Shove off into a corner

Because it's a wonderful day. It's Tax Freedom Day, according to the Adam Smith Institute.

Tax Freedom Day is special for the free-marketeers. It marks the point in the calendar when Britons supposedly stop working for the Treasury and begin to earn for themselves.

In the words of institute director Dr Eamonn Butler, the 149 days at the start of the year "is the time the average person must labour for the tax collectors."

Now before all of you start filling in your application forms for a job in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, we should point out that Dr Butler is being less than exact here.

This is, of course, much to the disappointment of all the hardworking civil servants who, on reading the good doctor's words, have already started packing their buckets and spades.

Sorry chaps, that's not it at all.

What he really meant is that 149/365ths of the average income goes on tax.

So all of you with visions of sun-drenched tropical islands packed with filthy rich tax officials in aloha shirts and casual sandals enjoying a long vacation at our expense will have to think again.

The overstretched officials at HMRC will have to resign themselves to continuing to pin down obscenely rich tax-dodgers despite being 3,300 short of staff thanks to the Tory cuts.

Free-marketeers from the Tory Party right will have to look elsewhere for something to justify their vindictive hatred of public officials in general and tax inspectors in particular.

And for those of you who have been conned by the Establishment media to feel resentful of taxation rather than thankful for the services it pays for, think again.

Because the tax you pay isn't subsidising the vacationing tax collectors' Cuba Libres and frozen daiquiris on the beach in Barbados.

Instead it's paying for the National Health Service, the old age pension and the benefits for the poor and the needy, the sick and the disabled.

It's funding your roads, your street lights, your fire and police services.

It pays for old people's lunch clubs - where they haven't been cut to death - and addicts' clinics.

It finances treatment and rehabilitation for the mentally ill, it pays for the ambulances, the social workers and the crisis teams.

It pays for the education of the youth, the parks they play in and the libraries they read in.

If you are an average person, you were born using its revenues, are taken care of throughout your life using tax-financed resources and when you die, you are likely to be buried or cremated using municipal facilities.

It funds Parliament, its MPs and all the machinery of democracy.

And also pays for David Cameron, George Osborne, Vince Cable and the arms budget.

So it's not all good, but you get the general idea.

To the Adam Smith Institute, we send this message.

We actually enjoy working collectively to provide the things we all need.

That's what human society is all about. Working together, living together and playing together.

And if you don't like it, all you free-market, anarchistic, individualistic, solipsistic entrepreneurs, why don't you all bugger off into a corner and rejoice in your solitary and friendless individualism and your lack of fellow-feeling with other members of the human race on your very special Tax Freedom Day.

Meanwhile, we'll get on with building a decent society that cares for everyone in need and, hopefully, get rid of parasites, exploiters and, most especially, the Adam Smith Institute.