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March 23, 2007
Gordo's give-aways ...
Seems to me that our dear Chancellor has done a very neat sleight of hand in his budget. In fact, if I wasn't one of those hit in the pocket (Nothing new there then!) I could quite admire the masterful piece of sleight of hand he has pulled off. First, the BIG bit of generosity, scrapping the 10% tax band for lowest income earners. Well, big deal, I happen to be one of those hit hard by that, because my pension is under £10k a year. So, for me, the tax rate just went up 10%. Ah, but wait, the Chancellor has been very generous, he has increased the tax allowance for pensioners - but only if you are over 65 - so that rules me out again. My local tax office is as sympathetic as ever, "well, of course it is hard for those who fall outside the net Mister X, but there are inevitably some losers no matter what!" Yes, there are, as long as it's not the Civil Servants and their Political Masters that's quite OK then isn't it.
Oh, and his BIG tax cut. Ah, well, that doesn't take effect until NEXT year. So, actually, he hasn't given the poorer end of the scale a damned thing. But he has raised the threshold for the top rate of tax, so all those nice champagne socialists who vote for him in the City can enjoy a nice little tax break. Funny that, throughout the years I was one of the so-called "middle income earners" he refused to make that change because people like me who were always just inside the higher rate zone, were "rich" and didn't qualify for all the breaks available below the "middle income group" (defined by the ever loving Civil Service as anything between £25k and £40k per year) and we certainly didn't get enough to take advantage of the tax breaks available to the people on the top brackets. Of course if I were to set out an father a whole herd of illigitimate children I could, I suppose, claim this ephemeral "Family Credit" which is supposed to be better than the former "Married Persons" allowance, but then probably not. Its so complicated to get onto it that most people aren't claiming their actual entitlement. What about Child Support. Ah, well, as a male I am NOT entitled to that even if I did have the proverbial set of rug rats to feed. THAT gets paid to the mother, mere males might just spend it all down at the local boozer you see. So single overage males just continue to get what they have always had, a good shafting at every opportunity and a demand that we continue to pay for the hordes of worthless pen pushers and sycophants in Whitehall and Westminster.
Looking at his latest adjustment to corporate tax, one has to ask which boardrooms have managed to engage his services. It will be interesting to see what Directorships he picks up when he is eventually kicked out of Downing Street and hopefully Westminster. At least we will then know who handed him the sweetners for this one. Small businesses have, according to him, been evading tax. So, the answer is raise their tax band and put the squeeze on them, then lower the rates for the really big players and give them further breaks for "research" and "investment". For both of those read "sweetners".
I suppose I could develop a "victim" mentality here, because all too often it is my generation, those born between 1943 and 1949 who seem to get shafted by the politicians at every turn. We always seem to be in that undefined zone where any change to pensions, tax or any other aspect of employment or income, seems to benefit those ahead or behind us - but hits us right in the wallet, bank account or investments. We are always the ones who don't qualify for the "new" deal or have our membership of the original deal curtailed. Just once in a while it would be nice to get included in something that actually benefits us.
I suppose I should be grateful, I don't drive a Chelsea Tractor and I drink very little anyway. With the extra tax coming out of my already shrunken pension, I couldn't afford to keep the tractor and I certainly can't afford to do much more drinking once the extra tax has been docked. I do trust that increasing the tax on beer while not hitting the Scottish Distilling trade isn't an anti-English thing, or we could really get paranoid about this budget.
Well, I suppose we can but live in hope that this malignant fraud will soon be history, but his legacy is unlikely to be disturbed by the likely successors - another bunch of self-interested idiots if ever I saw any.
Posted by The Gray Monk at March 23, 2007 02:48 PM
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Comments
Must be the human race. We are doing the same sort of stuff in the USA. Drives me nuts. Then again, I wanted a flat rate for EVERYONE. I don't think it is fair to 'tax' the rich more than the average... Sigh.
Posted by: vw bug at March 24, 2007 12:17 PM
Could be - its more likely to be the sentiment of greed and envy. You have more than me - "thats not fair!" So I'll have it off you any way I can is what drives most of the "Socialist" agenda.
Posted by: The Gray Monk at March 25, 2007 08:20 PM