The hard case of Lord Wardington leaves me, of course,
sym- pathetic, but rather perplexed. What he said in the House of Lords on Tuesday, if The Times report can be trusted, was that "the highest category of surtax-payers were severely, if not brutally, treated. . . . These so-called rich, after paying rates and taxes and other inescapable liabilities, would not have a penny of free income to buy a crust of bread." That means slow starvation, which is. very horrible. But the thing is odd. Lord Wardington is chairman of Lloyds Bank and several other things besides, and I am quite sure his income is many times as large as mine. Yet modest as my takings are, I am not within shouting distance of the crust-of-bread (let alone no-crust-of-bread) level so far. Let us try a sum or two. Out of his first £2,000 of income Lord Wardington keeps £i,000. Out of the next £5oo he keeps £200. Out of the neat £50o he keeps £192 Is. 6d. Out of the next p,000 he keeps £337 los. Out of 9n income of £4,000, therefore, the Chancellor the Exchequer still leaves roughly £1,730, enough surely to cover a cell wherein to dwell, a little bit of bread, and even a little bit butter on the bread—and to pay the rates. There are men fightin
in Libya on less than that.
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