When the Bookies Make More Sense Than the Billionaires, It's Time to Reboot the Country

We live in a nation where schools are falling down, trains run on chaos theory, and the only thing that arrives on time is your annual council tax hike. So naturally, John Caudwell — the former Nokia salesman turned kale preacher — has emerged from his crystal palace in Mayfair to save us all from ourselves.

With the air of a man who’s just discovered morality in the back of a Range Rover, Caudwell has demanded a national gambling tax to curb the "mayhem in society." And for good measure, he’d also like to tax alcohol, cigarettes, and—brace yourselves—carbohydrates.

Yes. Carbohydrates. The thing that fuels nurses, builders, and anyone who’s ever seen a Greggs susage roll at 8:45 a.m.

Apparently, the road to salvation is paved not with investment in public services or fair taxation of wealth, but with cabbage.

When Was Flogging Nokia Bricks Ever Building a Healthy Society?

Now, this is the part where we pause to ask: when, exactly, did John Caudwell become the moral referee of Britain? Was it during the years he made £1.5 billion selling early-2000s anxiety machines to teenagers in Romford?

Because unless I missed the press release where Phones4U was rebranded as a mental health charity, flogging Nokia 3210s to the masses wasn’t exactly a selfless act of public service.

He essentially monetised the fine art of ringtone addiction and thumbs-on-keypad RSI. If gambling apps are today’s vice, Caudwell’s phones were the proto-pusher, the gateway drug to the smartphone zombification of society. And now he’s upset people are gambling on their phones? Mate, you helped build the bloody screen.

Selling mobile phones while moaning about gambling is like a pub landlord complaining that people are getting drunk in his beer garden.

“Tax the Idiots” – AK Bets Gets It Right

It fell, gloriously, to AK Bets — a podcast run by men whose entire business model revolves around horse racing, odds-checking, and trying to make a 8-leg accumulator sound like financial planning — to say what the rest of the country was thinking.

As the Caudwell kale sermon made the rounds, AK declared on air:

“There should be a tax on fucking idiots.”

And with that, they became the closest thing Britain has to a shadow Cabinet with common sense.

Let’s formalise it. Not a wealth tax. Not a windfall tax.
A Plank Levy.
A Leafy Moron Surcharge.
A Mandatory Donation for Men Who Say ‘Society’ While Living in a Glass House Full of Chia Seeds.

And John Caudwell should be billed annually.

Britain's New Public Health Plan: Shame the Poor and Praise the Rich

Caudwell’s policy dreams read like they were scribbled on a Whole Foods receipt after a disappointing yoga retreat.

• Tax the gamblers — but not the billionaires who profited from the mobile tech that enables gambling.

• Tax the drinkers — but not the wine-soaked think tanks handing out economic advice like wet wipes at a Tony Blair dinner.

• Tax the carbs — because nothing says “levelling up” like telling a single mum from Hartlepool that penne pasta is now a Class B substance.

He even wants a “concierge service for investors”, because God forbid a multinational corporation doesn’t get a warm flannel and a glass of prosecco when buying half of Bristol.

And yes, he’s formed a think tank: Caudwell Strong Britain — which sounds like the name of a protein shake for right-wing influencers.

You Can Drive a Vintage Chevy Through the Gobi Desert, But You’re Still a Hypocrite

In case you missed it, Caudwell recently went on a 4,000-mile drive through the Gobi Desert in a vintage Chevrolet. He returned, sun-kissed and inspired, declaring China’s solar farms a sign that we must go green—urgently—as long as it doesn’t involve taxing property developers.

You couldn’t invent this if you tried.
He wants to save the world with solar panels, while simultaneously nuking the civil service, taxing toast, and offering “radical” Budget advice like some fusion of Ayn Rand and Gillian McKeith.

And now he’s publicly rating the Labour government out of 10, as if he’s Simon Cowell with a wind turbine. If they don’t do what he says in the next Budget, it’s a 3/10. If they suddenly adopt his cabbage manifesto, they’ll get a 7.

Final Thought: There Should Be a Tax on Kale Evangelists With Gold Chandeliers

Here’s the brutal truth: John Caudwell made his billions hawking phones to people who now can’t put them down, then reinvented himself as Britain’s leafy-green messiah. Now he’s lecturing the nation like a wellness guru with a portfolio of BTLs and a suspiciously favourable VAT strategy.

Meanwhile, it’s left to the lads on AK Bets — the ones in tracksuits, hunched over Coral receipts — to speak sense. And they nailed it:

There should be a tax on fucking idiots.

Start with Caudwell. Backdate it to 2002.
Charge interest for every cabbage-based policy proposal.
And send the invoice by text — preferably on a Nokia 3310.