Hard Times?
Please Sir, can I have another Volkswagen?
By Guardianista Charlene Dickens from her Tuscan Villa……
The original:
The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again.
The 2011 Guardian version:
Mr Osborne’s deficit-reduction package will end up hitting Britain’s poorest hardest. As of this week, VAT has risen by two and a half percentage points to 20%, which in theory puts an extra £340 on the advertised price of a basic Volkswagen Golf, pushes up a typical 37-inch plasma TV from something like £449.99 to £459.57, and pulls the average pint of lager over the £3 mark. Not to mention raising the cost of petrol and even the humble packet of crisps.
Oh dear – brand new Volkswagen Golf? 37” Plasma TV screen? It doesn’t have quite the evocative ring to it that Dickens description of the down trodden poor had, does it?
January
7, 2011 at 23:05
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Oh dear, so by la Toynbee’s definition I’m poor as I don’t own a Golf, let
alone a car nor a plasma TV – not that I need one as the current idiot box is
doing well enough.
How about trying a different approach? Such as don’t tax quite so much and
I might be able to buy the aforementioned items!
- January 5, 2011 at 18:45
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I bought a new TV last year, but only because the old CRT one finally
shuffled off this mortal coil. It had managed ten years, and I would like to
think that its replacement will do at least as well. Fortunately this all
happened before the VAT increase.
Compared to what I have to pay the BBC for the privilege of operating a TV
set, an extra couple of pounds a year over the next ten years is
negligible.
However, I have yet to buy a new Volkswagen. Come to think of it, I’ve
never bought an old one either, so I must be really poverty-stricken.
- January 5, 2011 at 17:39
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Prepared pet food has VAT on it at the top rate and has had ever since it
was introduced. we have three dogs (small ones) and two cats though!
- January 5, 2011 at 12:37
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Problem is the feckless with families do recieve benefits equatable to
working families at the lower end of the employment ladder .
This is
morally wrong not to mention economically unsestainable.
The 100 tax code
is the answer ,the sooner the better ,then there are no excuses.
Another
Labour government ?
It will be urepairable.
- January 5, 2011 at 11:32
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A new Golf – it’s the kind of poverty I aspire to; in vain.
- January 5, 2011 at 10:37
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Try leaving a comment on Polly’s dirge about her 3 houses, they are always
removed. She also hates to be reminded about her statement that ‘Blair and
Brown are the best thing to happen to British politics’.
- January
5, 2011 at 11:17
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Yes, some facts are clearly less sacred than others!
- January 5, 2011 at 15:28
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Yes, Julia – comment is free, but facts are expensive!
- January 5, 2011 at 10:06
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Do you really believe The Guardian accurately represents people on lower
wages and benefits? What do you imagine its circulation is around the working
class estates? Most of it’s readers (stereotype alert!!!) appear to me to be
those who gentrify poorer areas for their own profit… you can’t take this type
of article as representative of how VAT will affect poorer people.
If your income is about £60 pw JSA or £100 pw ESA, you will be more
adversely affected by the rise in VAT than if your income is higher.
Finally – why can’t poor people aspire to own nice things or have a
comfortable home life? If people are too ill to work (obviously, not all
incapacity claims are fraudulent), or if no work is available for them (I
mentor a teenager who was recently one of 280 applicants for four positions at
a retailer) then should they all just huddle around an old oil can fire and
tell stories of the good old days for entertainment?
Lovenkisses…
- January 5, 2011 at 10:30
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If your income is around £60 pw JSA, I would venture to suggest you
wouldn’t be buying a Volkwagen Golf – you would be buying essentials like
food, on which there is no VAT!
There is absolutely no reason why ‘poor people shouldn’t aspire to own
nice things’ – nor was there any suggestion in my piece that there was.
However, to suggest that those who are buying brand new volkswagens and
37″ Plasma TVs represent the new poor is ludicrous, few of those with jobs
can afford such things…..
Lvennkisses…
-
January 5, 2011 at 10:48
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Anna: Regarding paragraphs 1 and 3 in your reply – I agree with you,
which is why I made the comment about The Guardian. It does not represent,
nor have an understanding of those who are truly poor.
Your paragraph two: you didn’t make that suggestion, other commenters
here and elsewhere make that implication.
More lovenkisses…
- January 5, 2011 at
11:06
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Quite right – shall we get a room?
More lovenkisses.
-
January 5, 2011 at 11:10
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With my nocturnal habits, I think we’re better off in separate
countries….
- January 5, 2011 at 12:34
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Not all food is exempt. Basic foodstuffs are zero rated but some food
isn’t. Basically around baked products (cakes vs biscuits) and luxury
foods, but take-aways are standard rates as are carbonated drinks.
-
January 5, 2011 at 18:41
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Given the unhealthy nature of a lot of take-out food, it’s probably
for the best if it costs more, in the forlorn hope that people might
cook more healthy stuff at home.
- January 5, 2011 at 09:20
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This is what Guido quoted from Matthew Parris the other day; it’s very
apposite:
“People will embrace retrenchment in principle then lament any cut
affecting them. Shrouds will be waved, illiteracy and infant malnutrition
predicted, and in the opposition imagination old people will be starving or
freezing to death in countless wretched hovels. The demise of theatre, ballet,
museums and day care centres, the fine arts, mountain rescue and the Battersea
Dogs Home will be pronounced imminent. Charities, think-tanks and academics
will write to The Times to call ministers deaf to reason. Long-term savings
will be claimed to be achievable only by maintaining current spending. The
whole lexicon of short-termism, scorched earth, vandalism and philistinism
will be ransacked. Howls of indignation from co-ordinated bands of
identifiable losers will drown out quiet murmurs of approval among the
ungalvanised majority.”
Couldn’t have put it better.
- January
5, 2011 at 09:02
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The rubbish that has been talked about this issue had left me fuming – see
today’s post.
Couldn’t agree with you more Anna – but then in the Milipede’s Britain
these items are part of your inalienable human rights!
- January 5, 2011 at 10:00
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January 5, 2011 at 09:00
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Indeed
I wouldn’t mind VAT so much if it was restricted the luxury goods
as I always understood was the idea (I am happy to stand corrected). I can do
with a plasma screne TV, or luxury sofa, whatever. What I can’y bloomin’ do
without is petrol, which is extortionately expensive.
G
- January 5, 2011 at 12:20
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Blame the EU for that. Once VAT is applied to an item it can’t be removed
according to EU rules. The rate can be changed however – which hasn’t been
done. And don’t forget that VAT is on top of the fuel duty so in effect its
a tax on a tax.
- January 8, 2011 at 11:43
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Somewhere in that price must also be a Global Warming tax.
- January 5,
2011 at 08:02
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Oh noes, the poor will have to make do with a laughable 33″ LCD, and a
second-hand car.
Oh wait, that’s what I have and I have a job. So what the
hell is all this bollocks?
Their rights?
Oh sorry, forgot. My bad, those
poor (figurative) poor (figurative) poor (literal).
- January 5,
2011 at 07:43
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And they state it without a trace of irony, or even a sense of shame!
-
January 5, 2011 at 09:17
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Merely taking their lead from the bbc. The tapeloop of milimong condeming
the VAT rise as reckless, must be worn out by now.
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