White Van Man budget. – The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Anna Raccoon on March 20, 2013

No Tax up to £10,000 annual income.

Fuel duty increase scrapped.

Cheaper Beer.

Tax Free child care to be introduced.

Equity loan up to 20% of value of homes up to £600,000 interest free for five years.

White Van Man must be ecstatic – and busy stocking up on dodgy cigarettes….oh dear, no increase in tax on cigarettes?

What’s your first impression of the budget?

{ 47 comments }

rabbitaway March 21, 2013 at 12:59

This lot seem very precise on how they’re gonna get their hands on tax
payers dosh – Surely they could have formulated a fail safe measure to force
the avoiders and other loop holer’s to cough up – UK uncut all power to ya
!

Jabba the Cat March 21, 2013 at 17:24

“UK uncut all power to ya !”

You should watch this, you might learn something…
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/occupier-thanks-former-soviet-citizen-converting-him-capitalism-pro-israel-pro-usa

rabbitaway March 21, 2013 at 18:00

@Jabba the capitalist cat
Don’t need this sort of education – What,
may I ask has the Soviet Union got to do with Socialism ?

Engineer March 21, 2013 at 19:26

The trouble is that ‘Socialism’ is part of the problem. Half of
public expendtiture is on Welfare, Health and Debt Interest. Now, having
a safety net that sees that people do not fall into destitution through
no fault of their own, and having some arrangement whereby all can
access healthcare when the need to are perfectly laudable, but the
immense spending and waste that have become synonymous with both are not
– hence the debt interest burden. We don’t “need” the NHS, we just need
a way of seeing people get medical attention when necessary. We don’t
“need” sink estates to be propped up with welfare spending, we need a
way to tide people over and help them find another job. Since about WW2,
most governments have spent more than the country can earn; they have
promised things they know they can’t really afford. Hence the debt. The
country has lived beyond it’s means for too long, and balancing the
books (if it’s possible at all, now) will be a long and (compared to
what we’re used to) painful process.

Someone once said “Socialists always run out of other people’s
money”. If they had just spent what could be afforded, things would now
be much more straightforward for all of us.

rabbitaway March 21, 2013 at 20:24

Engineer – Oh dear, thanks for that I’m off back to me Jimmy Savile
stuff – as they say 2 things never to discuss in a bar politics and
relegion – each to their own …..!

Jabba the Cat March 21, 2013 at 23:44

“Someone once said “Socialists always run out of other people’s
money””

It was Mrs T who said, “socialism always fails when it runs out of
other people’s money”…

Jabba the Cat March 21, 2013 at 12:27

Mr Micawber is not happy…
£612 billion income – £720 billion expenditure
= -£108 billion deficit
http://orderorder.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/charts1.jpg

miss mildred March 21, 2013 at 10:58

I wish I was clever enough to know whether Osborne’s fudget is good bad or
worse. My other half asked me if I thought we, as ancient state pensioners,
would be better off? The CT had 2 quid knocked off. If we staggered into a pub
and bought beer we would hardly notice the difference. We can’t go away
because OH can’t get insurance. It is too cold to go out at the moment. We
hardly socialise. No need for fancy clothes. Just lots of layers to keep cosy.
House temperature18o C. We are not poor. My financial adviser said yesterday,
on the phone, that I had made 15% on a substantial 3 year bond due to mature
on 3rd March. Oh whoopee. He also told me he was unable to support such a
Footsie gamble in the future, or a longer term investment, due to my age.
Ageism? Or just being cautious? The raising of income tax threshold might help
too. Apart from a very personal circumstantial viewpoint I cannot pronounce on
poor young Osbornes fudget.

GildasTheMonk March 21, 2013 at 10:20

He has no room for manouvre and is playing the appalling hand he has been
dealt as best he can. We are paying the price for more than 60 years of mostly
incompetence, Brown’s and Blair’s being of a truly impeachable degree

Engineer March 21, 2013 at 10:48

Indeed, that is the long and short of it. One does wonder why politicians
of any stripe can’t just be honest about it – though I did see a quote
somewhere from (I think) the Prime Minister of Luxembourg that politicians
know exactly what to do to sort out the mess, they just can’t work out a way
of doing it and being electable afterwards.

