Oops - HMRC might be charging lots of extra tax

In one of those "computer mistakes" ( which are really human error - at best ) for which government is justly famed, could cost about £1000 /yr for those people who don't check in detail.

Just like HMRC's decision not to ask for Tax returns from those earning less than £100k /yr I'm going to guess HMRC does well out of this also.

Its a new tax - a tax on ignorance.

PS I'm guessing I'm not the only one to wonder if a link between Gordon Brown's insane debt fuelled destruction of the country, his need for ready cash to keep fooling the voters before the general election, and this mistake might be linked ....

Brown's broadband poll tax

For a number of years Labour has been salivating over the idea of taxing the internet more. So look Brown created the "Broadband poll tax" - starting at only £6/household ( but we remember what happens next as year on year the levy increases far above inflation - at least in England ).

For a shorter period of time Labour has worried about the independent thought that the internet allows. They want to stop free expression, they want to control it all - after all they are socialists. The first step here is the plan to cut people of for file sharing. Once the infrastructure for that's in place it won't be long before they want to regulate and control further - just wait.

The Conservatives should pledge to repeal both measures.

PS Its about time we started drawing up a list of laws imposed under Labour that we need to repeal. Perhaps a great reform act could be passed wiping out the decade of oppression and waste caused by Labour as one of the first acts of a liberating Conservative government.

Update: And guess what ? Scotland is to enjoy being subsidised by English phone poll tax payers !!

"Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?"

Good question. Why aren't we hearing any more of this from our politicians ?

Clear blue water at last

David Cameron has announced the break with shadowing Labour's economic plans.

The Conservative party is now going to oppose enslaving our children with debt piled on by worn out Labour politicians anxious top keep their public sector salaries and pensions.

The snap election borrowing bribe is now looking more difficult for Gordon Brown to pull off with impunity.

Indeed there are reports of a rift between the current Chancellor/Treasurey and Gordon Brown on this.

Politics is about to develop substance again ...

I am also starting to notice people losing their jobs in my locality. Again any tax bribe in peoples pay packets here will be hidden away like it has been grasped by a starving squirrel.

The Bust has finally come. The only question is how long Labour will leave the spending drunk Brown at the wheel.

Update: The Conservative poll lead is reported as at about 3% - given the bias in the electoral system that means Labour could win a general election. This means politics is about to get very lively indeed.

Where is the government's balance sheet ?

Just spend a few minutes looking for a breakdown of where the UK government gets funded from.

The HM Treasury web site wasn't much initial help - just talks about spending.

Anyone know of any good links ? I'll have to go and look at the treasury's web site in more detail....

How about raising income tax ?

Now that might not seem the expect line from a somewhat right of centre blogger, however there is method in my madness, let me explain:

Gordon Brown has steathly increases the tax take from all of us, doing everything he can think of increase taxation without us realising it. He has stolen from our old age by increasing tax on our pensions ( and in passing reduced the value of the stock market causing negative feedback for pensioners - you can argue about how stocks should be valued, but this does seem to be an effect ). He has raised national insurance levels ( another name for income tax ). And most crippling of all council tax has increase by a staggering 50% - especially in areas that : Labour wish to tax disproportionately to punish them for being English or not voting Labour. And don't forget the anti South-East stamp duty rises.

All this deception has created deep problems in our society. The most obvious the damaged pensions and pensioners and the less obvious of making some voters think they can get something for nothing. Gordon Brown has picked our pockets without our noticing, but one day we'll wonder why the money is not there .

Hence George Osbourne should reverse as many of Gordon Brown's stealth tax rises as possible and increase income tax to cover the loss. I think the public would understand that this was a fairer and more honest thing to do. It would also expose Labour's deception that it has carried out over ten years.

There would then be wide spread support for reducing the size of the state - once people fully appreciate the cost of it.

Remember Mrs T raised income tax when she had to, to get the country out of the financial mess the last Labour government created.

The public sector millionaires club

Socialism is good for some - for those who don't have to pay for it.

The Tax payers alliance has identified that every house hold int he country will have to pay up to £40k to fund public sector pensions over the next few decades.

Most shocking they have found:

8,500 retired NHS employees with retirement benefits of £1 million !!!
To add to the 3,500 civil servants with that money.

Wow - its good to be involved in government - crap to be involved in wealth generation or other work as your money will have to be taken from you to pay for the new ruling elite in this country.

No wonder people want to emigrate. ( There was a good article in The Times on Saturday about the fact that the skilled and professional middle classes are the ones leaving the country right now - my neighbours are off to New Zealand).

Arty farty burdens on the tax payer

Man in a Shed is about to make himself very unpopular with the luvies but he can't see any reason for the state to fund arts - at all. There's a lot of special winging going on right now in the media over arts funding.

