The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday 7 November 2010

The BBC's motto is "Nation shall speak peace unto nation", not just "Nation shall speak unto nation".

Last week I received an email from an organisation called 38 Degrees. I don't like emails from organisations unless they're giving me a reference number for an online taxi booking, in which case they're comforting. (That's the inner city equivalent of a cosy fireside and a hug: some digits you can plaintively cite to a stranger when your cab doesn't turn up.) I delete the unsolicited ones. I'll never be the massive-penised, permanently erect, luxury watch owner with a PhD from the University of Pretend that these organisations seem to want.

38 Degrees wasn't offering "prescription meds", a chance to share my bank details with someone who doesn't understand grammar or even 38 qualifications by correspondence course, so I read on. I wish I hadn't. It asked me to sign a petition calling on George Osborne to pay the £1.6m of tax that a Channel 4 programme alleges he and his family are paying accountants to help them dodge. It declared that: "along with two other cabinet ministers, he's avoiding paying tax", that: "'Legal' tax dodges like this cost the rest of us billions" and that: "George Osborne seems to think it's OK to have one rule for him and his friends and another rule for everybody else."

What a stupid, wrongheaded campaign. Along with George Osborne and "two other cabinet ministers", I avoid paying tax. Only saints and incompetents don't. Most people pay the minimum amount of tax they're legally required to and not a penny more. That's prudent tax avoidance not illegal tax evasion. Osborne is doing what any self-employed person who keeps receipts for stationery is also doing. It's not "legal", it's just legal.

Does 38 Degrees really want this to become a country where politicians, as well as being scandalously underpaid considering the importance of their jobs, are expected to pay more tax than the law requires? Should we all be chipping in a bit more if we think we can afford it – treating the Treasury like a charity? Is that its vision of liberalism? Like a "pay what you can" night at the theatre, the more generous and generous-spirited, the caring, the giving, will feel the pressure to pay more – it would be a tax on qualms, on social conscience. What a brilliant scheme for finally, irrevocably, impoverishing the left.

George Osborne doesn't "think it's OK to have one rule for him and his friends and another rule for everybody else". He knows he can't get away with that. What he thinks is OK, and what the petition should really address, is how that one rule, which applies to all of us, is so much more beneficial to him and his friends – to the rich – than to everybody else.

The rules are universal but unfair. They allow the rich to avoid tax without having to evade it and Osborne, as chancellor, is responsible. We should be protesting about this, not that he's keeping as much of his own money as the law currently permits. If it helped focus his mind on a wholesale reform of the taxation system, I'd happily let him off tax altogether, make it a perk of the job. I don't care about his £1.6m. I care about the billions being lost through the same loophole.

Maybe 38 Degrees thinks I'm making a meaningless distinction. If so, it's wrong. It makes a big mistake by not concentrating on the real issue but making a snide personal dig at a public figure's private conduct. This sort of carping, this demonising of wealth, is what makes progressive politics so unattractive. Like a trending topic on Twitter, it's preaching to the choir, it fails to resonate with the wider population, it seems naive. It lets the political right wing pretend to contain the more serious, pragmatic people. There is no chance this petition will change anyone's mind and that makes it much more of a public relations failure for advocates of redistributive taxation than the revelation of Osborne's tax avoidance is for the Tories.

Few organisations have a greater mastery of the public relations gaffe than the BBC, which last week attracted press criticism because its presenters were deemed to be wearing their Remembrance Day poppies too early. In an official statement, director general Mark Thompson remarked: "We can't fucking win with you shits, can we!?"

If only. And who would honestly blame him (as opposed to saying they blamed him)? The poor corporation is harassed at every turn by its enemy-competitors in the print media. Fearful of criticism for not showing our troops and the fallen sufficient respect, poppies are issued early, only for that to be the cause of another kicking. The BBC is the gentle giant of the media school playground, bullied by the smaller, nastier kids. And, with the licence fee frozen for six years, a ruling which doesn't decrease the national deficit by a penny, it becomes clear that the new headmaster hates it too. But then he's best friends with the school bully's dad.

I think it's time the BBC gave up on PR and got nasty. It'll never gain the approval of the Daily Mail or the Murdoch empire so it should give up trying. It could start by closing the World Service. If the Foreign Office doesn't want to pay for it, why should the licence fee payer? It's a radio station you can't even receive in most of Britain. Let the foreigners pay for their own radio or the FCO for its own propaganda. I might start a petition.

Of course it would be barbaric of the BBC to do any such thing. Its mission is to "inform, educate and entertain" not "deliver value to licence fee payers"; its motto is: "Nation shall speak unto nation." But while its enemies spare it, it may as well do what those running it think is right, not what they hope will evade censure. Wear poppies when and because you think they should be worn, not to dodge criticism for failing to wear them. Pay for the World Service because it's a gift to the planet which dignifies the giver.

Is George Osborne doing what he thinks is right? He claims to be. When he's minimising his tax liability, I don't think he's doing anything wrong. But when he frames legislation which he knows, from personal experience, leaves rich people's unneeded money untaxed while public services are stripped to the bone, how can he think that's right? It's just of the right.