MIG wrote:
On May 26, 2:46 pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2008 12:50:49 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

Gordon said he was abolishing 10% tax. Most people would (and did)
immediately assume he was reducing the 10% tax to 0% whereas in fact he
put it up to 20%
I think in practice what he should have done was somewhere in the
middle (remove 10p band, leave upper band at 22p, move allowance up
(and 40% band down if applicable) so that as few people in the 10p
band are disadvantaged as possible). I'm all for tax simplification,
but the way this was done smelt strongly of "attempted vote winner"
rather than common sense.

If the scheme is unethical (as a piece of dressed-up foreign aid) it's
best to nip it in the bud.
Agreed.

Which proportion of our oil comes from schemes that are more ethical
(or less unethical)?

Also, what's so ethical about apparently being more concerned about the
wellbeing of poor Venezuelans than about the wellbeing of your own
constituents? It's lucky for Boris I don't believe his reasons for
scrapping the scheme, really*, or some serious reductio ad absurdam
would be deployed.

As for the 10% thing, I remember thinking at the time 'hey, this is
smacking the working poor in order to bribe the voting lower middle
classes'. As a result I didn't think it anything out of the ordinary
for the Blair government and put it on the ****list along with the rest
of their rubbish.

Tom

* If he'd announced it by saying 'I'm scrapping it because I don't
believe that being on income support entitles you to cut-price
transport' I'd have applauded his political courage and honesty.
Instead, what sticks in the mind is the sneaky way it came out and the
dishonesty of the official spin.