3901 days ago
The spin doctors of Chancellor George Osborne had leaked much of what he said so it is not as if anyone was waiting with baited breath. What he did serve up was a combination of political posturing and timidity. It is not a conservative budget and it does little for Britain.
Posturing? The Welfare cap of £119 billion. Hmmmm. I am capped in my size 34 trousers but will binge and booze and then buy a pair of 36 inch trousers. Parliament can vote to lift this inflation adjusted cap and will do so.’
£119 billion is a lot of money. A brave Conservative chancellor would be tackling a system where folks like the vile fat slob and, now patron Saint of scroungers, White Dee can pick up £200 a week tax free and regard welfare as a lifestyle option. Forget setting caps that can be lifted. Start tackling welfare abuse. Cut payments. That is what a country running an unsustainable budget deficit needs.
What about the poor? Osborne has lifted the personal tax allowance by a few hundred quid to £10,500. That is simply not enough. It means that folks earning less than £1000 a month are paying tax. The incentive for those living on welfare need to take a low paid job is not just a stick (which Osborne declines to use) but also a carrot – that is to say to lift the tax threshold to £20,000.
What about creating jobs?
4154 days ago
You may remember that last summer I spent a long while as the sole guest of a hotelier in Corfu called Spiros. I am back. He greeted me like an old friend and there was good news and bad.
The bad news is that I do not have his undivided attention. There seem to be two other rooms occupied this year. The good news concerns money. My rate per night has fallen from 35 Euro a year ago to 25 Euro this time. And as a bonus, Spiros has given up trying to quit smoking and so now buys his own rather than smoking all of mine. That is worth another Euro and a half a day.
Sitting in the pool this afternoon (all alone) I pondered the suggestions from our correspondents in the GNSH that is Stoke on Trent that after my experiences in Athens I should abandon Greece and book a holiday in the Potteries. I am assured that Stoke has a brand new bus station, is 30 degrees in the shade and has much else to commend itself. Truly it sounds like the new Athens of the North… well at least in terms of youth unemployment it probably is.
Hmmmm, shall I swap lounging the pool in 34 degree heat with an almost personal service of café frappes from Spiros for an afternoon trekking round the pottery heritage trail? It is a hard call. I promise that one day I shall go visit David and Chris in Stoke for a bit of welfare scrounger porn, but on balance for a summer break, I have to conclude that Greece more than edges it.
