The Budget. Take a moment to imagine being in the left hand half of this chart. What it tells you is that you are some of the poorest people in society, but the government thinks it can take over £1,000 off you (around 5-8% of your net income) but actually give money to the richest 20%. This austerity thing seems a bit imbalanced?
Click to access budget2016_weah.pdf
In the same Budget, the Chancellor cut the rate of capital gains tax so that those who already have assets pay less tax on their growth, even though no one was asking for such a cut, and raised the ISA allowance dramatically (because only being able to shelter £15k each year wasn’t enough. “I just didn’t know what to do with the rest of my disposable income”!).
All at the same time as cutting PIP payments to 500,000 disabled people, with 200,000 forecast to loose £3,000 a year! (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/13/cuts-will-see-200000-disabled-people-lose-3000-a-year )
I really can’t believe that any sort of majority of society think this is right?
And it really highlights that the state of Labour, the “opposition”, isn’t just some lefty existential crisis, it is a bloody disaster for the country as no one (other than the SNP – God, did I really just write that?!) is doing the pretty easy job of holding the government to account.
And that’s all before we look at how they just privatised primary and secondary education in England too, and cut Corporation Tax from 20% to 17%. This, from Jolyon Maugham (follow him, he’s a genius – waitingfortax.com @JolyonMaugham), was actually written before the Budget, so the position’s actually got worse since he wrote this.
(Full article here: http://waitingfortax.com/2016/03/11/the-uks-tax-competitiveness/ )
Back in September 2014 I had numerous monologues in my head (I did think about writing a blog, but wasn’t brave enough) about how it wasn’t right to vote for independence just because you didn’t like the Tory government. Voting for independence is too big a thing, and if you don’t like the government in Westminster then campaign and vote for a different one. After all, it was only 4 years since the last Labour government, and that had been around for quite a while! I don’t regret how I voted in 2014, but posts like these ones (first two by David Allen Green aka “Jack of Kent” jackofkent.com) make it look like the Tories are doing all they can, whilst they have power, to permanently rig the system in their favour.
http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/2016/01/25/is-england-getting-more-illiberal/
There’s so much to be angry about it is hard to know where to start. I still, personally, think it is appalling that Nicola Sturgeon could even consider another referendum in any sub-10 year timescale. You can’t keep causing such disruption and uncertainty on a regular basis – it WILL have a negative affect on the country, on investment etc. (though is that their plan? If they do too good a job of running a devolved Scotland, then why would anyone vote for independence?).
However, I have to say that if there was another independence referendum tomorrow, I’d have to do a lot of thinking about how I was going to vote.
tormod46 