The brassiest of brass necks

What is it with this time of year? One minute you're getting Ken Livingstone criticising someone for being tactless and insensitive and the next you get this:

I loathe these new Londoners – brash, arrogant, vulgar, loud and tasteless

And who is spelling out this message of hatred for the brash, the arrogant, the vulgar, the loud and the tasteless? Janet Street-Porter, that's who. The rest of the article is the usual balls.

[Livingstone] should consider a wealth tax, whereby any Londoner with an address in the congestion zone has to pay a tithe of 1 per cent of their earnings over £500,000 a year into schemes funding youth workers and practical training for the teenagers who hang around doing very little night after night.

As well as the 40% tax they already pay? Plus the Council tax they already pay? Oh, and a 'tithe' is a word with a meaning by the way - it's not synonymous with 'tax'. Arcane words are only impressive if you know what they mean.

The news this week that a millionaire banker "forgot" that his £80,000 Maserati had been towed away three months earlier, and had been languishing in a car pound in west London, running up £5,000 in fines, is another example of the kind of resident we can do without.

Why? He's just, through his own stupidity/astonishing wealth, given £5,000 to the local council. Which is as much as your proposed 'tithe' would have raised from someone earning £1 million. If he's careless enough to subsidise the council, why should we complain?

At the bank Mr Des Paillieres had a PA to sort out "domestic matters", and without this support, his life has become disorganised. It's time for this character to enter the real world...The first step in this man's rehabilitation will be to survive without a PA. I've finally managed it and my life is vastly improved.

Note to Ms Street-Porter: the life of a banker is more difficult than a media tart and occasional journalist.