Andy Burnham wants to splash as much public cash as possible – but where on earth does he think it all comes from?

GOD, don’tcha just hate billionaires? Greedy bastards bleeding the world dry just so they can send their pneumatic wives and their stupid friends into space. Andy Burnham wants to bleed the public purse dry Credit: Shutterstock Editorial Our new PM must have forgotten where all this cash comes from – taxes Credit: Getty Gormless tech bros, smarmy bankers, crackpot inventors and all those power-mad media moguls (urgh, aren’t they the worst?) brainwashing and exploiting us plebs I think we can agree that this planet would be a much nicer place if they ALL just buggered off to Mars. Right? Of course not. You see, while many of the super-rich might well be utterly odious, we would all be completely screwed without them. Because the vast majority of billionaires are not idle aristocrats luxuriating in inherited wealth handed down through the generations. Most of those chaps are skint, ligging about society snorting cocaine and boring everyone to death. No, many of the “real deal” billionaires are game-changing entrepreneurs, like the men who made the keyboard I’m currently bashing (Michael Dell, worth $250billion) and the software I’m using to help ­create this column (Google bosses Larry Page, $278billion, and Sergey Brin, ($264billion). Chris Rokos, a British-born hedge fund manager, is set to leave Britain Credit: PA Chancellor John Healey is gearing up to clobber the rich even further in next month’s Budget Credit: PA Blokes like them — they’re usually men — provide employment for thousands of people and products and services for ­billions. And, typically, they pay truckloads of tax. Even with the best “tax-efficiency” accountants, they still flood government coffers with billions, which is used to pay for vital things such as hospitals, schools and, er, £500,000 pay-offs for senior civil servants. So the trick for people who lead ­countries is to keep them in the tent so you can keep syphoning off all that ­delicious tax. Well this week we discovered Andy Burnham has become the latest hapless PM to have failed to do that. On his watch — and granted he has inherited an obscenely high-tax country from the schmucks before him — Britain’s third-biggest taxpayer has decided to flee the ­country. Chris Rokos, a British-born hedge fund manager who essentially invests money from things like pensions to make even more money for things like pensions, is upping sticks to Greece and taking with him the £330MILLION in tax he hands over each year. To put that into perspective, that’s enough to pay for 6,500 teachers or 8,000 nurses every year. It is, by any definition, a lot of money. And now we won’t have it. We don’t know exactly why Rokos is quitting a country he evidently holds dear (he has donated £190million to Cambridge University alone) but we can hazard a guess. Greece charging foreigners a flat fee of 100,000 euros in tax on overseas income is one clue. Obviously it’s hard to compete with that but we could have tried to ­mitigate it by not strangling British businesses with so much financial red tape and picking fights with wealth creators. Thanks to successive governments Britain has become a country where hard work and success has been met with the most punitive tax ­system in decades. It’s no wonder thousands of wealthy people — estimates vary but a Henley & Partners report put the figure at 9,500 for 2024 — have recently scarpered. Push factors include abolishing the so-called “non-dom” status under which folk living abroad only had to pay tax here on income earned in the UK. Other moves, like changes in inheritance tax, capital gains tax and VAT on public school fees, have also accelerated the “millionaire flight”. How much more can Brits be expected to fork over for less and less in return? Credit: Getty On Burnham’s watch, Britain’s third-biggest taxpayer has decided to flee the ­country Credit: Shutterstock Editorial More punishment beatings are set to come, as new boy Chancellor John Healey gears up to clobber the rich even further in next month’s Budget. Those on the Left shrug their shoulders and insist the people leaving represent a minuscule amount of the three million millionaires who live here. Now it’s three million minus one — a bloody great big one, who doubtless paid more tax than many of the rest of them put together. Look, we don’t have to fall in love with our fat cats. We don’t even have to like them. But it is categorically not in ­Britain’s interest to lose them and the public funds they provide. Who will be next? Because