Now that our economy is well and truly fucked, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alister Darling has decided to ramp up our national insurance by 0.5% in 2011 in addition to ongoing plans for a further 0.5% increase.
He is also proposing a 50% tax on bankers bonuses that seems to be more a publicity stunt than an action that will have any impact at all (I thought he’d already imposed such a tax on anyone that earned more than £100k anyway). He forecasts that this will raise £550million per year: by the time I’ve typed this I think the state deficit will have gone up by more than that and banks are already changing the way they pay bonuses (share options, salary increases) to avoid this tax.
The income tax bands will remain the same which means as people receive pay rises there will be another 70,000 higher rate taxpayers. Public sector workers of course, as many private sector employees I know are having 10-20% pay cuts imposed on them (all good if you’re an MP in the running for a £40,000 pay rise, though).
He’s announced “help” for young unemployed but in true Labour style fails to provide any real measures that will make any difference coupled with a reannouncement of old money.
Taxes on bingo will go down and the state pension is to increase by 2.5% as of next year.
So there’s your pre-budget report. It has to be said that Labour has bottled it on the national insurance raise and I find it typical of Labour to put it on the back burner because there’s an election coming up. Remember, Gordon Brown was the founder of the budget that announces deferred tax increases so that when they come into effect everyone’s forgotten about them and the public fury has subsided. Taxation via the back door is, after all, Labour’s speciality.
I believe the short term measures put in by Labour such as the reduction in VAT, the car scrappage scheme and the stamp duty waiver (did they do anything else?) have lulled people into believing that the recovery is in motion. But what will we all think when VAT goes back up by 2.5% in a few weeks, we get 0.5-1% on our national insurance, the car scheme expires and house prices are suddenly pumped up by thousands.
Yep, that’s right. We roll back to how we were about, oh, a year or so ago except a lot more people are unemployed, we have even less money and everything’s more expensive. It could well create the second wave of recession that has been talked about by pundits.
Token gestures like this bankers bonus tax are a joke: it’s a typical appeasement of the grassroots Labour footsoldier but this could be a move that hurts the UK far more than any other. Banks create a lot of tax for the government and after all, the financial services industry is – or was – the only world class industry left in the UK. After the banking bailout a good chunk of these investment bankers now work for UK Plc.
But whilst there are three banks that have been bailed out there are many other banks such as HSBC, UBS and Goldman Sachs that have received no bailout money from the Government. What happens with these? Will they have their bonuses hammered? Will they do their business abroad with lots of high earning, high taxpaying employees leaving the UK?
Remember, investment bankers and their ilk don’t just pay lots of tax on their earnings, they buy big expensive houses and pay lots of stamp duty, they buy flashy toys and pay lots of tax to buy and play with them and they have a generally exuberant lifestyle. That’s why we want them here.
Take Simon Cowell. He paid almost £60million in income tax the year before last: assuming the average staff nurse is on £25,000, this pays for 2400 of them. If he lived somewhere else this money wouldn’t be going into our tax coffers.
The extreme outcome here if all the bankers feel persecuted and realise that in fact if they move to the USA they can double their bonus is the scaling down of the UK banking sector: in ten years will the only UK based banks be Lloyds Banking Group, Northern Rock and RBS? If the conditions everywhere else are so much better, will UK banks be able to hold on to the very staff that multiply their capital?
Excellent comment Phil, soe very good points. Labour is just trying to win the sheep back to the flock and then in the campaign for the next electon it will use (as always) negative campaigning and scaremongering with the usual ‘Don’t vote Tory because they will hammer the poor to help their rich friends’. I am sick to death of these tired old rants, why should people who are well-off be punished for doing well. I do agree that super-rich people (footballers, celebs, Phillip Green) should contribute more, they shouldn’t be allowed to dump all their money in foreign bank accounts and pay the same tax as a Tesco shelf stacker. I only the average staff nurse was on £25k, only staff nurses with years of experience earn £25k, the starting salary is £20k. Don’t believe these Government propaganda campaigns, be a nurse earn £28k, be a teacher and earn £35k. Those jobs should earn those amounts and MPs should be paid a similar amount not £65k but very few in those professions actually earn the claimed amounts.
Ahh you see I don’t really agree that the super rich should pay more. Labour has killed the aspirations of so many people, me included if I’m honest, so I think it’s a good thing that people are successful through traditional means and it should be encouraged rather than punished.
I went to university the very year the grant was phased out and tuition fees were imposed by Tony Blair.
A double whammy: they take away the money they and their generation received whilst compounding the misery with thousands of pounds of tuition fees on top of it.
