Gordon Clown .Com

With today’s budget, Gordon has tricked the public into believing he’s cut taxes, when in fact he hasn’t. In fact, the removal of the 10% tax band and the cut of 2% on the next band up will hurt low earners, and only benefits high earners very slightly. But as ever with Gordon, the sting is in the spin, and the BBC amongst others have fallen for it hook line and sinker with headlines such as “Gordon Cuts Tax by 2p”.

One interesting thing about this measure is that, like a lot of measures in today’s budget, it doesn’t come into effect until next year.  This means, presumably, that whoever succeeds Gordon as chancellor in the next few months won’t actually need to announce a budget for a few years.  Gordon seems to be seeking to ensure his rules are followed even after he’s left office…
Other than that it was a fairly dull budget, unsurprisingly as Gordon is desperate to maintain the status quo to ease his passage into the house next door. Hopes for changes to Stamp Duty and Inheritance Tax went unfulfilled, and fiscal drag has been allowed to drag on in almost all cases, apart of course from the areas such as beer and fags where fiscal drag would be bad news for the treasury’s coffers.

Desperate to appear to be doing his bit for the green cause, Brown raised road tax for 4×4 “gas guzzlers” to £400, completely missing the point - as do most politicians - that global warming is far too large an issue to be solved simply through a few punative taxes on a small proportion of the public, and needs stronger measures to be affected at the multinational business level. Gordon took care of big business of course with a bit of corporation tax cutting - but simply passed it on to tax hikes for small businesses. Another nail in the coffin for entrepreneurship in Britain should ensure the ongoing brain drain continues.