Angel network bites back at Darling

Hats off to the wonderful people at Angelnews.co.uk, the angel investor network, who have come up with this delightful spoof letter to chancellor Alistair Darling.

Here is is for your amusement, readers.

Darling, I am afraid it is all over

Dear Alistair

I am so sorry that it has come to this. For over 10 years now our relationship has felt like a long honeymoon. I felt you understood me and my desire to improve the state of our country by supporting and investing in the great companies of tomorrow and you have been supportive and benign. I thought I understood you and that you had the same views as me.

I have benefited greatly from being able to contribute to UK plc and reside here as a non-dom, but now that I know you do not want me or my money have sadly decided to move to Switzerland, where I feel much more appreciated and will be able to maintain the privacy I want.

You have made my life so unpleasant in recent years and that of my UK resident angel friends. Why have you encouraged your mates at the Revenue to attack so many of them on their EIS claims? I still don’t understand why EIS can be removed because a UK company generates “too much” revenue overseas, and why do you penalize the entrepreneurs I have backed and their employees with excessive National Insurance contributions?

Why do you have a lunatic attitude to business rates, smaller company tax rates and now Capital Gains Tax? You seem to want to tax growth – surely this was not our vision all those years ago and I can no longer live with it, or you. I also do not want to die in your arms and leave my heirs with an inheritance tax bill that will hasten their own route to their graves.

It now feels that the UK is a truly managed economy. It’s not the third way you promised me, as you seem unable to provide the public benefits in education and so much more which I expected would be the quid pro quo for your high taxes. The cost quite simply, outweighs the benefits.

I know that for every employee there is one vote for you to win, but the obligations on employers are now out of control and are simply unfair. And I bet you have no intention of leveling the playing field. That is plain cynical.

I feel that it is only fair for me to ask our protégées, the entrepreneurs you know and I have invested in, to be offered the choice of whether to leave with me. After all, you do not really need them do you? You have plenty of immigration and I still believe that entrepreneurs and investors should stay close together in the early days when everything is so risky. Also you love big business – I turned a blind eye to the affairs you have repeatedly had with “famous” business people, but I can stand it now longer.

If you want to reach me, I will be staying at our favourite hotel – you know the one in Istanbul where we stayed at the end of last May.

Gabriel

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