An interesting philosophical comment from the tragically dull F1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton: “In life, if you do good things, good things come back to you.” I’m not terribly sure he’s right, though, because I have known plenty of people who did good things and nothing came back to them. In some instances, very bad things happened to them. I’m more of a believer in the law of averages whereby sooner of later if you keep doing bad things, the odds are that one day you will be found out and bad things may happen to you. As philosophers go, Hamilton is not right up there with the best.
The good thing Hamilton says he did was to pull over to allow his team mate to finish third in today’s Hungarian snorefest, or Grand Prix as it is officially known. “Finishing fourth was a wonderful thing to do”, says Hamilton. “I’m going to be rewarded for this.” But how and why?
The fact that Hamilton’s team mate pulled over to allow Hamilton to go into third suggests an odd interpretation of what racing means. The last time I looked, it didn’t mean deliberately slowing down to let someone go past. In any other sport, you would call that cheating, wouldn’t you?
But let’s look deeper into this. One of the good things Hamilton doesn’t like to is pay tax. He’s lived in tax havens for years, first in Switzerland and now Monaco. He’s believed to be worth an eye-watering £150 million and, as a proud, patriotic Brit, doesn’t want to squander any of it paying towards the NHS, schools, the armed forces and all the other vital services we depend on. Hamilton wants to keep all of his wealth for himself so we can pay a little extra ourselves.
“Oh, but you’d do the same thing if you were wealthy, wouldn’t you?” comes the lazy reply. Well, no I wouldn’t actually. I’d be like Andy Murray or Mick Hucknall and live in the country I love and pay my taxes which ensure our country remains civilised. I’ll bet that I pay a higher percentage in tax for my part time work with an international humanitarian charity than Hamilton has ever done in this country but I don’t feel bad about it. I know that because we pay taxes somewhere there is someone getting cancer treatment or a good education or there is a brave emergency service worker saving lives or a soldier defending our country. Hamilton, who likes doing “good things” clearly doesn’t regard these things as important enough.
I don’t wish ill on Hamilton. I just don’t want him to represent me abroad. I don’t want to see him looking all proud in front of the Union Flag because for him it is merely a flag of convenience. Why doesn’t he represent Monaco instead?
As with cricket, as with golf, as with so many sports, motor racing is going to become an even smaller minority sport in future as it removes itself from mainstream media and onto subscription channels. And as with cricket in particular, its so called stars will no longer be household names in their own households.
Hamilton is far from being the only British tax dodging motor racing driver – hello Jenson? – but his bullshit proclamation that he somehow deserves a favour for being a good boy doesn’t pay for a single extra doctor, nurse, firefighter, soldier, teacher or lollypop lady and he deserves nothing but contempt.
You’re boring, Lewis, in a boring sport and you contribute next to nothing to the well-being of our people. And your pathetic self-serving sense of entitlement don’t, as Shania Twain put it, impress me much.