Why did they need the tuition fees? Because Labour had set fucking targets for people going to university and all these non-degrees like Outdoor Adventure and Philosophy were generated to soak up the misguided so even thick people could have a degree. It’s probably more difficult to get an ASBO than a degree these days.
According to Labour, it’s elitist if you didn’t toss your schooldays off and actually got the requirements to do a decent degree. It’s not fair on those people that spent the whole time swigging cans of Special Brew outside Coral Island.
You set off from university saddled with a £10,000+ debt because of Labour so that doesn’t exactly set you off on a positive start. But then it got worse with the systematic 10-year taxation assault of middle income groups.
It reminded me of that arcade game Whack-a-Mole: any time you got your head above the water you were hammered back down again.
It’s always been an uphill struggle but Labour have increased the gradient many times over, making the hill unclimbable for many. Thats why these Big Brother wannabe celeb programmes are so popular. People will do anything when they’ve got nothing to lose.
When I see this Labour government creating laws so that employers can decide not to employ you because you’re a man and you’re white, I really despair.
But don’t worry! When the employment figures aren’t looking too good, Labour just creates another Government department, moves a few high flyers in to manage it and recruits a load of minorities to answer phones and send letters with a different, expensively designed logo emblazoned at the top.
It’s all a load of bollocks.
Then you see the fucking freebies that some layabouts get for doing fuck all.
Well said Phil, I just wonder how many people will now migrate to the fringe parties now?
Well I am one of them.
Labour or Tory, NEVER AGAIN!
Whats the point though, I mean without this taxation annihilation we’ll be fucked either way.
It’s going to be an Herculean task to get Britain out of the shithole its in and I don’t really think the BNP is the party to do it.
Vince Cable talks sense, but the Lib Dems would tax us even more than Labour because they’re obsessed with green policies.
Saying that, would I prefer the environment and infrastructure that places like Stockholm have compared to here? I would, but I wouldn’t be happy about paying 10 quid for a pint!
Brew your own mate, the pubs rip us off anyway, thats my answer!
Dig for England?
nahh DRINK for England!
I absolutely agree with that comment, I hate tuition fees with a passion. I plan on returning to university in the future in the hope of studying medicine (4 or 5 years) yet thanks to Labour I have to rely on a bank loan and save up some money. Because as well as tuition fees, Labour now makes second degree students (eg career changers) pay full fees upfront with no student loan. I hope to train to be a doctor meaning I will serve the NHS for many good years and yet Labour is punishing me for wanting to get a good career. I agree totally socialism just rewards laziness and I am a great believer if you want to be well off you should work for it like I am doing and others do. But what really really fucks me off is when Labour supporters (like Born and Bread Blackpool lad) harp on about how Labour opened the door to higher education for all saying he was ‘grateful for an opportunity the Tories wouldn’t have given him’. Give me strength sounds like party loyalty to me. At least under Thatcher and Major university was FREE for all, so I don’t buy all that ‘I never had the opportunity’ bollocks. Like Marsden he enjoyed a free education at some very prestigious institutions then denies that to other people, lying hypocrite he is. Grants should be restored and fees scrapped. Now if the greedy selfish vice-chancellors get their way fees will go up.
Socialism means that we are all equally miserable,thats Labours idea of equality.
I just pray that the public vote in Fringe MPS next yaer who will hold the bazlnce of power in a hung parliament, but its unlikely, its always the fucking same, one colour of shit to another, but still shit.
That’s exactly what it is mate: bollocks.
I don’t understand how Labour can say university was only for rich people. It soon will be though.
I’d like to do the same as what you want to do. I think career changers should pay more, but I don’t think it should be of the level that would basically absorb any money you might have saved so you’re effectively starting from scratch.
Precisely spot on, how can these idiots say ‘universities were elitist institutions for the well off and no place for working class kids’. So how did all these supposedly ‘working class’ Labour MPs get to go to Oxford and Cambridge. Yet now they are denying the right to a free education to others, it is sick, unfair and hypocritical. I should not have to pay £20k a year to be a doctor, that way universities really will be purely for the rich, hope to god it never ever happens. Its like that smug little toad Andy Burnham (useless Health Secretary) was banging on, on Question Time once about how ‘elitist’ universities were under the Tories. He attended a comprehensive and yet he went to Cambridge under a Tory Government, what a lying hypocrite he really is.
yes Andy Burnham sucks shit but would swear blind hes eating caviar.
