British Labour increases tax free threshold out of desperation

Following on from the fiasco of abolishing the 10% income tax rate (putting thousands of people on low incomes on a higher tax rate), the absolute gutting of Labour in the local body elections, polling for the Crewe-Nantwich by-election (a safe Labour seat) that shows a 7000 vote majority being overturned with a Conservative victory, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced a "compensation package". He had to, as Labour backbench MPs were threatening to vote against the Budget legislation because of the abolition of the 10% tax rate, quite simply Brown's government was risking losing supply from its own party! The days of Labour being trusted with the economy in the UK are over, but it is two years till the next general election.

.

The package is simple. The low income tax free threshold is to be raised by £600 per annum to £6035 a year. However, the so-called "rich" get none of it, because the threshold for the 40% top tax rate is being reduced by the same proportion.

.

Of course none of this comes from cutting spending. No, another £2.7 billion of borrowing to fund this tax cut. Never mind, Labour wont be in forever, they can let those nasty Tories clean up the finances and get them blamed for cutting spending.

.

Labour under Gordon Brown is running bigger and bigger deficits and an ever more complicated tax system. How long can Labour in the UK overspend and overspend? Could it ever consider that its heavy borrowing programme contributes to the credit crisis and the level of interest rates?

Meanwhile, New Zealanders might wonder why neither major party believes in income tax free thresholds, when their family and friends in the UK can earn around NZ$15,000 and pay no income tax. Libertarianz and ACT are advocating a $10,000 tax free threshold and even the Greens advocated a $5,000 threshold at the last election.

The lesbian threesome that wasn't

Got to love "Flight of the Conchords" Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie. According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

.

"Scruffy New Zealander Jemaine Clement from the folk-parody group Flight Of The Conchords was approached by a girl at a party in Scotland, who invited him to a spit roast. She wanted to know if Bret McKenzie, his band mate, would also attend. Thinking she was referring to a barbecue, Jemaine said yes. Hey, they both liked meat. "She said, 'I wouldn't usually ask. I'm a lesbian,' and I thought, 'Why would that stop you asking for a barbecue?"' Soon after, Clement discovered a spit-roast was British slang for a threesome and declined, mightily embarrassed."

.
What can you say to that? They probably didn't want to see each other's meat or else she really wasn't worth it, plus it might have helped had she brought along three friends - you see THAT's the threesome famous guys want.

Party pill regulation continues

Having succeeded swimmingly in not reducing harm by banning BZP, the Dominion Post reports that the Health Ministry is now proposing a different approach to other party pills. Age restrictions, labelling requirements and licences to sell them (all stuff to make a bureaucrat wet himself). Now while I'd agree with an age restriction, labelling requirements seems over the top and having licences to sell something isn't proven to do much other than put up the price and start creating a black market - BUT my big question is this. Why hasn't BZP simply been treated the same way? Why not legalise BZP, put an age restriction on it and regulate it?

.

If ACC was abolished, then those who sell such products would face the risk of damaging lawsuits for causing personal injury by accident - in other words, just like most countries in the Western world. Whilst the ACC folly continues, the arguments for some regulation of substances remain.

.

However, my question remains - if party pills are to be controlled like alcohol, why not make extend this to BZP, and remove the ban?

Is ACT prepared to support a Labour government?

From ACT's website:

"Rodney Hide: Does the Minister feel so strongly against giving parents a choice of school, including independent schools, that he would resign as Minister of Education if that were a condition of support from MMP parties for a future Government?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: I think the likelihood of Labour going into coalition with ACT is nil, especially with the addition of Roger Douglas to its party list."

.

According to this, Rodney Hide is teasing Labour into considering whether it engages in, at least, a confidence and supply agreement with ACT if it needed to do so to remain in power after the 2008 election. Tactically of course, given National's unwillingness to consider Sir Roger Douglas for Cabinet, this might make a little sense for ACT, so that there is some leverage over the Nats after the election. However, if you voted National in 2005 and now are contemplating ACT, because the Nats are a shoo in, Rodney Hide seems safe in Epsom and you want a CHANGE in government to implement more free market policies, you might hesitate if Rodney Hide actually keeps Helen Clark in power.

.

Now if you think this is unlikely, consider this. It has seemed both in 2002 and 2005 that Labour's natural partner would be the Greens, but it has avoided confidence and supply and coalition agreements with it after both elections. The Greens were hardly going to support National were they? By contrast, did the average Labour voter expect United Future to keep the government in power for two terms and NZ First for one? Is it inconceivable that a Phil Goff lead Labour Party (let's say Clark is rolled before the election, highly unlikely unless Labour's polling drops below 30%) would seek confidence and supply from ACT, if Labour did implement some modest tax cuts and uh.. did something else? (help me here). After all, it is far from inconceivable that National will partner up with the Maori Party, and the feelers have been out between the Nats and the Greens (although that does seem like hard work).

.

So what would be ACT's bottom line for a confidence and supply agreement with Labour OR National? Not the details, it's clear that would be worked through. However, I'd hope it included the following:

.

- A tax free income threshold, abolition of the 39% top tax rate and lowering of company tax;

- Education vouchers for primary and secondary education;

- Including private property rights in the RMA if not replacing it;

- End to the growth of the state sector and identification of opportunities to privatise by sale AND issuing shares directly to the public.

As Hillary has her last stand

It is worth reminding you all the eloquent words of Christopher Hitchens on Hillary Rodham Clinton. My favourite snippets are below:

"For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done."
.
"It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all (Bill) Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton...Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues.""

.

"During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat.... What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry."

It's time to bury the attempted Clinton dynasty once and for all.