there will be more. Andy Burnham’s entire worldview is built on spending as much public money as he can get his hands on. It’s high time he paid a bit more ­attention to where it actually comes from. Oasis anger surge Recordings of chats between the Oasis brothers are to be sold Credit: Getty OLD recordings of legacy band du jour Oasis are going on sale for upwards of a million quid – and Messrs Our Liam and Noel aren’t fookin’ ’appy. Bootlegs from gigs in the 90s and “unfiltered” backstage banter between the brothers were recorded by a former sound engineer, whose son is now flogging them at auction. Understandably the band want to have control of this sort of thing, no doubt so they can use it to push more stuff to fans currently flocking to see their new tour film. There is a simple solution: The brothers could dip into their own pockets, recently pumped full of £300million from last year’s gigs, and take the recordings off the market. Of course there is no guarantee that the grumpy Gallaghers will secure the haul for its listed price of £1.2million to £1.6million. Indeed, if there’s a rush of interest, the price could easily, ahem, surge, resulting in them being forced to pay far more than they were expecting to at the outset. Sound familiar, lads? George and the flaggon Prince George has started his schooling at Eton College Credit: PA AS a father of young teenagers, I find myself frequently wrestling with the thorny issue of how to approach their curiosity about alcohol. Well, I have now learned of an intriguing strategy practised by Prince George’s new school, Eton College. The Windsor toff factory has its own subsidised pub known as The Tap where, from the age of 16, boys can order two pints of beer or cider, three times a week. So a policy of under-age drinking but in moderation. Sounds like just the kind of sensible solution that teaches kids the joys of alcohol and pub culture without getting them so bladdered they become a complete Eton mess. Who ate all the spies? Igor Chaika head of Russia’s ‘international co-operation agency’ Credit: Sputnik HE’S the grand fromage who’s eaten all the fromage. Igor Chaika, 37, head of Russia’s “international co-operation agency”, cut an imposing figure as he fielded questions at a press conference this week. Can we sign you up as Man United’s new goalie, would have been my question. Conspiracy theorists always like to suggest that Vladimir Putin has a body double. Well, this beast has a double body. Shore thing Karl Bushby is just a 21- mile doggy-paddle away from completing his bid to travel around the world without using any mode of transport Credit: Getty FORMER paratrooper Karl Bushby is just a 21- mile doggy-paddle away from completing his bid to travel around the world without using any mode of transport. Plucky Karl, who set off on his 30,000-mile journey in 1998, had to pester French authorities to let him swim home across the Channel as strict rules usually prohibit that from beaches in France. I’m surprised he bothered asking. As we’ve seen, the French don’t put much effort into stopping those who have traversed the globe from disembarking its shores. Colin with the cast of The Inbetweeners Credit: Supplied I’M pumped for the new Inbetweeners movie, which better be as deliciously puerile as everything else this foul-mouthed foursome have done. Stuff the easily-triggered snowflakes. They can watch all the other woke rubbish in cinemas these days. Many moons ago I spent some time with the show’s charming stars when they were filming their TV show in some crummy pub in Walthamstow. I can’t remember much of what happened, suffice to say having arrived dressed in my then-regulation office wear, I spent the day being referred to ­– deservedly so – as “suit w***er”. Eddie Izzard cycles through Notting Hill Credit: MJ-Pictures.com “SUZY Eddie Izzard, 64, sports a pleated mini-skirt and towering knee-high boots as she cycles through Notting Hill without a helmet on Monday,” so blared the headline of one website this week. Well, I hate to nitpick but I’m pretty sure “she” is very much in ­possession of a helmet. LEFTIE loon Miriam ­Margolyes attempted to wriggle out of her latest racist clanger by suggesting she’d only called Andi Peters a “high yalla” because she was ­interested in what he thought about being black. “All of us feel something about who we are and how people see us, what they think of us,” chuntered the tiresome old windbag. It’s a shame this ridiculous “national treasure” didn’t spend a little more time ­wondering how people see her and whether they think of her as a fat old racist.