Too true and little tosser was here the other week god help us. I work for the NHS and I am ashamed to have an inept idiot like him in charge. Lord Darzi was one of the best things to happen to the NHS in recent years and he’s gone, but then again the further away from Labour the better he is a great doctor with some great ideas. He was wasted on Labour.
Is he not an expenses fiddler as well?
I see benefits are being uprated next yaer, moral of the story, sponge off the state with multiple disabled kids and you are laughing all the way……..
That’s Liebour for you; workshy scrongers benefits go UP, work hard for a living taxes go UP
When I heard that I wanted to go out and twat a chav, cos they deserve it, yes a chav, another child of new labour.
I felt like uppercutting a traffic warden
Good idea!
now they are tax raising cunts!
I am glad that christian couple were cleared that trial was a Stalinist disgrace and testament of nu labours PC facsim.
I hope that mudslum whore gets raped by an AIDS infested Iman.
Islam is a wicked vicious mysoginistic faith founded by a warmongering paedophile and terrorist
jesus christ everyone had their ready-brek yesterday morning didnt they! most heated discussion ive seen on this blog yet!
As for the subject matter, i dont really have anything i can add.. I intend on going to uni next year and im going to try my best to turn a blind eye to the shattering debt im getting myself in for.. ah well.. i’ll cross that bridge when i come to it, with the current state of everything its impossible to know what the future holds for us.
P.S, before migrating to this blog from NQH’s, i had no interest in politics or local affairs or the financial world at all. This has been changed. thankyou
I am glad to hear you are not letting unfair fees stop you from going to university Jamesh, good for you and good luck with your course. But I think it is downright unfair we have to pay fees when all these selfish MPs enjoyed free education when most of them could easily afford it. Gordon Marsden MP for Brighton (and Blackpool S when he feels like it) enjoyed FREE education at 3 of the best universities in the world and despite being born with a silver spoon in his mouth he didn’t pay a penny. Yet he is now saying students should pay and second degree takers should pay fees sometimes up to £20k a year depending on the course. That means elite professions are priced out to people from modest backgrounds, all this coming from a party that claims to have made the opportunity for university available to all. All a Labour Government has done is make the HE system more elitist than ever. Any Labour voters should be ashamed of themselves.
Ahh we get excited when Labour line up in our sights ready to be shot down! Always nice to get a bit of praise, though, so thanks for that.
Glad you’re not letting the debt mountain get you down and I echo what True BP says.
Unfortunately he mentioned the hypocrisy of Labour so my blood has started to boil once again! Britain used to be the land of free education and free healthcare, until Tony Blair reworded it to free at the point of use.
Use the Higher Education system now, and you’re shouldered with both tuition fees which are what, about £1500 a year, and the student loan: I think you can borrow about £4000 a year now (and probably need to).
What degrees cost £20k per year? Surely medicine doesnt? I thought the NHS funded medical students anyway..
Well yeah thats the strange thing… a friend of mine is doing some high plumbing qualification at blackpool & fylde college, he started it last year – the same time i started a foundation degree at the same college (which i later quit. reasons i wont go into as its off topic)
Anyway his course was costing him about £1200 a year, he explained to me (so he thought) that this was because of the materials he was using throughout the course.. which made sense.. he would be using and throwing away alot of pipes and whatnot.
So when i told him that my course would cost £1225 a year he couldnt work out why.. seeing as all i did all day was use a computer. I think my point of this waffle is that they charge you large amounts – no matter what you actually have to go through/use during the course.
As for loans.. i recieved a letter from student services asking kindly for the £4000 i owe them back, might have dumped myself in the shit a bit seeing as i never actually finished the degree, and so i will go on to bury myself in more debt in the coming years as i have decided to actually go to a real university to get my degree rather than participating in a wannabe mickey mouse degree that the college set up.
Far as I know tuition fees are the same for all degrees if you’re a first time student. They are means tested though which explains why some people don’t pay as much.
What uni are you going to?
I wish i knew… i have to find the course i want to do, then find a uni that i want to go to that allows me to do it. Not very good at planning these things..
Course fees are always the same for FULL TIME degress about 3225 a year.
Whats tested is normaly the loan/grant balance and how much you get over all. ATM im “borrowing” my course fees plus about extra £1000 a term with £1000 Grant on top. thats a debt of about 6000 odd a year. about 19ish grand by the end of uni. Plus 9 grand in grant. Thats about averge.
Very true, but if you are a second degree taker because Liebour cut adult education funding the greedy universities can charge you what they like and upfront.
Dunno perhaps. I am a mature student im 28. lucky for me in a way, i never did a degree when i was 18, i worked hence the student loan. A few of my mates are paying there way tho with second degrees and they pay same fees i do.
