Alastair Darling has read his (hopefully) last budget,
what a fizzer.
The same government that wants to borrow and spend, in order to boost the economy, is now raising taxes at the same time.
A new top tax rate of 50% is to be introduced from 1 April at a threshold of £150,000. So the UK is back to discouraging the best and brightest to remain, back to penalising success to pillage for the bloated public sector, and welfare for the underclass. It is a breach of Labour's 2005 manifesto pledge "
We will not raise the basic or top rates of income tax in the next parliament".
Alcohol and tobacco duty increase by 2% today - the typical sin tax.
Fuel duty goes up 2p a litre in September, don't pretend it is about anything other than pillaging the motorist, as 5x as much is generated from fuel tax in the UK than is spent on roads.
Government debt is going to be 79% of GDP by 2013/2014 because Darling and Brown before him have wasted the good years, constantly running deficits. Now borrowing an additional £175 billion. Fiscal child abuse on a grand scale, because Gordon Brown refuses to cut unproductive government spending.
It's Gordon Brown's huge fiscal "gift" to an incoming Tory government, which will find it difficult to cut taxes easily without massive cuts to spending - and at the same time Labour will accuse the Tories of being heartless, when Labour has been stealing from future generations to buy itself power.
He is subsidising those with cars more than 10 years old by paying £1,000 subsidies to those buying a new car who already have an old one. Nice that, so those without cars get nothing and those already with newer cleaner cars get nothing. A nice subsidy to Labour voting knuckle draggers in the north.
250,000 jobs will be "created" through subsidies, and everyone under 25 who has been unemployed for 12 months or more will get training.
£500 million to "kick start stalled housing projects", great when you already have a deflated housing sector. Nothing like government to help further deflate a sector in decline.
The bloated Scottish Executive is to get another £104m, which upset the socialist SNP government which sees government jobs being cut there - good. The Welsh are similarly unimpressed with a reported £400m cut. Good. This is all part of reducing growth in state spending to 0.7%.
Tax credits for breeding are to increase, when the UK already has a massive problem of people on low incomes breeding when they can't afford to house, educate or provide healthcare for those kids.
£1 billion to subsidise low carbon businesses. £750 million to subsidise "emerging technologies". £525 million for offshore wind generation, because presumably it isn't efficient for users to pay for that electricity.
Pensioners get a 2.5% increase even though there is no inflation - Labour's bribe to pensioners taken from their grandchildren.
Leader of the Opposition David Cameron is unimpressed
according to the Daily Telegraph “
the worst peacetime public finances ever known. Any claim to economic competence is over, dead, finished.” He added: “With debt like that, our children are going to be in poverty for decades.”
It's appalling. The British governnment squandered years of prosperity, milked the increases in the speculation of the housing market, and ran deficits, poured money down the black hole of the NHS, boosted welfare and kept subsidising the criminal underclass through housing, welfare, health and education, and now it is squandering more.
This budget wont boost the economy, as it borrows to subsidise some industries, and means that future budgets mean more tax increases and tougher spending cuts just to get a balanced budget.
What's most insidious is the philosophy behind it. It is class warfare returning. Labour is saying:
- If you're wealthy and successful, you owe it to the country to have more of your money taken to prop up the government's past failures;
- If you're a pensioner or a welfare beneficiary, don't worry, we'll improve your standard of living so you can vote for us to borrow and hope some more;
- If you run a business that bureaucrats decide is "new technology" or "low carbon" expect money that was taken from other businesses.
It is a return to the old Labour borrow, tax and spend. There is so much wasteful pointless government spending in the UK, tinkering here and there, subsidies here and there, schemes, projects and other nonsense that could be cut - but no, Labour wouldn't hear of it.
So the message is clear- from April 2010, the best and brightest can either be taxed in the UK more heavily, rearrange their affairs to avoid it, or just fuck off.
Why would you stay to get half of every pound you earn to pay for the UK government?
ALL budget documents here