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Tracey Emin, faced with the prospect of a 50 per cent tax rate, has announced that she is "very seriously considering leaving Britain" for France, where they "have lower tax rates and they appreciate arts and culture".
I really admire Tracey Emin but she does make a pillock of herself with this.
There has never been an instance of a celebrity threatening to leave the country that has not been greeted by the public with gigantic shouts of "Hooray!" "Good riddance!" "Awa' and bile yer heid!" and "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!"
And quite properly so. These are stamping butterflies. Rich people threatening to leave the country in protest at the prospect of becoming marginally less rich, and with the implication that "you'll miss me when I'm gone", are already living in another place than the rest of us.
If you don't like the idea of a 50 per cent tax rate, make the case against it. It's there to be made - and Chris Blackhurst did so eloquently in these pages not long ago.
Most of the case against it is that greedy every-man-for-himself-niks - sorry, "wealth creators" - will pile off abroad, so it will actually decrease the take rather than boost it.
Individual pledges from these wealth creators, though, tend to look a bit less than public-spirited.
And it seems to me particularly awkward for someone in Miss Emin's line of work.
If ever there was an area of endeavour that benefits from state patronage in the UK, it is the arts.
Charles Saatchi's game-changing interventions in the visual art market come, obviously, from the private sector.
But the sea through which he makes his sharklike progress is salty with public money, and the Emins of the future are nourished far less often by wealthy private collectors than by the state.
From the beginners who are able to continue making work because of the dole, through the many artists who are able to work thanks to state grants and prizes, right up to those on Miss Emin's level - whose reputations and bank balances alike are cemented by public collections acquiring their work - the state is a major helper.
"What have the Romans ever done for us?" asked the Judaean nationalists in Life of Brian.
"Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order"
An artist even of Miss Emin's success would do well to ask: "What has general taxation ever done for us?" And she would do well to find a humbler answer.
Best things in life aren't 40p
Two cheers for the scheme to put "water stations", where you can refill a half-litre bottle with drinking water for 20p, in public places.
Bottled water is a wasteful con, and as more and more people get wise to this, the companies that sell it are starting to flail.
Hildon - which sells some of the most expensive - has already run a scare campaign asking of tap water: "Is it safe?" What an absurd and contemptible lash of desperation.
So hooray for access to tap-water in public places - but it seems a shame it's left to Thames Water, at 40p a litre.
Drinking water is one of those things - like telephony, information, wireless internet access, Radiohead and the Evening Standard - that wants and needs to be free.
The Victorians filled London with water fountains, regarding them as an elementary civic good. Why can't we?
Naughty knockers meet their match
When my mother was working as a journalist at a party conference years ago, she was pestered for sexual favours by older male hacks.
She heard one knocking on her bedroom door in the conference hotel, and opened it to discover to her horror that it wasn't his knuckles he'd been using to knock.
So comely lobbyist Susie Squire, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, is my heroine of the week.
When a sex-pest at Labour conference pressed his room-key on her, insisting she show up at 3.30am for "the time of your life", she passed it on to the next sex-pest, directing him to go to that room at 3.30am for "the time of your life".
What joy to imagine the scene as her suitors met. A shame, though, the key-card obviated the need for a knock on the door.
• To distant Scotland, to plug my new book at the Wigtown Festival.
A livelier, friendlier and more enjoyable small festival would be hard to find.
I am bedevilled by a series of misfortunes, however. There's the hour I spend outside Dumfries station in the drizzle.
There's the festival director having - with manful brilliance - to step in when it emerges there's no chair for my event.
And then there's the bookshop containing no copies of the book I'm supposed to be persuading the punters to buy.
And the event I am co-chairing where the author doesn't show up.
This is to say nothing of my getting lost in the dark on deserted country roads with my phone conked out.
Personally, I couldn't be more delighted. The book I'm here to promote is called Sod's Law. It is already working its mojo.
Reader views (9)
I thought she had taken herself to America. One gets the feeling Tracey will feel a disconnect wherever she plonks herself. It's hilarious that now the poor me/outsider attitude is because she's so wealthy she's disgruntled at having to pay the tax bill asked of her. Artists! Eh!
- Jools, London, 07/10/2009 11:53
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Actually, looking at Emin now, she looks like an old boxer who had one fight too many, and to be fair, her art work looks much the same.
- James, Manchester England, 06/10/2009 17:42
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'Drinking water is one of those things .... that wants and needs to be free'
What about buses as well, paid for like a utility bill by locals, and only charging at point of use to visitors?
The congestion on the Tube would plummet without any new capacity.
- Mdj E10, london uk, 05/10/2009 22:15
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What a vile creature Emin surely is.Having amassed a very healthy pile of our cash for herself for her so called art she whines and moans about paying too much tax while there are people around the world dying from starvation every second of every day.Go to France you spoilt little halfwit,tell ya what I'll help you pack!!!
- Mike Pedley., Derbyshire,UK, 05/10/2009 19:55
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I'm not sure the French will appreciate Emin's dirty bed, knickers and tampons sort of art. Emin, Hirst & Co represent everything that is wrong with modern art. Charles Saatchi provides the cash and ideas and Emin and Hirst duly give him a conveyor belt full of mediocrity. Would it be too much for her to give back a liitle, after all she has been getting money for old rope.
- James, Manchester England, 05/10/2009 15:37
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Tracy Emin leaving London? What s shame - having read a number of things she has said in the past, and may I add having gone to a number of galleries displaying her work I really cant say I am going to be crying into my conflakes upon her departure. The French are welcome to Emin - Au revoir!
- Marcus Newman, London, 05/10/2009 13:16
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Most of us were disappointed in 1997 when Paul Daniels told us that he would leave the UK if Labour were elected. His decision to stay on did not receive the same amount of coverage.
- S Jones, Kennington England, 05/10/2009 12:54
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So, a list of those who have said they will leave Britain if tax goes up/Labour gets in, compiled over the last few years, contains luminaries such as Paul Daniels, Jim Davidson, Andrew Lloyd Weber and now Miss Emin.
How will we survive without them?
Note to Gordon - Raise it to 60% and see what other dross we can get rid of.
- Barry, Welwyn England, 05/10/2009 12:42
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Why does anyone expect financial altruism from the likes of Emin or "rich" people?
The madhouse housing pricing experience over the last twenty years should have taught us that.
The attitude to "poor first time buyers" dissipates as soon as the seller enters the greedy estate agents parlour - and so the web is spun.
Don’t even expect individuals to take "societies" needs into account when spending on themselves, most don’t even want to care for their own elderly parents - they want someone else to do it, AND pay for it so their parents house - their inheritance - is safely tucked away for them to consume after they die.
This is what the past twelve years has encouraged our consumer driven techno-addicted greedy and indebted decadent “society” to become.
So don`t be surprised when the likes of Emin turns their backs on the hands that fed them, just because times are hard for the “little people”.
- Darius, London UK, 05/10/2009 11:14
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