GildasTheMonk March 21, 2013 at 11:33

A good point.

binao March 21, 2013 at 13:38: All may be true, but govt continues to increase spending rather than
cut it, for all the talk of too much austerity.
Govt taking half of
everything; I’m sure it was less than 40% of a much smaller economy
about 20 years ago; and I really can’t see what we’re getting for this
huge increase in govt spending. Pavements crumbling, roads full of
potholes, but we’ll have HS2, which may yet become Concorde 2
Must
stop whining.
Beer helps.

Cascadian March 21, 2013 at 16:45

If Mr and Mrs Engineer can balance their domestic budget year-in,
year-out I nominate them as the next co-chancellors.

A budget is not some sacred thing that has to increase inexorably,
decisions about where money is to be allocated have to be made, in times
of lower income(of which there will be many in the future given UK
demographics) frills and less essential items (and there are plenty of
those in the national budget) have to be foregone. It is really very
simple, but one has to have the correct outlook-we must balance the
budget. If by contrast the outlook is -we must get re-elected-then failure
is sure to ensue, if electors accept that they get all that they
deserve.

Camoron and Osborne, Clegg and Alexander have proved themselves
useless, Balls-up we know would be worse, Milliband will do whatever the
unions tell him to do with disastrous effect. You have been playing this
game of alternatively electing socialist government or
not-quite-socialist-but-want-to-be-seen-as-caring-government for my entire
lifetime (60+years). It has not worked, let me correct that, it has failed
miserably, it is time for a change. Oh, but people will bluster, we cannot
give an untried party the keys of power, they might mess it up-as if they
could do worse.

For increased credibility should a new government be formed, I would
suggest as the first act an immediate cut of MP’s compensation by 30% , a
meagre allowance for one assistant, a free second-class rail ticket for
the UK and a severe cap on expenses. I would then know we have a serious
budget balancing party in power.

Enough of the status quo where people are freezing to balance their
budgets (two reports here in the last couple of days), and killing
pensioners in hospital is used to reduce the budget. These miserable
politicians with their penny-off a pint are taking the piss, and I for one
despise their inaction while they sit comfortably.

Engineer March 21, 2013 at 19:33

Thank you for the vote of confidence Cascadian, but I’m afraid that
politics is not for me. I don’t believe in despotism, and I’m damned if
I’m standing for election, so it’s not going to happen.

I do share your thoughts on MPs’ pay and perks, though.

Cascadian March 21, 2013 at 23:28: I understand your reluctance Engineer, but until we can attract
engineers, housewives and tradesmen with real work experience then we
are doomed with gormless candidates like Miliband, Balls, Camoron,
Clegg, Alexander, Osborne, Harman and a cast of hundreds of MPs who
have absolutely no life experience or budgetary skills.

JohnR March 21, 2013 at 09:41

Right-to-buy discounts increased, many to 75k.
London RTB to
100k.
The 10k threshold will take many out of the working tax credit
zone.
1p off beer makes no difference , but looks good.
NIC lowered,
guess the LLPs’ will be queing to go PAYE ?
Univ credit a year
early.
So, not so neutral.
Looks interesting.
If employment increases
then things may get slightly better, but then wages/salaries will increase and
employment costs too.
Looking at it as a package:
He is pessimistic, and
he isn’t alone.
Looking at the rest of the world I doubt that there is room
for optimism.

Backwoodsman March 21, 2013 at 05:46

Well, spring has nicely sprung here and my thoughts turned to something
long and cool, with a slice of lemon. Later that day in the supermarket, as I
picked up the very acceptable litre of gin, costing just under four quid, it
did fleetingly cross my mind that the UK is a seriously fucked up place !

the moon’s a balloon March 20, 2013 at 21:41

1p off beer and he expects that to be passed on to the consumer? Silly arse
hasn’t bought a pint for a while, has he? Beer was rounded to the nearest 5p
about ten years ago and has long since been so rounded to the nearest 10p.