Like the lottery its a case of the poor paying tax to fund rich people's taste for opera and weird workshop on socially liberal topics.

Can I suggest arts funding is cut by 95%. Lower our taxes and let those who want to see and hear these things pay for it - or alternatively the performers / artists do it as a hobby.

Brown and Darling could force Shell and BP to leave the UK

There is a lot of emotional nonsense being spoken about Shell's profits today.

People like Unite and the AA ( for goodness sake) are trying to link petrol prices at garages to oil company profits. This of course not true. Even refining in general is less profitable - note BP selling Coryton recently to Petroplus.

Gordon Brown damaged the long term future of the North Sea oil industry as chancellor when he raised taxes and made clear that there was no longer going to be stability from the government. The problem is that areas like the North Sea require long term and high investment - you don't make it if you think the likes of Gordon Brown are just going to steal it when it suites them. Shell and BP have already made substantial moves to pull back from of the North Sea.

Now there's at least £8Billion missing from government revenues and making a popular so called windfall tax will look tempting to Darling. But remember its peoples pension schemes that own Shell and BP. So he's really stealing from peoples pensions when he does this ( not that you can expect left wing organisations like the BBC to explain this as the report from a garage forecourt having interviewed angry voters - I have no idea if they've done that this time, but I think they will ).

And there is a further risk Shell and BP may move. Shell completely to the Netherlands ( it is already registered there and its technical operations based there - the Dutch have for a long time got the better deal out of Shell ), BP to the US.

Then HMG will no longer benefit from taxing the profits that these companies make over seas. Less British people will work for these companies and out skills base will decline further.

But just because a decision is pig headily stupid in the medium to long term doesn't mean that Alistair Darling won't get permission from his master Gordon Brown to do it to keep them in their government jobs for a few more years.

Update: See this quote from Sunday 3 Feb Telegraph

"Shell is withdrawing from the North Sea operations because oil and gas reserves are in decline. On Thursday the company said it was planning a big increase in capital expenditure this year, using money from disposals to invest in more productive oil and gas fields around the world."

MiaS would argue that it is also because of uncertainty about operating in the UK created by Gordon Brown.

No ! Its my money.

Just heard a discussion on the radio about whether the BBC should have to compete for licence fee moeny with other public service broadcasters and there is one point I'd like to get across.

At one point the Conservative MP mentioned perhaps the money from the licence fee being spent on digital roll out could be used for this top slicing, so as not to take money from the BBC.

I would just like to say that its my money. Just because you've got people used to losing it to the government doesn't mean its the governments to spend.

The same goes for my taxes. No one should be racking their brains trying to figure out how to spend tax payers money - they should stop taking it from us in the first place.

And since were on the subject of the licence fee- which the BBC manages to make sound so grand - I'd like to chose which public service broadcaster it goes to - or at least a proportion goes to.

That would end the BBC-Guardianista domination as the large Right of centre population of the UK would at last have to be catered for. ( By the way Mark Thomson of the BBC - none of us is taken in by your employing Jeremy Clarkson or even having Iain Dale in to comment. Human shields will not hide you institutional left wing bias. )

Why should Liverpool say 'thank you' when the EU never does ?

I spend a few days in Liverpool last week and took the obligatory ferry across the Mersey.

And for the second time that day I came across the EU's propaganda. (Its all over the New Lanark museum in Scotland also.)

So if the EU thinks it should get thanks - where the thanks for the English tax payer who subsidises them ?

We are being made to be grateful for getting a little of our own money back - after the EU bureaucratic shrinkage of course. Isn't it time something was done about these annoying propaganda signs ?

My council tax bill is in 4.5% up

So that's GBP 1371.51 this year. Inflation in the public sector is at around 4.5% so I am told by the happy looking leaflets that came along with the demand for dosh.

The government is laughably trying to tell us inflation is currently at 3% .. ho ho.

The government is also busy cutting the grants it send to Surrey and probably other areas that don't vote Labour also.

Joy.

Global warming backlash is buidling up steam

We have all got so used to being told that Global Warming is a fact and those who argue against it are evil Luddites that we may have lost sight of the science. And worse its now being used as one of those political issues politicians use to justify their existence and why they should take our money.

Journalists are now starting to question all this received wisdom - and about time too !

The following program on Channel 4 in the UK on Thursday looks good;

Channel 4 Thursday 8 March at 9pm

In a polemical and thought-provoking documentary, film-maker Martin Durkin argues that the theory of man-made global warming has become such a powerful political force that other explanations for climate change are not being properly aired.

Should be worth a watch ! There's a trailer here ...

