It has been difficult for most liberals – let alone Liberal Democrats – to take any positives at all from the fiasco that ensued from Sunday’s leaked announcement of plans for new powers for Government to snoop on electronic communication. Some pretty sharp lessons need to be learnt across the board, from the spectacularly ill-advised [...]
Having got that good rant about scaremongering and pensioners out of the way, it’s onto the rest of the budget. First, the good. The delivery ahead of schedule of the latest instalment of the core Liberal Democrat pledge to raise the basic tax allowance will take 2 million low-paid people out of paying tax altogether [...]
One of the issues developing a head of steam from the Budget is what I gather is being labelled the ‘granny tax’. I will be critical of other parts of the Budget later, but the fuss over this is absolute hogwash and the Government’s position is absolutely right and to be robustly defended. This is [...]
I’ve commented in the past on what the 2012 Budget has to do to pass muster as a worthy document from a Government committed to ensuring that those with the broadest shoulders pay their share. This is all the more so after the passage of legislation that will undoubtedly have a disproportionate effect on the [...]
The big surprise with today’s vote – even with the payroll vote to support the leadership on Andrew Lansley’s NHS Bill – was how close it was. A margin of barely 5% was not reflected in the overwhelmingly anti-Bill speeches, themselves reflecting the balance of opinion among those wanting to speak. Even the instincts of [...]
