What he gives with one hand.......?

Given the unalloyed enthusiasm which he engenders in some news followers, I think I’m unusual in finding Robert Peston extremely irritating. It’s something to do with the staccato emphasis, apropos of nothing, with which he imbues every report. I was therefore somewhat relieved and refreshed to hear Nick Robinson breaking the big economic story yesterday.

Robinson has discovered that, allied to an immediate cut in VAT, the government is to raise taxes at the next election, introducing a 45% band for top earners. This move will be impregnated more with symbolism and populism rather than practicality (as just as it might seem). It is likely to raise a mere £2billion, which is small change next to Gordon Brown’s planned borrowing, never mind that already incurred.

On the Today programme Robinson speculated that Labour’s main means of recouping some of its astronomical debt more likely lies in the realm of National Insurance. This of course would affect every wage earner and every business in the country. Smoke and mirrors is the phrase which springs to mind.

Comments

Timothy Belmont said…
I hear speculation that more of the "family silver" shall be sold off in order to pay for the latest governmental spending spree. The Met Office, forestry etc have been mentioned. Not happy about that at all.
Unless you really are, literally, counting your pennies (I'd concede it'd matter more to companies), a few per cent reduction in VAT won't make much difference.

Tim
24 November 2008 at 10:21
Anonymous said…
If all the public debt including PFI Pensions and contingencies is taken into account it will near £3 trillion after todays 'give away' which it seems is £100,000 for every individual who works in the UK. (See CPS for base numbers).

Yes £100,000 that is the amount that will have to be generated from taxes on behalf of every worker in the UK.

So let us estimate, if tax is 20%of pay and the average wage is £25,000 that means it would take 20years to clear the debt and then they would have to start on future expenditure. Of course not all taxes are paid by individuals so 15years may be a better estimate.

Not a pretty picture
24 November 2008 at 14:17
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro...
Read more