From Munguin's Republic: "I didn't want to blog on the budget, I'm already sick of hearing about it." Labour government - taxes go up and we get screwed. Cleggeron administration - taxes go up and we get screwed. The faces might change, the voices get shriller (squeaky even) and the rhetoric is different(ish). But somehow, the outcome is always the same - we get screwed.

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But when the EU impliment it's direct taxation will that be on top of the VAT which is imposed on the excise duties so we end up paying a tax on a tax on a tax! Why don't they just take it all and give us pocket money?

Are you a socialist Richard?

Private wealth might be an advantage in seeing off the blandishments of corrupt politicians, and power structures.

Are you guilty of muddled thought? Are not butlers employed and happy by and large? Why do they need you to fight for them?

Leave Jeeves alone and Bertie Wooster. Get after the EU please.

The problem with inherited private weath in politics is that it insulates the beneficiaries from the real world, and any understanding of how it works ... thus almost by definition rendering them unsuitable for the task, lacking as they do any scintialla of empathy. More to the point, in the current environment, we are getting toy boys who are able to become politicians and progress to positions of power merely by virtue of their inherited wealth. Does that bother me? Well, not particularly until they start mouthing their meaningless shit, like "we're all in it together". Er.. up to a point, Lord Copper, 'cept we get to make friends with the bailiffs, not they.

This, of course, does not mean that lack of personal wealth - as with Heath - makes for good politicians. It may be that the problem with politicians is just that they are politicians, and perhaps we should shoot ten percent of them at random every decade, pour encourager les autres, irrespective of their net worth.

Labour fuck up and the tories fix up, again. That's the sad message of this budget.

Why no immediate moratorium on ALL foreign aid? That alone would cut recovery time in more than half....We have to work to fend for ourselves, only to have the fruits of our work taken away from us by gumment & pissed up against a third-world wall...They've been on this planet as long as have we...time they sorted themselves out

Don't think so ... public spending is set to increase by ten percent (in real terms) by 2014-15:

2009-10 (Last Labour year) £669bn
2010-11 £697bn
2011-12 £700bn
2012-13 £711bn
2013-14 £722bn
2014-15 £737bn (£68bn or 10% above Labour level)

Labour fucks up ... Cleggerons (not Tories ... we don't have a Tory government) fuck up ... we pay.

Only the rhetoric changes.

We cant afford current levels, the deficit is @ 160 billion, so to take it over 200 billion, is insane......yes some growth may occur......but it may well not with such a large deficit and virtually no stimulus.

Thanks for quoting from Munguin's Republic.

And then writing that amusing piece. Glad to be associated with it.

LMAO @ letting the Second Butler go.... we'd never do that. I mean the Butler has to have one day of, a fortnight... who'd lay tea in the drawing room?

Tris.

Do politicians have their brains removed when elected? This lot are as stupid as the ones they replaced. Both wee Georgie and Hannan haven't a clue how anyone else lives. Certainly things had to be done but increasing VAT to 20% and then Hannan says it is OK because only the rich buy things. What sodding planet is he on? The poor also have to buy things and have things repaired, all carrying this dead load of VAT, it hits the poorer sections of society much harder than the rich bastards like them. And the poor cannot claim it on their expenses. So food is zero rated, at least some of it, but many other things are not.

Perhaps one of these so called elite would enlighten me, we are broke as a country, and going green is going to cost what.., billion, trillions, isn't this a paradox? We are going to spend money we haven't got over and above the current debt for a myth. I am really glad that I didn't go to Eton, I might have ended up as stupid as the Boy King and his chancellor. To say nothing of his best mate Hague who thinks he is "foreign secretary", last I heard that was an EU competancy, not National.