dalrymple . Spends all her time in charity work raising money for good causes all over the place. Heaven only knows how she manages to live here… but we do!

They have sheriffs and bailiffs calling round Benefits Street

And here in the Mews we all love to watch
them taking the telly and cooker, the beds and the sofa.
While we put some fizz in our mid-morning Scotch!  

So let’s get it clear. We in Benefits Mews are respectable people. Putting our money into the economy not leeching it out, so no 50 pence tax rate, thank you very much! How dare the mob up in Birmingham criticize us for paying less tax when they don’t have to pay a penny themselves. If they don’t want to work then it’s their choice so naturally they don’t have to pay. Just live a life on the hob courtesy of the taxes Yours Truly fork out for them in Benefits Mews!

And finally I forgot to tell you about the great retailer Harry Devenish who lives across the cobbles from me. A billionaire he may be but he’s being bankrupted by all the taxes he has to pay in handouts for the millions living in Benefit Streets up and down the country so he put all his money into a bank in Monte Carlo under his wife’s name. That way he pays no tax at all but now he’s set up a soup kitchen in London for the poor and the homeless. What he’s saving in tax he’s giving back to the needy so he’s a really splendid fellow you see.

So if you’ve read this post, please don’t cry for them on Benefits Street. Time you started crying for us! 

 

THIS POST IS SPONSORED BY THE GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALL THOSE WHO LIVE IN BENEFITS MEWS ALONG WITH THOSE WE’VE RECEIVED FROM DAILY MAIL, EXPRESS AND SUN NEWSPAPER READERS.