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What is capital gains tax and have you ever met anyone who has paid it?

LABOUR will not promise that capital gains tax will rise, but have you, or has anyone you know, ever paid it? This FAQ explains what it is and why the answer is no: 

What is capital gains tax? 

Capital gains tax is paid on money from selling an asset for more than you paid for it. 

What, like the successful teams on Bargain Hunt?

Yes, exactly like that, except for those doing a little better than to be thrilled they’ve made £60 on a nasty teapot. 

How much do you have to make? Because one time I sold a SNES game on eBay for £250. 

How endearingly pathetic. Try £6,000, or 245 times that amount. Perhaps if you sold shares, a Picasso, a business or a spare house. 

I haven’t got any of those things. 

No. Only nine per cent of people pay capital gains tax. But those people, as you can imagine, are involved in some pretty high-value transactions. 

So it wouldn’t be anyone I know? 

It could. For example your mates who bought in Hackney Wick for £285,000, sold for £1.4 million and have a huge house in Hastings now. Your colleague who inherited his uncle’s coin collection and sold it for 75k. Your annoying nephew who made 100 grand on Bitcoin. 

But I hate all those people and wish they had less money. 

That’s why rises in capital gains tax are ‘the politics of envy’ and Labour should not even consider them. Those people earned that money fair and square by doing nothing. 

Is that why neither I nor anyone I know gives a bugger about Labour raising capital gains tax to soak the rich, improve public services and get the country working again? 

See? It’s like making private schools pay VAT all over again.

Builder doing excellent job of being a stereotypical working-class arsehole

A BUILDER working on a couple’s loft conversion has surpassed their expectations of him being an uncultured, bigoted wanker with zero professionalism.

While installing floorboards and skylights in the Bishop family’s home, builder Steve Malley has subjected them to behaviours they had assumed were offensive stereotypes about working-class tradesmen.

Dad Martin Bishop said: “After turning up late and flicking a dog end into the rockery, immediately evoking a builder in a bad 1970s comedy film, Steve asked me if I’d seen ‘the match’. 

“When I said ‘no’ he visibly sneered and then rudely ignored me. However when I took him a cup of sugar with some tea in it, he decided to draw me into an extremely uncomfortable discussion about immigration. 

“On his phone he showed me a Twitter video of a helicopter machine-gunning people in a boat, which I assume is a popular racist meme. He assured me that was what ‘we’ should do to ‘them’. 

“Haven’t builders got broader interests these days? We could have talked about any number of things – the election, Playstation, recent films. Even some mild sexism about Anya Taylor-Joy would have been acceptable.”

Bishop’s wife Rachel said: “When he wasn’t mysteriously disappearing for long periods in his white van, Steve had the nerve to have a massive chip on his shoulder. I casually mentioned we were going on holiday to France, and his response was, ‘Very la di dah.’ 

“How can a self-catering flat in Nantes be elitist? It’s the nearest f**king country that isn’t Wales.”

Asked to give his version of events, Malley said: “It’s too easy for people to fall back on lazy class stereotypes when you’re exactly like them in every way.”

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