HOW I regret breaking my habit on Sunday, and watching a long interview with the Chancellor that left me virtually tearing my hair. Anger and frustration come nowhere near my feelings.
Why does no interviewer ever ask what the tax breaks actually do for the poorest few million?
All we hear is that the reduction in tax rates and the reversal of the National Insurance increase leave more money in folks’ pockets. But no-one ever points out that the poorest do not pay any tax or National Insurance, so where is the extra in their pockets?
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These changes do indeed leave more in pockets – of the richest, around £55,000 for someone “earning” £1 million. But of course, this will trickle down and create more jobs and better pay. When? In a few years’ time? Aye, right!
Why not ask the Chancellor how people will put food on the table for their children TOMORROW, or keep the house warm enough for a frail, disabled pensioner to avoid dying of hypothermia in the next week or two, as the weather gets colder.
Past experience shows that most of that kind of wealth only trickles down into a bank account in a tax haven, and these changes will simply turn that trickle into a huge jet-like a burst in an oil pipeline.
L McGregor
Falkirk
THE Conservatives have surely made poor choices with their recent Budget. To most people, rewarding those at the top of the pile in the current climate is wrong. A better choice would surely have been to take look at VAT, how it is being charged and what it is being charged on. I could understand a 40% VAT levy on a Land Rover Discovery, which is not a necessity and only the rich can afford one, but 20% VAT on an electric heater is stupid.
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Reducing VAT to 10% or removing it totally on most necessary items and then increasing VAT to 40% for luxury items would help everyone, and most likely increase the sales of many items in the shops. Those who could afford the luxuries would contribute more, and those getting by would have more money to spend.
VAT, value added tax – what clown thought that one up?
Alan Craigon
via email
ONE of the main aims of achieving independence is to close the gap between rich and poor. With child poverty reaching 25% (much higher in deprived areas), surely this is the time for the Scottish Government to show their desire for this by NOT reducing taxation rates. To show their true worth, they should consider increasing the tax entry rate for the lowest paid, by at least 10%. These are people in most difficulty, with fewer working hours and even closures in the sectors that partially sustain them.
The UK Government has once again looked after their own – with millionaires £40k better off in the next fiscal year. Hopefully, this policy will never be implemented north of the Border. Losing a few (which I doubt) will probably not affect the outcome of the next referendum.
Sandy Coghill
Sligachan , Isle of Skye
THE latest Tory Budget can leave us in no doubt: they are a self-serving organisation who hand our favours to their already wealthy Tory supporters. However the latest attack on the already poor and disadvantaged is disgusting.
They have created a system that perpetuates low wages to help their supporters get increased profits. The wages are so poor that the taxpayers have to fund tax credits to support these victims of government policy. They refuse to establish a proper minimum wage or raise it with inflation, and now they try to blame the low-paid for the position they are in, telling them to find higher-paid work or lose their tax credits.
I am disgusted and appalled that UK voters can continue to vote for politicians who lack any social conscience or care about improving the lives of their citizens. A government voted in on promises of levelling up and maintaining pensions – every promise made has proved to be a lie. We should wise up – Scotland can do better.
F Paterson
Dunlop
YOU really have to wonder why anyone would believe a single word that current British Labour in Scotland leader Anas Sarwar says! Prior to the council elections he claimed his party wouldn’t do deals with the Tories, yet not only did they do that all across Scotland but they also did deals with the British Unionist Party and went as far as having a leading light in the Orange Order stand as a Labour candidate!
He now claims that whether we voted Yes or No for indy our bills are going up – but wasn’t he part of Better Together who told us our bills would only go up if we voted Yes in the indyref? Each promise from Sarwar and his Tory Better Together colleagues has been broken – we’re out of the EU, food and fuel prices are rocketing and still Sarwar tries to hide his lies and continue with the “only Labour can sort the situation” myth!
It’s Labour and their lies, their preference for a Tory government in Westminster rather than an independent Scottish Government that has got us into this mess. On this showing, there will be no revival in Labour’s fortunes in Scotland – no matter how often Sarwar lies to the public.
Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley
JIM Taylor (Sep 27) is correct that nothing of what we were promised in 2014 has materialised. Shouldn’t the fact that the 2014 referendum was based on a serious false pretence – viz we would stay in the EU, a reassurance that would have swayed a substantial number to vote No – invalidate the result of that referendum, if not legally then definitely morally? And doesn’t this strengthen the case for holding not a second but a reframed referendum to take the place of the invalidated one?
Valerie Waters
The Lothians
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