TREASURY Minister Philip Ozouf’s first Budget brought back memories of a Monty Python sketch about a befuddled highwayman who ended up robbing the poor to give to the rich.

The Pythons’ tale of Dennis Moore has always stuck in my mind – not just because it is very funny but also because it happened to be filmed in St Peter. At that time, my father was working at a house close by and every evening would recount the day’s proceedings. The tale of Mr Moore began with John Cleese, in the title role, holding up a coach to rob the occupants of their lupins before galloping off laden with bunches of these colourful blooms.

Cut to studio set depicting a peasant woodcutter’s hovel, where the occupants are dressed in clothes made from lupins, they have run out of ways to cook them and the cat has just choked to death on a stem. When the hapless highwayman arrives with even more, the starving woodcutter berates him and suggests he might be more gainfully illegally employed stealing useful things such as money, gold or jewels.

So successful is Mr Moore, after taking the peasant’s advice to rob the rich to give to the poor, that he has to make a U-turn and take back from the poor to restore the wealth to the impoverished ruling class. Pausing in one of many cross-country gallops he looks to the camera and says: ‘Wait a tick … blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.’

Redistributing a nation’s wealth and balancing the government’s books, to make sure there’s sufficient money in the public bank account to pay for all the essential services we have come to expect, is tricky indeed. In proposing hikes in duty to raise cash for health provision and pegging tax allowances at a time when the average worker’s wage is subject to a pay freeze, Senator Ozouf has certainly rattled a few cages.

At first glance the Island looks to the world like an affluent community where people have money to burn. The streets are relatively clean and litter free, the populace appears well dressed and content, there are no beggars sitting in shop doorways and storey upon storey of public car parks are packed with shiny motors ranging from trendy little Italian run-arounds to people carriers the size of a small house extension, with the odd ridiculous super ‘toys for boys’ car snuggled in between.

We who live here all year round, and who venture outside the growing waterfront-orientated metropolis dominated by construction cranes, know the other side of the story.

The 2010 Budget fact that made yours truly sit up and think was that a pensioner living on £25,000 a year – with no mortgage commitment – would be expected to pay £780 in income tax. Considering that the average salary of Islanders earning less than £80,000 is £30,000 – £6,000 more than in the UK – and £100,000 for salaries above £80,000, it is a pretty selfish society that expects the elderly to cough up such a relatively considerable amount.

The unfairness does not stop at penalising the old, as the proposal to freeze tax allowances will result in even more low earners being pulled into the tax net, thereby reducing their ability to save or enjoy a few of the little luxuries so many take for granted. If you have aspirations to climb up the social ladder in Jersey you need to start a few rungs up – but will you like what you meet at the top?

Maths was never my strong point but in the interests of a just society should we not be applying the Robin Hood principle, as opposed to Dennis Moore’s, by taxing the higher paid to help the less well off? If we are going to redistribute the obvious wealth in this comfortable little tax haven then let’s start at the top and let the benefits filter down.

Having been taught the value of money from an early age, my financial dealings have been governed by the sound advice of living within one’s means, as imparted by the delightful Dickens character, Mr Micawber to David Copperfield – even if he failed to follow it himself. ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’

It is our desire to live beyond our means – and the driving force of finance to gamble other people’s money to make ever bigger profits – that last year so nearly resulted in the collapse of capital, leaving us mere mortals to contend with the legacy of recession, pay freezes, redundancies and mortgage foreclosures. Now the Treasury is proposing to tax the old and workers at the lower end of the pay scale to shore up an economy over-reliant on a finance industry that got us into this fine mess.

In taking the sum of £780 from a pensioner living on £25,000, just what will the taxman be depriving them of next year? The ability to fund treats and outings for grandchildren, or a well-earned annual holiday after a lifetime’s toil? Or could this not insignificant amount be spent on more basic items such as fuel bills, medical care or home repairs?

The clippity clop of the hooves of Dennis Moore’s horse can be heard resounding in the streets of St Helier as the taxman prepares to take from the ‘poor’ to prop up the rich.
The Chuckle Brothers’ failure to rein in public overspending since the introduction of government by a coterie of ministerial dictators is the underlying reason why the 2010 Budget will hit those who can least afford to have their incomes reduced.

With or without the worldwide recession, Mr Micawber’s dictum was always going to come true. We live in a society where basic goods are already overpriced, where house prices have lost all sense of reality and in which we are in serious danger of creating a social divide between an overcrowded town and an affluent countryside.

If 7,000 Islanders can be mobilised to form a line in St Ouen’s Bay in defence of the coastline, perhaps the reinvigorated ‘Angry Men’ can organise a ring around the Island in the cause of social justice and a fair redistribution of wealth.