That Jimmy Carr fella, ain’t he a prize chump? When faced with the public finding out that he was doing something perfectly legal to keep his hands on his money, he did something silly.

He pretended that he’d done something wrong.

What he should have said is this: what kind of an idiot pays more tax than they need to? Seriously, why would you? Why would you not minimise the amount of your money that is taken by force by the state?

We all do it to some extent; we put money in pensions rather than in bank accounts because it’s tax deductible. We buy stuff at duty free when we can. We take advantage of VAT changes where possible. ISAs exist because the state realises that many people won’t save unless the state lets them off paying tax to do so. We put in claims for tax deductions on uniforms and the like.

We all do what little we can to stop our money being taken from us. Are we so hypocritical that it’s suddenly different when someone only pays tax on £100,000; i.e., he only contributes dozens of thousands of pounds?

The answer is, of course, that we are hypocritical. We are holding double standards; these people aren’t doing anything more than we would do if we could, it’s just that they have the money to do it better.

Obviously, hypocrisy is another reason that Carr is in trouble, what with him professing to be a standard big-state lefty. But I’ve known that about him for a while…