All budgets are presented in incomprehensible accountants language, based on a conjuring trick, to get us to part with our money.
Whilst the Chancellor of the Exchequer bribes us with “give-aways” with the right hand, the left hand is in your back pocket, deftly taking it all back.
The “give-aways” hit the deadlines, buts it’s the small print the next day, when we realise we have been mugged.
Never before has a budget been “leaked” openly – especially the 50p tax uproar.
This was the last gasp in they dying days of Labour, a soak-the-rich gimmick playing to the public gallery but rather than raising more revenue, it was a vindictive plot to wrong-foot any in-coming Tory government, daring to abolish it.
Welcome it is, now it’s been reduced, still not enough, which will encourage business and jobs, also shutting down remaining tax loopholes and surely yielding more tax revenue.
Critics do not seem to realise the symbolic effect this has on foreign companies and investors, looking with favour on UK Plc Ltd.
So why not wait until April next year, George?
So far so good, but now the bombshell out of nowhere.
This so-called “granny tax”. Rightly, poorer pensions are exempt, with pension concessions all intact for all, but why prey on those thrifty pensioners, already punished with minimum returns on their savings by having tax allowance frozen. Surely, it’s back to the drawing board on this on, George...never underestimate the grey vote.
All in all, the government has not yet got on top of public spending. For all the savage cuts, the budget scarcely tackled the public squandering of our taxes – state salaries, lavish quangos, entitlements, red-tape, bloated welfare, gold-plated pensions, foreign aid, idiotic projects, human rights nonsense et al.
All of this makes us unfit and uncompetitive to face the young tigers of Brazil, India and mighty China.
And so the verdict on Budget 2012: the right way, George, but you can do better.
As for Labour – don’t throw stones in glass houses you built.
Brian Johnston, Leeds
Comments