Harry’s Place

Let freedom reign!

About time. Labour deserves a small amount of credit for doing the right thing in the wrong way. If next year’s budget includes long-term measures to help the low paid, then the government will genuinely deserve praise. Until then it seems perfectly reasonable to ask whether or not this is a short-term, cynical stunt.

When Frank Field was speaking he was flanked by John Reid and Charles Clarke. That can’t be just coincidence, surely?

Blair will have changed the political weather if Cameron promises tax cuts by increasing the tax free allowance to ten thousand pounds.

I cant be arsed with the way a U turn is seen as a bad thing. If after the turn you are heading in the right direction then it should be praised.

Nice one Brown

£2.7billion to try and win a by-election. Cheaper than er nothing!!

When the government brought in the lower rate, and kept it for nine years, they never got a lot of credit, possibly because the cash value was always quite small.

When they abolished it, it suddenly became a big deal (although not until a year after the announcement, strangely).

Now they’ve compensated it, and it’s ceased to be a stick to beat the government with, people will work out that anyone working full-time even on the minimum wage would have *benefited* from the original change overall, that anyone without children who is working part-time while earning so little probably has another source of income, and that the amounts that people were losing were really very small.

Now they’ve compensated it, I expect that most media commentaters will change their tune and say that the government were panicked into a needless change.

Overall, I think that Darling’s changes are a pretty good fix in the circumstances, compared to what they might have done, but I’m a bit worried about the impact on inflation, given today’s news.

I think we should give the government credit for this. OK, they totally ballsed up on the issue but they finally realised that what they needed to do was take decisive action. Not “review the situation”, not fiddle around trying to find complicated ways to target those who specifically lost out, but just sort the bloody mess out with a simple and effective change to the tax system. Let’s hope they learn from this. I disagree with Tim J - a lot of people did really lose out and though the amounts were relatively small when you are not earning much it makes a difference.

Now while they are at it there are another couple of boils they should lance. Firstly ditch the plans for 42 days detention. They have lost the argument and they will lose the vote, and Brown really cannot afford a defeat in parliament. It has the attraction of being both the right thing to do and the politically convenient thing to do.

Also, halt post office closures. The amount of antagonism they are generating is way, way out of proportion to any benefit from closing them. So some of them are not economically viable, but the costs to keep them open are tiny in the overall scheme of things and many people see them as a vital service which should not be judged purely on economic grounds.

Then the party has to decide quickly whether Brown is the right leader to take them to the next election.

This, coupled with the new 20% base rate, is a major tax cut for almost every worker in the UK. Apart from people doing low-paid part time work, and those in the 40% bracket.

The thing is, every rational part of me says that dealing with this should have been a matter for specific targetting (the new Labour disease, some would say), but politically that wouldn’t have been possible. In the circumstances, this is politically the very best thing Darling could do. And it is dramatic. One can only hope it has some effect, politically speaking!

(And the money will be quite nice, too.)

By the way, I hope the keyword “Obituary” is not a prescient one!

C&N has obviosusy become a referendum on Brown’s leadership - and he’s willing to chuck billions at it to save his own skin. How could anyone give him credit for such naked self interest? And remember it’s for one year only. this has nothing to do with helping the poor - it has everything to do with hanging onto power whatever the cost. Literally.

I’m just hoping this will be enough to preserve intact one of my favourite pub quiz questions, which stumps normal (i.e. non-politically obsessed) people but will no doubt be eaten for breakfast by everyone here: “Name the last seat to be gained by the Conservatives in a parliamentary by-election”.

A fiver to Burma says Graham will be first with the answer in about 30 seconds…

I earn bugger all. I will be worse off. I will not vote Labour.

This is like being told by a mugger I can keep the loose change in my coat pocket after they have already stolen my wallet and have turned to go off to the shops to spend the notes and use my credit cards. No, it won’t win my vote.

“Name the last seat to be gained by the Conservatives in a parliamentary by-election”.

Mitcham and Morden in 1982. I’ll get my anorak.

I earn a fairly average wage, and don’t qualify for any tax credits. I was twenty pounds better off last month and will get another tenner a month now. (So at least I can afford to start smoking again!) But as a decent/progressive type I still couldn’t stop screaming at the telly last night when I saw the news.

It’s a by-election bung on a scale not seen since Barbara Castle and the Humber Bridge scandal (which is still being bailed out).

However HP has changed my mind for once, and I’ll hold off tearing up my membership card and giving up on Bethnal Green and Bow getting a Labour MP back. But as Bill so rightly points out - the proof of the pudding is in next year’s budget (and this year’s PBR).

There’s still a lot of money in the city - tax the buggers til the pips squeek.

It’s good news because Brown will keep his job. Take that as you will.

“There’s still a lot of money in the city - tax the buggers til the pips squeek.”

Thats a plan…………..

And when they destroy that sector of the economy what next?

This increase in the personal tax allowance by £600 is only for one year - and it is to be partly paid for by reducing the 40% supertax band entrypoint by £600.
Next year when this reverts and the personal tax allowance is reduced back again by £600, will the supertax band be raised by £600 again? If not then its a tax hike.
Middle-income middle-class Britain is still being clobbered. It looks like this Labour government is still slowly rediscovering the Denis Healy curve, sorry, I mean to say the Laffer curve.
And after blithely slapping a further couple of billion onto an already horrendous balance of payments deficit, any Labour bragging about prudently managing the economy can be treated with total contempt.
What it will do though is bind the next government’s hands - with debt. Scorched-earth policy perhaps?

They had to do something to resolve the issue and compensate those who had lost out, and which could be clearly seen to do so. The effect on higher rate taxpayers will be neutral and overall middle income people will benefit from the tax changes. As you and others say though we will have to watch next year’s budget carefully and Brown will still be massively damaged by the issue. As I have said before this will turn out to be Brown’s equivalent of the ERM fiasco.

Sorry, but the government must not get away with bribing people now. We’re all going to pay for it later.

http://armchairnews.co.uk/2008/05/14/people-wont-be-fooled-by-the-governments-tax-bribe/

Don’t raise taxes and benefits, just f**king cut taxes. The only benefit possible benefits of the first method are:
a) increase employment oppurtunities for government parasite scum (’public employees’) to deal with the additional paperwork.
b) increase the dependancy of the already much abused working classes on the state so as to make them more pliable to Labour’s next demented attempt at social engineering.

Loathsome. Also c.f. the attack on the Northern Irish education system.

We need a more rational tax system.

We need a flat rate income tax, differential sales tax (with higher rates for more expensive items), an energy tax and a significant land and property tax.

These taxes would all be relatively easy to collect, not easily evaded (or indeed avoided). There would still be a strong progressive element.