(4th December 2020) As the weather worsens the coming vaccine is good news. The priority order seems reasonable.
However, what does a 40-year-old rich person do? They will be down the list. Nevertheless, I am sure that there will be clinics in Switzerland who will oblige, for a fee.
So here is an idea based on three known facts.
- There are wide levels of income inequality in this country.
- The vaccination programme will cost a lot of money-eventually paid for by the taxpayers (us).
- The rich are in the best position to minimise their tax payments (see Lady Green who owned Arcadia taking a £1.2 billion dividend) a few years ago and paid no tax on it.
Thus, a logical idea- given that people drafted in to give the injections are paid the curious figure of £ 11.32 per jab (call it £15.00 to allow for admin and NI), we could set aside 5% of the jabs for people to pay to jump the queue. I suggest £5,000 which is probably cheaper than going to Switzerland twice. This would pay for 332 ordinary people to have injections.
Assuming 100,000 rich people took up this offer it would pay for over 33 million jabs. Given that the top one percent of the adult population would number over 400,000 people this is a modest proposed take up. (If Lady Green had paid tax of 30% this would have covered nearly another two and a half million jabs).
Suggest this to anyone you know with power and influence; I wonder what the Daily Mail would think?
