Why vote DUP? To back stupid Labour VAT cuts.

Last week the German Finance Minister poured scorn upon Alistair Darling’s 2.5% VAT cut, noting that it was an expensive and ineffective expedient, unlikely to get people spending. Nick Clegg believes the £12.5 billion which it costs would be better spent on direct employment through financing infrastructure. Conservatives argue that targeting National Insurance offers a more effective means to benefit business and get money into people’s pockets. Just about every expert on consumer trends in the UK has cast doubt on the likely efficacy of the government’s scheme.

So what does Nigel Dodds assess as a great benefit of DUP representation at Westminster? His party’s ability to wade in behind government in order to defend an expensive, ineffective, temporary sales tax cut, which will have to be paid back with interest, some time in the not so distant future. Perhaps the pressure of all those jobs Nigel is doing has effected his judgment. Maybe the prospect of adding European duties to his already bulging portfolio is starting to get to him.

The DUP’s independence might permit it to exercise questionable judgment to little effect, but Ulster Unionists intend to participate in the party of government. That will offer opportunities to make a genuine contribution and to shape policy, both for the benefit of Northern Ireland and the entire United Kingdom. (H/T Jeffrey Peel)

Comments

Anonymous said…
In fairness, whatever about the rest of the UK, surely the VAT cut has been a fairly significant boon to Northern Irish retaillers?
19 December 2008 at 12:17
Owen Polley said…
whatever about the rest of the UK

Very much in tune with DUP thinking.
19 December 2008 at 13:20
Anonymous said…
Yes John just the other day I meet a chap from Cork who had travelled to Sprucefield. He said that the fact that prices are generally lower in NI, the slump in the pound which saw the pounds go from 65 to 90 cents in a matter of months, the increase in duty on petrol in the South and the massive 40% sales had NOT convinced him to come North - it was the 2.5% VAT cut that swung him.

Do the DUP suppport the massive tax increases - including National Insurance Contributions that are going to kick in down the line
19 December 2008 at 13:59
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