Originally posted by budski
Your exact words
And then the U-Turn
- You seem to have decided that the term "for the vast majority" means 'all'.
Sorry but it doesn't.
If you insist it does then that's your own little issue.
The only person engaging in spin and linguistic contortions is you.
"the vast majority" does not mean everyone or all the people.
You can try and work your way out of that 1 if you like.
If you really wanted to be clever and accurate you could go & find old posts of mine at the time of the last budget when this measure was first
announced......
......but then you'd find that there I had said that I expected the years delay in implementing the 10p rate abolition to mean that this would be
corrected at the following (2008) budget and that the net result would be that by the time the original 10p rate abolition was supposed to take effect
no-one would end up losing out.
OK, so it took a damaging row, a mini-budget (which this, kind of, is) and a very convoluted route to get there but it looks as if I ended up being
right afterall.
Maybe that wouldn't have suited your purpose tho, eh?
Whatever points you want to score over this the result is that Labour once again reduced taxes, particularly for the least well off
(and it sounds like a very small hike is going on the tax bill most well off too).
Happy days.
Originally posted by Ste2652
I'm not sure how hard the EU will push Britain
- They'll do what they have done previously when Euro-member countrys exceeded the criteria, a little disapproval or at worst a verbal slap on the
wrists.
But in reality it might not even be much of that.
The whole point of the convergence criteria is the stability and credibility of the Euro currency, the fact that the UK is not a member of the Euro
means that we are of far less concern to the others.
It's really about us and the impression we create.
Maintaining within the convergence criteria is nice and all (something the UK has done when others have not and for years) but if we have cause now to
occasionally stray from the line(s) drawn then we only make problems for ourselves if we later wish to join.
But even then the example of Italy alone shows that it is hardly a matter of rigid 'law'.
I also think there's something else to consider here.
This (reportedly) £2.7 billion that this measure effectively injects into the UK economy might just turn out to have been part of a fortunate
convergence of events.
The US has decided things are so serious that they have just done something similar (albeit to the tune of around £80 billion) but nevertheless this
might turn out to have been the most helpful & sensible thing to do in view of the current economic climate.
Naturally it's been very badly handled in political terms but economically it could be the start of a drastic fiscal easing which must be carried
through if we are to escape financial problems some have likened to the 1930s.
Perhaps this has been a convenient way of doing something fairly drastic without frightening too many people or causing a collapse in economic
confidence?
.......and despite the party-political jibes of some that is nothing like the reality of todays UK 'market'.
[edit on 13-5-2008 by sminkeypinkey]
