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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:41 pm 
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Just watched the vid on the Graun of Miliband cutting Osborne a new one.

Osborne did not look particularly happy.

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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:42 pm 
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Nicked from the Flashyboy blog on how the budget affects fictional characters:

Quote:
Rhahlgur, George Osborne’s former brood nurse
Vast and silent, she lies deep and cold in the darkness.

She is patient, as all her kind are; for a thousand years she has waited here, alone in the void, drawing her faint glimmers of sustenance from the baleful dull-red glow of a long-dead star.

All she has had, for aeons, are her memories. She can still recall the day that George Osborne and his countless nameless siblings clawed their way through her flesh and tasted life for the first time. Then they were things of teeth and scales; she remembers the cold flash of talons and the wordless screeching of a thousand thousand writhing children. That was in the time before they discovered the Dance of Forms, and played their way among the stars, wearing the flesh of lesser beings. Those were the good days.

She will not be affected by the budget, for she is a horror older than time itself, and she was not in the 50p tax band.

Of late, she has grown used to waiting; biding her time since she sent George Osborne and his terrible multitude of brothers howling across the wastes of space, seeking new sustenance. She knows that soon he will sing the song; the old nightmare song that summons his kin from across the stars, and that on the day that dread song is sung they shall be together again, as they were always intended to be, and that the ancient stars will burn anew, and the suffering will be reborn, and – at last – they shall feast once more.


Fictional? Looks bloody realistic to me...


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:06 pm 
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It looks like the inevitable result of both parties wanting their totemic policies in (top rate cut, raising personal allowance), even with the economy not doing very well. And of course they both want to be able to do giveaways before the election. Avoiding the child benefit "cliff face" (sensible in itself) also would have created an extra hole to fill.

Stealth tax on pensioners, some anti-avoidance stuff (which I think they're being a bit reckless in including as income, because tax advisers may have alternatives ready to go already- to be fair though, all chancellors do that). Quite substantial rises in top stamp duty, though it should have started at a lower level.

I've wondered for a while if someone coming to the very top of politics at such a young age (like Blair, even more so) is particularly bothered about winning elections. If he can grind down the deficit, and never mind the effects, he'll be set up for a lifetime of easy money on the lecture circuit.


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:24 pm 
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He doesn't need it...


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:36 pm 
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Nor does Blair.

I think there's probably an element of him looking for his "place in history". "I fixed the deficit" would make him very proud, I'm sure.


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:50 pm 
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Blair didn't inherit huge wealth, Cameron did. Not the same thing.


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:54 pm 
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Do you get the impression Gideon has fucked off a lot of the Tory core vote? How real their slight is is open to debate but the perception seems to be bad to quite a few.


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:13 pm 
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Osborne and Cameron look over the Atlantic.

"Well if we don't get Atlantic at least we'll get our pay off".

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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:25 pm 
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It can take a day or two for people to work it all out- or in my case, copy what the IFS say- but the pension thing has the potential to piss a lot of Tories off, as do the fuel and air passenger duty rises. Nothing done about employers' NI either.


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:26 pm 
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Fuck the core vote, it's the core donators that matter. You know, the ones who will have their tax avoidance clamped down upon with furious vengeance (yeah, right).

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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:32 pm 
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At the risk of becoming a stuck record - the Tory front bench don't care about elections.

1) They all have private fortunes.
2) They're all going to be in cushy executive positions in the privatised services they're creating.

Who on earth needs a political career with that lined up?

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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:37 pm 
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3) They will have created even more favourable conditions for profit-taking in the companies providing privatised services, and they will know all the ways that extra profit can be milked from the system. Mission accomplished.


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:40 pm 
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Exactly, politics is long hours, stressful and relatively badly paid by comparison.

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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:44 pm 
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Well, doesn't the inherited wealth mean it's not likely to be all about the money. Cameron and Osborne are clearly smart and connected enough to have been partners/senior managers in any City firm for years. Their careers so far suggest a full-hearted commitment to politics. It's only with this budget, and its insouciance about the core vote that I've started to think there's something else going on. I think the idea of being (in their minds) the ones who "sorted out" this deficit is likely to mean a lot. And of course the money and adulation they'll get talking about it for years to come.


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 Post subject: Re: The Budget.
PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:10 am 
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Tubby Isaacs wrote:
Well, doesn't the inherited wealth mean it's not likely to be all about the money. Cameron and Osborne are clearly smart and connected enough to have been partners/senior managers in any City firm for years. Their careers so far suggest a full-hearted commitment to politics.

Of course it's not about money, that's why I mentioned their private fortunes, that's what makes them so dangerous. They have nothing to lose. If 2015 was the worst Tory defeat in history forcing Cameron out in disgrace with his reputation in tatters, it would matter not a jot to him financially.

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Last edited by oboogie on Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

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