E-petition: Response from Man in a Shed to the Prime Minister

E-petition: Response from the Prime Minister and corresponding fisk from Man in a Shed (blue)

The e-petition asking the Prime Minister to "Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy" has now closed. This is a response from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Thank you for taking the time to register your views about road pricing on the Downing Street website. (Thank you for giving me your email address.)

This petition was posted shortly before we published the Eddington Study, an independent review of Britain's transport network. This study set out long-term challenges and options for our transport network.( At the time this petition was started you were unaware of all the facts and so are ignorant and ill informed.)

It made clear that congestion is a major problem to which there is no easy answer. (Its taken 10 years to figure that out eh ?. Well I guess you had John Prescott in charge of all this for a long while.)One aspect of the study was highlighting how road pricing could provide a solution (to Treasury funding without raising income tax and ruining our re-election chances - then we'd be stuck on public transport with the rest of you. Ministerial limousine from Heathrow in the bus lane is the only way to travel ) to these problems and that advances in technology put these plans within our reach. Of course it would be ten years or more before any national scheme was technologically, never mind politically ( you've got that bit right), feasible.

That is the backdrop to this issue. As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing "stealth taxes" (No we are hiding them in open cover - they are camouflage taxes) or introducing "Big Brother" surveillance (unlike cross checking all the finger prints on the ID cards against past crimes - which is. But we can be trusted) . This is a complex subject(ie you voters are too thick to understand), which cannot be resolved without a thorough investigation of all the options, combined with a full and frank debate about the choices we face at a local and national level. That's why I hope this detailed response will address your concerns (when will that bit start ? ) and set out how we intend to take this issue forward. I see this email as the beginning, not the end of the debate, and the links below provide an opportunity for you to take it further.

But let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing (please don't vote against us.). Indeed we are simply not yet in a position to do so (see you don't even have to trust us ! ). We are, for now, working with some local authorities that are interested in establishing local schemes to help address local congestion problems. Pricing is not being forced on any area (of course just untrue - the people in the extended congestion charging area don't want it and its being forced on them.), but any schemes would teach us more about how road pricing would work(for raising revenue - for example London congestion charging just reducing traffic by about 4% - but will bring in lots of dosh ) and inform decisions on a national scheme ( we'll we're hoping for the exact opposite really.). And funds raised from these local schemes will be used to improve transport in those areas ( Oink flap ).

One thing I suspect we can all agree is that congestion is bad. It's bad for business because it disrupts the delivery of goods and services. It affects people's quality of life. And it is bad for the environment. That is why tackling congestion is a key priority for any Government. (As is raising yet more money to waste on an unreformed public sector which will create a large client state to ensure Labour get returned to power and we can all keep our 1st class travel and limousines.)

Congestion is predicted to increase by 25% by 2015. This is being driven by economic prosperity. There are 6 million more vehicles on the road now than in 1997, and predictions are that this trend will continue.( Of course it takes one person to drive on vehicle so there's a limit here - but we don't want to spend your money on road - not we'd like to waste it on expensive rail schemes -see west coast line upgrade - in Labour heartlands and on ourselves. )

Part of the solution is to improve public transport, and to make the most of the existing road network. We have more than doubled investment since 1997( this is spending Tony SPENDING - you need to stop deceiving people with the words you use ), spending (Ok now that's better) £2.5 billion this year on buses and over £4 billion on trains - helping to explain why more people are using them than for decades ( no I'd say it was bus deregulation and rail privatisation ...). And we're committed to sustaining this investment (SPENDING), with over £140 billion of investment(SPENDING) planned between now and 2015. We're also putting a great deal of effort into improving traffic flows - for example, over 1000 Highways Agency Traffic Officers(cheap police officers - the traffic cops we're moved to filling forms in for the home office down the station) now help to keep motorway traffic moving.

But all the evidence shows that improving public transport and tackling traffic bottlenecks will not by themselves prevent congestion getting worse (bollocks - build bigger motorways - why are France and Germany OK ??). So we have a difficult choice to make about how we tackle the expected increase in congestion. This is a challenge that all political leaders have to face up to, and not just in the UK. For example, road pricing schemes are already in operation in Italy, Norway and Singapore, and others, such as the Netherlands, are developing schemes. Towns and cities across the world are looking at road pricing as a means of addressing congestion(revenue generation).

One option would be to allow congestion to grow unchecked. Given the forecast growth in traffic, doing nothing would mean that journeys within and between cities would take longer, and be less reliable. I think that would be bad for businesses, individuals and the environment. And the costs on us all will be real - congestion could cost an extra £22 billion in wasted time in England by 2025, of which £10-12 billion would be the direct cost on businesses.( So build more roads.)

