Don't let the Door Hit You on The Way Out

From the Independent

Comedian and TV presenter Griff Rhys Jones will “probably” move abroad and buy a “massive palace” if Labour wins the next general election, he has said.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Jones, 61, said Labour’s plans to introduce a “mansion tax” on the super-rich would hit him hard as he currently lives in a “gigantic” house in Fitzrovia, London.

He bought the property about 15 years ago when it was a “slum”, he said, and spent the next few years doing it up.

I'm sure Mark already has a classification for these people to go with the poor widows, something like the "restoration justifiers" (someone come up with another name), people who try to pretend that the reasons their homes rose in value is that they got the plasterers and decorators in.

Jones, famous for BBC comedy show Alas Smith and Jones in the 1980s and 1990s and for the Three Men in a Boat series with Dara Ó Briain and Rory McGrath more recently, said he might leave the UK if Ed Miliband led the Labour party to power.

“It would mean I’d be paying the most colossal tax, which is aimed at foreigners who have apparently come in and bought up all the property in London. That sounds about as fatuous an idea as that immigrants are stealing all the jobs,” he said.

Well, no, it's not aimed at that. It's aimed at people who have seen a rise in house prices as a result of a windfall.

“I’d probably live abroad because I could get some massive palace which I could restore.”

Good. Clear off, then. Would anyone miss Griff Rhys Jones at this point? What does he do nowadays? Stands in front of an autocue for that BBC restoration show. Plenty of people who can do the same job.