As for the government getting into the mortgage guarantee business… One is
left speechless by the innocence of it all.

Kingbingo March 20, 2013 at 21:27

For me this budget did its main damage in the first few minutes when the
Chancellor explained that he would tolerate high persistent inflation as long
as the BoE did not run out of envelopes to justify themselves. This is after
39 months non-stop of missing the inflation target.

My dear old mum sent me a text the other day “lucky we are not in Cyprus
she said” to which I replied “It has already happened here and worse with
inflation, just more gradually so people don’t riot”

Inflation is the silent killer, that when I was starting out in finance
everyone knew we had to be very wary off, although everyone seemed to be
forgetting why exactly. Well now all my peers are either finding that they
have no money left at the end of the month, despite seeming to have what most
would call a high income. Inflation, taxation, all crazy, all mean there is
nothing left to spend, much less to save. My friends from my home town with
more regular jobs are really really struggling. It will get worse.

The truth is this country is broke, and it is trying to pretend it is not
by printing money and attempting to inflate the debt away. But when you print
money, your not making anything of value, your just making the government
richer while making everyone else poorer.

I don’t know what to recommend if your a pensioner, you’re kinda
screwed.

Woman on a Raft March 20, 2013 at 22:57: ^^^^This^^^^^

Also, a re-inflation of the housing bubble as that’s the favourite
Conservative feel-good drug. The boils, paranoia, defaults and outright
fraud come later, for which the rest of us will be handed the tab.

John March 20, 2013 at 19:06

1st thought:
The last time George decided to cheer everybody by
increasing the starting rate of tax, we found out a few days later that he’d
snuck in some unannounced small print where he lowered the starting threshhold
for 40%, so that those hard working, aspirational folks making over £41k got
nothing from it at all. I expect a similar sneaky-bastard measure is in this
one too, for all the shit Osborne talks about encouraging hard working
aspirational people it will be just a load of lying bollocks.

2nd thought:
1p off a pint of beer! Fuck me, I feel so incentivised to
suddenly go out and buy beer. I doubt the pubs will even hand the decrease
down. Again – just more bollocks from Osborne.

Kingbingo March 20, 2013 at 21:11

From next year people earning £33,000 will now be considered ‘rich’ and
will pay higher rate tax.

Yeah….

Newmark March 21, 2013 at 12:53

In 2014-15 you don’t pay higher rate income tax unless your income is
greater than £41,865, The first £10,000 is not taxed.

Kingbingo March 21, 2013 at 15:02: Yes your right, my typo, I was thinking £43k, but your more correct
with the exact figure. Apologizes.

Still bloody low to be considered ‘rich’ though.

carol42 March 20, 2013 at 18:59

Cigarettes went up 26p a pack, not that it bothers me, I have not bought
cigarettes or tobacco in the UK since the ban, especially in pubs. If they
want to treat me as a second class citizen they don’t need my taxes, a few
trips abroad, easy from where I live keeps me going. I am not sure keeping
house prices up at all costs is a great idea, it might lead to relaxed lending
again and we all know where that led. Difficult though with all the people who
bought in the years before the crash. I can’t see it making much difference to
me anyway.

Robert Edwards March 20, 2013 at 17:21

I don’t like the ‘organized support’ for the housing market. I’m damned if
I’m going to pay for other peoples’ aspirations. Fuck ‘em; let them take some
risk. Is this government run by estate agents?

Cascadian March 20, 2013 at 18:57

Don’t be silly of course you will pay, you can only hope it will not be
too much.
If this sounds like a re-run of the USA attempting to get
people into homes with small down-payments and low-interest loans (actually
you are providing zero interest for five years) in a falling market, then
lessons have NOT been learned have they? The difference here is that the
government is directly betting with your money, hoping it can be recovered.
There is no upside, only precipitous downside risk. The only way this can
work is more QE, the govt prints money at 0%, loans it at 0% hopes like hell
it gets repaid, how can that be classified as an investment?
Let me
summarize more money in circulation, GBP effectively devalued, the govt
loves inflation, to hell with savers.