A second option would be to try to build our way out of congestion. (thats better) We could, of course, add new lanes to our motorways, widen roads in our congested city centres, and build new routes across the countryside. Certainly in some places new capacity will be part of the story. That is why we are widening the M25, M1 and M62. But I think people agree that we cannot simply build more and more roads, particularly when the evidence suggests that traffic quickly grows to fill any new capacity.( No I don't - there is a physical limit to how many vehicles the population of the UK can drive - one each )

Tackling congestion in this way would also be extremely costly, requiring substantial sums to be diverted from other services such as education and health, or increases in taxes( again rubbish - it would stimulate the economy - leading to higher tax take- giving jobs to many of the working class). If I tell you that one mile of new motorway costs as much as £30m, you'll have an idea of the sums this approach would entail (given the GBP22Billion/year your worried about you could build 733 miles of motorway a year for the same cost - every year).

That is why I believe that at least we need to explore the contribution road pricing can make to (funding Labour's failed public spending splurge)tackling congestion. It would not be in anyone's interests, especially those of motorists, to slam the door shut on road pricing without exploring it further.

It has been calculated that a national scheme - as part of a wider package of measures - could cut congestion significantly through small changes in our overall travel patterns. But any technology used would have to give definite guarantees about privacy being protected - as it should be. Existing technologies, such as mobile phones and pay-as-you-drive insurance schemes, may well be able to play a role here(we've never heard of peoples location being confirmed by mobile phone station records in court have we ? Oh that's right we have), by ensuring that the Government doesn't hold information about where vehicles have been (again see ID cards and finger prints). But there may also be opportunities presented by developments in new technology. Just as new medical technology is changing the NHS, so there will be changes in the transport sector. Our aim is to relieve traffic jams, not create a "Big Brother" society.

I know many people's biggest worry about road pricing is that it will be a "stealth tax" on motorists. It won't. Road pricing is about tackling congestion ( believe this and you'll believe just about anything - in fact you probably voted NuLabour at the last election).

Clearly if we decided to move towards a system of national road pricing, there could be a case for moving away from the current system of motoring taxation. This could mean that those who use their car less, or can travel at less congested times, in less congested areas, for example in rural areas, would benefit from lower motoring costs overall. Those who travel longer distances at peak times and in more congested areas would pay more. But those are decisions for the future( hint: Those in rural areas vote Tory - were do you think the taxes will fall ? If you wondering just see how Fox hunting ban was forced - against the will of local areas - onto the country). At this stage, when no firm decision has been taken as to whether we will move towards a national scheme (we don't want to loose votes until its too late to stop us), stories about possible costs are simply not credible ( so they are credible - just read your argument again - what proper job did you have before becoming an actor for the Labour party ? ), since they depend on so many variables yet to be investigated, never mind decided.

Before we take any decisions about a national pricing scheme, we know that we have to have a system that works. (Haven't you finished yet ?)A system that respects our privacy as individuals. A system that is fair. I fully accept that we don't have all the answers yet. That is why we are not rushing headlong into a national road pricing scheme. Before we take any decisions there would be further consultations. The public will, of course, have their say, as will Parliament.

We want to continue this debate, so that we can build a consensus around the best way to reduce congestion, protect the environment and support our businesses. If you want to find out more, please visit the attached links to more detailed information, and which also give opportunities to engage in further debate.

Yours sincerely( there are two words I just don't believe),

Tony Blair

(Man in a Shed)

Here come the camouflage taxes !

We've all grown wise to Gordon Brown's stealth tax rises - where he took advantage of the fact the public so much wanted to believe in NuLabour and the no one was interested in finer details. Until now that is when they have risen so high. Terms like fiscal drag and stamp tax relief for pensions didn't seem to impact anyone - only they have.

So having vastly expanded the parasitic nature of the state - but simultaneously allowing its productivity to drop what the new plan ?

Green Camouflage taxes :- Like the retrospective airport duty - which by its very definition wasn't green when it was implemented ( and maybe wasn't legal). The excuse - save the environment - the reality - more money to the government.

Current ploys being tried are:

• Road pricing.
• Congestion charging.
• Putting Ken Livingston in charge of charging the home counties to subsidise his transport policy.
• Airport duties.

And there will be more. As politicians bang on about climate change - many of them are really just setting up a direct debit to your bank account which they think you'll be happier with than income tax.

So Green issues are the new campaigning rally call that makes it look like government is important and could do something - whilst at the same time fleecing the taxpayers of their case.

I would like to say the Conservative party has woken up to this - but I'm afraid that's just not the case. People will however, once they realise they are being used, get very angry about this new taxation ploy.