When I was a child I was taught that all the people in the world could fit on to the Isle of Wight. I suppose now there are more people, and we are too jealous of our privacy and personal space to allow such a stunt to take place so as to prove or disprove the claim, but I thought about it while trying to see some thread in the various disjointed news reports that we are delivered these days like handfuls of grain to free range chickens.
It is now, incredibly, some sort of political contest as to how many prisons we have. The leader in our most popular tabloid, always one of my favourite bits of reading matter, entitled ‘The Sun Says’, has this:
‘David Cameron’s plans to expand spaces in Britain’s jam-packed jails from 81,000 to above 100,000 will be widely welcomed. So will his proposals to end automatic release after serving half the sentence; making lags work to compensate victims; and a tough programme to tackle re-offending.’
So more prisons, and more reasons to lock more people up. Do you want a prison next to your house? Thought not. But what about building them in the Isle of Wight? There is already a prison there (Parkhurst), lots of space if we are not going to put all those billions of people there, and being an island, any escaping lags would have to swim home across the busiest sea-lane in the world.
The second piece of news is that Germany seems to have gone off the rails. It first went off the rails when it appointed a vegetarian chancellor some 75 years ago and now madness has descended on a woman chancellor. Angela Merkel appears to be considering an Anschluss of Liechtenstein, without even the Sudetenland excuse that there are Germans being treated badly there. Indeed they appear to be being treated very well, paying less tax than they would have to if they left their money anywhere near the profligate Merkel. She is making threats not just against the Principality, which in my view should retaliate by making a bid for Volkswagen, but against anyone who has lower taxes than Germany and might attract some banking deposits.
Now, obviously, is the time for a well armed nation like the UK to create a new tax haven to spite this Saxon woman's blustering. Gordon Brown has given away the status of Jersey and Guernsey but I was thinking, what about the Isle of Wight? Plenty of space (OK, except for a few prisons), it needs developing out of its grim 1950s Brighton Rock tourism so what about zero income tax, no VAT and a few 7-star Dubai style hotels near Shanklin? And drink: the government wants to put up the price of booze particularly for you middle class drinkers, what about no tax on any sort of booze throughout the island? All the drunks would leave England’s quiet market towns and take the ferry from Portsmouth, to the benefit of both island and mainland.
The next item is that the government suddenly wants to renege on its promise to build a casino in every town (remember John Major’s grammar school in every town? That didn’t work either). But I think we can see now that there is only one suitable site for a maxi casino – indeed several, we can make it the Las Vegas of Europe.
Looking for a job for Prince Harry when he leaves the army in a sulk and his brother becomes Prince of Wales? Lord of the Isle: who better to run this new paradise?
When I lived near Ryde many years ago there were still the wartime sea defences which you could see stretching out at low tide. So we’d be ready for Angela Merkel’s invasion. Cry God for Harry and the low tax Isle of Wight!
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