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We’ve never had it so good
Now that we’re into the new tax year, the tax changes introduced by Flash Gordon in his final Budget as Chancellor have come into effect. To support a 2% cut in the basic income tax rate, the lower 10p threshold has been abolished. This means that while he’s giving back 2%, he’s taking tax on 10% which he never used to. The reasoning behind this is to generate more Treasury money to pay for the various credits and benefits that are offered to many low-income families with children, or households with elderly residents (things like working tax credits and the winter heating payments).
What he doesn’t seem to have taken account of is that single people, with no children or elderly relatives living them and who are on a wage of less than about £18,500 a year will be worse off as a result of this change. Analysts predict that the figure will be up to about £232 per year, which isn’t so much - less than £20 per month - but it comes on top of a steadily increasing cost of living and for many people could be the final nail in the coffin.
Yet according to the Party faithful, even those adversely effected by the change “will have found that on average they are £505 a year, or £9.70 a week, better off overall, as a result of all of the changes that we’ve introduced since 1997 [the year 'New' Labour came to power]“. Quite where they get their figures from, I’m not really sure. One of the first things that Brown did as Chancellor was abolish MIRAS; that made me worse off by about £17.30 a week straight away. He’s consistently raised fuel duty - to the point where a litre of petrol is now £1.07 at my local garage. I don’t remember what price petrol was when Labour came to power, but I do know that when I first bought my motorbike (2002) I could fill it up for £10 and now it costs me £17.50. At a tankful a week, that’s an extra £7.50. House prices have gone up astronomically, to the point where my one-bedroom flat is now worth about four times what I paid for it 14 years ago. That’s good when I want to sell, but bad when I want to buy. And bad for anyone trying to get on the property ladder and buy their first home; most people are finding it is simply not possible and they are having to stay in rented accommodation far longer than they would have 15 years ago. And those are just the things that come to mind straightaway. What about inflation? Interest rates? Increased redundancies? Hell, even the cost of a stamp has gone up to an all-time high today.
I don’t necessarily object to public money being diverted to support families with children or elderly relatives - I’d prefer that the system was not so open to ‘gaming’ though - but I do object to the idea that we’re all better off under the new regime when that quite clearly is not the case. In any system of Government, they’ll always be a group of people that fall through the cracks and always get the bum deal; this time it’s me and lots of other people like me and Gordon and his mates can take their Labour spin and shove it up their arse.
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