If you can draw down all of your pension now, then there are going to be companies springing up that will steal the lot from you, masqeurading as bona-fide pension dealers.
Fuel duty hike planned for later this year frozen - Is anyone going to enforce a cap on the prices paid at the pumps?
Savings limits increased - OK if youâre not so impoverished right now that youâll be saving less in the following years, rather than more. Great if youâve just been promoted, or had a windfall of course.
Pensioner Bonds - The rate on these bonds implies that the chancellor knows that base interest rates (as set by his mate at the Bank of England) are not going anywhere for this parliament and the next.
The abolishing of the 10p savings rate of tax wouldnât make much sense unless current savings rates were not going anywhere anytime soon eitherâŚ
Extra tax relief for latchkey parents whoâs kids will grow up as strangers, but nothing for responsible parents who actually do the parenting themselves. Childminders are now set to get above-inflation increments in pay. Not all of the âchildmindersâ will be bona-fide ones either⌠Perhaps a new flurry of âagenciesâ will be formed to handle the staffing demand required!
Poor old families whoâs dad is a tramper and mum stays at home wonât be voting Conservative by the looks of itâŚ
Cutting bingo duty and raising fixed odds betting terminals duty? - WTF? Thatâs a big grab at the lucrative market that is now based on gambling addiction. The cut on bingo duty will allow more bingo halls to proliferate rather than punters getting cheaper entry and/or more in prizes as well. Not much for those on the ground there I guess.
Raising the cap on premium bonds (along with the introduction of pensioner bonds) represent a cheap way for the government to borrow money from the public - providing interest rates donât rise in the interim⌠The third clue that interest rates are not going anywhereâŚ
âgo softâ on Cider and Scotch? - I donât think the somerset levels have much scrumpy about at present, and there wonât be much âBritishâ scotch around after september either - unless I got cynical, and suggested this is some kind of kid-glove bribe aimed at those north of the border.
Vote tory and pay for your own brain transplant, I remember the days of thatcher, this lot have not changed one bit, the NHS is now all but private and all the other public bodies - what are left of them will follow the same way.
Winseer:
Pensioner Bonds - The rate on these bonds implies that the chancellor knows that base interest rates (as set by his mate at the Bank of England) are not going anywhere for this parliament and the next.
Iâd say the BoE interest rate depends entirely on what the Federal Reserve does with US interest rates. Iâd certainly be very reluctant to base any financial decision on them staying at current rates for much longer.
Oddly enough, Iâve never voted labour, and must confess to once voting Tory and once voting Libdem. The rest of the time (during the thatcher era) this voice crying in the wilderness wasnât going to make a difference by speaking or voting at all, so I didnât.
Some might get the impression that Iâm some kind of socialist/uniony/leftie or whatever - but Iâm not. Iâm actually a champion of proper honest capitalism - that is, not the kind we have now that is basically communism in a blue suit.
Rot the âcompensation cultureâ, the âneed to have a 4x4 when I live in townâ, the âneed for tatoosâ, the âlack of work ethic/â â â ethic/responsible parent ethicâ that leaves people who are already godless without anything to believe in at allâŚ
On the ground, the falling unemployment is merely people moving off Job Seekerâs allowance and onto other benefits. A better measure of âunemploymentâ would be "the population of working age 16-67 available to work minus the number of people actually paying taxes". This means minimum wage part time jobs wonât count as being employed at all. Self-employed DIY tax fiddles would end up being âdonât count as employedâ as well, but for many, thatâs true already.
I also wonder what could be achieved by the rather interesting notion of scrapping income taxes outright, and putting all taxes on transportation! If you donât want to pay any taxes, youâd need to work across the road instead of commute. âŚAhh 1950s style empty roads! I can dream canât I? âGreat Britain - A confederation of independant towns and cities each ruled by its elected mayor, each population living off itâs own economy.â
Instead, we have places like London sucking the economic life out of the rest of the country - and I say this as someone brought up there!
Winseer:
On the ground, the falling unemployment is merely people moving off Job Seekerâs allowance and onto other benefits.
No, itâs because 780,000 people have been âsanctionedâ because they didnât try hard enough to get jobs which didnât exist and they no longer appear on the unemployment figures.
Surely, they didnât walk quietly into the night, never to draw benefits again, but not working either?
They went to the food banks which have been springing up like mushrooms in the last year or so, and they probably earn what cash they can by doing odd jobs, but they didnât find jobs. They have just gone off of the unemployment figures- more good news ahead of next yearâs general election!
The Governmentâs pre-election propaganda just gives better and better news by the day, but curiously every single person I know is worse off than they were a year ago and nobody is expecting things to get better any time soon.
Still, theyâve only got to keep the plates spinning for another year and theyâll be back in powerâŚ
Winseer:
On the ground, the falling unemployment is merely people moving off Job Seekerâs allowance and onto other benefits.
No, itâs because 780,000 people have been âsanctionedâ because they didnât try hard enough to get jobs which didnât exist and they no longer appear on the unemployment figures.
Exactly, if you wonât work in poundland or tk maxx for free you are labelled a shirker despite there being no real jobs, 6 jobs up for grabs at a local pet store and over 500 applied, this lot will lie like good uns to get re elected,
I have been made redundant twice in my working life, both during Conservative Governments (granted this one is a coalition) So thanks Maggie and Cameron
Though I do like the idea about scrapping annuity on pensions as I have a 20 year pension and a shorter other pension plus the one I have recently joined so in 5 years I can get to do what I deem right with them.
