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Just been reading up on I.L . What a nobba!!.. Just my opinion, other $h?t politicians are available. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Lavery

Yes, I do know what it is Tony, and OK I won't provide any links for you, but I don't think you know what it is. I think you know what you've been told by Labour, but - as usual - Labour is economical with the truth. There are about 110,700 people with non-dom status. They pay tax on every penny of their earnings in this country. In aggregate they pay about £8,400,000,000 a year in direct tax. That's an average of about £76,000 directly to the exchequer, and if they didn't pay this we'd have to double the tax paid by the bottom 10 million taxpayers (the people who can least afford to pay it). In addition to this they pay far higher indirect taxes than the average person, provide considerable employment, and reputedly invest heavily in our country. They don't burden the NHS, or any other public services, but do spend a lot. The majority of these people are doctors, surgeons, lawyers, specialists and other top professional people who we sorely need. It's impossible to say exactly what these people contribute indirectly to our country but in direct, indirect, and trickle down economics the figure must be well over £30BN a year. However that's not the full story, not all of these people are wealthy, quite a lot of them earn less than you or me, and only a tiny percentage of them fall into the super-rich Abramovich category. What we are talking about from here on is what they earn simply from overseas sources. Firstly about 64,000 of them (in theory) declare ALL their overseas earnings, and pay full UK tax on them. This isn't necessarily a huge gain for our country because they will also be taxed in the country where the earnings originate, and it's quite likely that (under international double taxation treaties) they'll be able to deduct this from what they pay to HMRC. In an event they are pretty much on the same terms as you or me, and you have to discount all these people as a source of further higher rate taxes. 110,700 - 64,000 = 46,700 In that 46,700 people are the already mentioned poorer people who simply have inherited non-dom status and aren't good for much or any overseas earnings (taxed at source or not). Already Ed Miliband's "soak the rich" is starting to look pretty limp, but how many of them can actually yield any more tax revenue? Well the number of people who chose to have their foreign earnings exempted in exchange for an ever increasing fee is in fact a paltry 5000! Yes, we are not talking about 110,000 we are talking about 5000. And the vast majority of those 5000 flit around the world, have houses in multiple countries, and their true wealth is hidden behind chains of companies, and is, to all practical extents untouchable - because they don't own it, they simply CONTROL it (in fact just like Tony Blair!). They pay the fees because it's often cheaper than paying international accountants, or concealing, transferring, or laundering the wealth, and some of them don't want their affairs flagged up to other tax authorities. So... we do have a nice little earner of about £300M from those fees, but Ed M wants to throw those fees away (not impose further taxes "on top" of those fees, like a silly Labourite claimed at the weekend) because he thinks he can get more. Do you think this is true, or do you think that Ed B was right when interviewed earlier this year, when he said income might fall if we try to up the take? Or, do you think that this isn't a matter of money at all but a matter of "fairness" and principle (in which case you'd better tell Ed M this before he spends even more money he hasn't got!)?