I just had a look at uni of Leeds, York, Manchester, Hudderfield at same type of course im doing and there all the same price no matter what. Open uni are a bit more in some case’s.
As far as im aware MAX charge for a FULLTIME course legally allowed is £3225 a year no matter how many degrees u have since 2006. Before then it was ofc cheaper.
well unless the “private institutions” like LAW schools and shit i think get away with more or have diff rules.
You are right there, but if like me you are a career changer and already have a degree universities can charge you the same fees as international students thankfully medicine (which I plan to do) is exempt but many other subjects aren’t and I think it is unfair. Noone should have to pay.
Up until very recently, the financial terms for ‘career change’ students were the same as first-time students. Labour, of course, have changed that now, so people trying to adapt to the flexibility of their own lives and/ or the labour and skills market find it much harder to make those changes.
For first time students, the maximum charge per year is around £3200 – it’s at the discretion of the institution whether or not it wants to charge that amount or lower. The reality is however, that you’ll likely pay the same whether you go to Oxford or if you end up in a shit institution like the University of Luton (bet you didn’t even know Luton had a university, did you?), although some institutions (like Blackpool & Fylde, I think) have offered bursaries to students. Of course, if you’re thinking about studying outside the EEA or at a private institution, then you can forget about grants and/ or student loans altogether (unless you’re enrolled on a recognised performing arts course at certain institutions) – presumably because they’re incorrectly perceived as the domain of ‘the privileged few’, rather than the aspirations of hopeful young citizens.
Anyway, having been side-tracked, I was just going to say that it’s refreshing to see a local opinion grounded in sanity, where the bankers’ bonuses windfall tax is concerned. We are already seeing financial workers leaving both the nationalised banks and the UK altogether – before sticking the boot in, we should remember that there are many different strands of worker employed in the financial sector and that only a few of them were directly involved in the fuck-ups that led to the ill-fated bank bailouts. As Phil points out, there are many more organisations that didn’t act carelessly and are still independent of the taxpayers’ money. Why should they be penalised for behaving relatively responsibly? London is the largest financial centre in the world, whilst finance accounts for around 8-17% of the UK’s GDP. We should be very, very careful before taking a wrecking ball to it, just to take macabre delight in seeing a relative handful of people pay for their mistakes.
I also forgot to add…
Jamesh – that was quite heartening to read! I hope my blog – and Phil’s – managed to make politics and local events relevant and not too boring, whilst not taking ourselves too seriously. I think a sense of humour helps!
Sadly not, you only get an NHS bursary in your 4th and 5th years you have to find the money yourself for years 1-3. You would have to pay ridiculous fees of anything up to £20k (at universities discretion) on some courses. I once looked at Pharmacy in London (National School of Pharmacy) and if you have a degree already you face fees of about £13k a year that you have to pay upfront, all because Labour scrapped support for career changers (backed by Marsden and Humble, Croysdill attempted to defend it in the Gasjet). You would think medical students got NHS funding as doctors (most of them, I certainly will) dedicate their careers to public service in the NHS, but thanks to Liebour they don’t and it really makes my blood boil. Gordon Marsden was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and went to Oxford, Havard and Imperial College London all on the taxpayers tab. I am not from a poor background, but I am not a toff like Marsden yet he thinks it is fair I have to face crippling debts.
You’ll hate me then as I went to uni when there were no tuition fees. But then again I don’t think they are fair.
I’d lay the blame at John Major’s feet though. It was him who decided that every higher education place could be re-named “university” (even though there was a mechanism for polytechnics and colleges of further education to prove their academic worth and become one anyway) and that an increasing percentage of us should go to uni.
There wasn’t and isn’t any need for a large percentage of the population to go – hence why we now have so many mickey-mouse courses that are no use for anything and so many “graduates” that can’t add up two and two.
If he hadn’t expanded “university” education so widely then we could have afforded to continue to fund those that did go to university – yes it would have been harder to get in, but that’s a good thing surely. We really don’t put enough emphasis on how we need people to have vocational and not just academic skills – it was a bad policy with bad judgement. Some people just can’t see how we need roadsweepers, binmen, plumbers, electricians just as much as brain surgeons and university lecturers.
Excellent comment Frustrated, I don’t hate you for getting a free education, I just think it is damn right unfair Liebour has denied me and countless others the same opportunity.
Somehow missed this post, but it has to be said that I dont hate people that had free education. What I despise, though, is people getting free education and then deciding to sink future generations with debt.