JuliaM March 21, 2013 at 09:37: “…then lessons have NOT been learned have they?”

Are they ever?

Woodsy42 March 20, 2013 at 17:11

Duty on tobacco, wine and spirits is increased automatically by inflation
+escalator, I think tobacco is 5% increase plus inflation.

Cascadian March 20, 2013 at 16:56

The estimates are always wrong, but Georgie got one thing right-more
borrowing required to fund ruinous programmes. Pretty much a liebour
budget.

The decline accelerates, England goes begging for more money to prop up the
domestic budget, the bond agencies will not be happy, yUK.

Beware of Geeks Bearing GIFs March 20, 2013 at 16:53

What’s my first impression of the budget?

Rearranging the deckchairs on UK plc, aka the RMS Titanic.

Engineer March 20, 2013 at 16:35

First impressions are that it would be best to wait until the pundits have
digested the small print and found the bad bits! That growth isn’t going to
suddenly take off is no real surprise – given the state of world economics, I
can’t see real growth happening for some time. Still, he does seem to be
trying to get off the backs of ordinary people and small businesses a bit, so
one can be cautiously optimistic, I suppose.

Michael J. McFadden March 20, 2013 at 16:25

No tax up to 10,000 pounds? Nice! I could live on that! (Heh, I *do* live
on that!) LOL!

:>
MJM

Saul March 20, 2013 at 15:44

Ooops!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21861941

John Galt March 20, 2013 at 15:35

“Tax give away = early general election?”

Doubt it as that would require the coalition agreement to be repudiated.
Might happen if the coalition falls apart in the immediate future.

Generally, the budget appears revenue neutral, some give away’s paid for by
more borrowing and a hope of future growth.

The 2015 budget, immediately prior to the May 2015 election (based upon the
current timetable) will be the clincher. Expect to get lots of giveaway’s
there to be paid for after the election. If Labour win the election, I would
expect an emergency budget to unwind the bits they don’t like.

Overall analysis: “Meh!”

Dioclese March 20, 2013 at 15:20

Tax give away = early general election?

Maybe Cameron has had enough of the treacherous little tit Clegg at
last?

Daedalus X. Parrot March 21, 2013 at 10:09: Very good point.

Or is this housing subsidy bonanzarama a devious, evil plan by Osbourne
to create another huge and damaging housing bubble carefully designed to
explode after the next general election when Lib-Lab will be in power?

Based on Osbourne’s previous lack of competence, I suspect you are right.
Either way it won’t end well.

Bill Sikes’ Dog March 20, 2013 at 14:49

The bad news :

Taxes on alcohol and cigarettes are subject to an automatic increase [the
escalator] of at least 2% over inflation until at least next year .

Beer was explicitly excluded from this year’s rises in the chancellor’s
speach ; unfortunately , no mention was made of tobacco duty so its looks as
if that increase will go ahead .

Sorry to disapoint you all

Dan T March 20, 2013 at 14:15

“Equity loan up to 20% of value of homes up to £600,000 interest free for
five years.”

British Politics 101. Keep house prices high at all costs.

Mudplugger March 20, 2013 at 15:35: Keep prices unrealistically high AND let your mates in the big building
firms make an extra bob or two (none of which would ever return as party
donations, goodness gracious me, no)

Trouble is, all these ‘new’ loan channels will still be subject to the
lenders’ criteria for safe lending – with no jobs secure and most new jobs
only on minimum wages, not many potential buyers will pass that test. So yet
another housing initiative will fail, just like all the previous ones. The
housing market should be just that, a market, one which works on a
supply-demand basis without interference.

Moor Larkin March 20, 2013 at 14:12