A MODEST LEVY ON THE BRIGADIER
Satire. This post is fiction. The people, offices, quotations and legislation in it are invented, and nothing in it is a factual claim about any real person or body. Build UK's sourced material is in the Watchdog and the policy library.
TO: The Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and whoever is currently in charge of both FROM: Sir Randybottom Clutterworth KC DATE: 7th October 2026 SUBJECT: The Automation Levy, and a…
TO: The Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and whoever is currently in charge of both FROM: Sir Randybottom Clutterworth KC DATE: 7th October 2026 SUBJECT: The Automation Levy, and a personal conflict of interest
Good afternoon.
I have been reading the news, which I do rarely and always at a cost to my digestion.
In April, Morrisons announced the loss of about two hundred head-office jobs in Bradford, in a restructuring built around, in the words of the report I read, “increasing automation and AI use”. In 2023, BT told its shareholders it would shed 55,000 roles by 2030, of which up to ten thousand were put down to automation. Its chief executive said the company would be “a huge beneficiary of AI”. I do not doubt it. I have never met a beneficiary who was a redundant person.
I raise this because a young man at BUILD UK has proposed a simple rule. If a company replaces a person with a machine, the machine should cost at least as much as the person. Not less. A solicitor who uses AI to leave at five instead of nine keeps her job. The company gets twice the work. Splendid. A company that sacks the solicitor and keeps the salary pays the levy. Splendid again.
Harrow has pointed out that I am, in fact, the Prime Minister, and that I could simply make this law. I have asked him to stop being sensible in my own pub.
The difficulty.
On reading the proposal I discovered, with some alarm, that the Brigadier has been doing the work of the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Hay since Michaelmas.
He eats the defence papers. He carries the vector files to Whitehall. He has not once been late, argued about his pension, or asked to work from home. The Permanent Secretary is on one hundred and sixty thousand a year. The Brigadier is on a carrot.
Under the levy, Harrow informs me, the Brigadier must be taxed at ten per cent above the Permanent Secretary’s salary.
I asked whether he is a machine. Harrow said he is a horse. I asked whether a horse is better described as a machine or a person. Harrow looked out of the window for some time.
The Brigadier, when told, threw a horseshoe. It went through the lid of the biscuit tin and into the wall. I have left it there as evidence.
My conclusion.
The principle is sound. A country that lets every employer pick the cheaper option, then wonders why nobody can afford a mortgage, is a country that has forgotten what employers are for. The levy should pass.
The Brigadier is exempt. This is not nepotism. It is the one case where the work, the worker and the carrot all match.
Yours, in the interests of the realm and the stable,
Sir Randybottom Clutterworth KC powered by BUILD
This post was written using AI as a disclosed accessibility tool by a dyslexic author. The ideas, experience, and policy positions are entirely human.