Day 4589: More Jane Austens to Circulate

Thursday:

The good news is that there has been a small but significant increase in Great Britain’s output in the second quarter, meaning that there will be call for more of the new tenners when they come in.

Unemployment remains at almost exactly the same place it was when the Coalition entered government, and inflation has been at about 3% for the last year (a bit too high, but – crash of 2009 aside – lower than it’s been since before Mr Frown was Prime Monster).

We’re even a little HAPPIER than we were last year!

And in a reversal of a trend that’s lasted nearly thirty years, income inequality has got LESS under the Coalition: average household incomes have dropped since the economy went to pieces under the last government, but the largest fall has been for the richest 20%, while the least well off 20% has actually seen an INCREASE in average income after tax and benefits, as a direct result of LIBERAL DEMOCRAT policies such as targeting tax cuts at basic rate taxpayers and expecting the well off to pay a proper rate of capital gains tax.

Clearly, as Liberal Democrat Voice reports, Liberal Democrats in government do better than Hard “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” Labour.

And, as a reminder to those people calling for the return of a “punish the rich” 50p tax rate, it seems that asking the better off to pay a range of FAIR taxes raises MORE money which means that we can CUT LESS or TAX LESS. Mr Neil puts it well in his letter to the paper here.

If you want to “clamp down on tax avoiders” you don’t do it by hitting the people who DO pay for an extra 5%; a LOWER tax rate seems to mean FEWER avoiders too. And call me a practical old lump but I’d rather have 45% of something than 50% of nothing, because I put REDUCING the burden of tax and cuts on the least well off AHEAD of the dogmatic pleasures of stiffing the rich for 50p.

As with the earlier news that Hard Labour’s recession was deeper than thought while the Coalition’s “double dip” never happened this was NOT headline news, because it was not a DISASTER.


Welcoming the news, Shadow Chancer Mr Bully Balls was spitting teeth.