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Well we could have told you couldn’t we?
In the Tory conference, Cameron announced that the threshold for inheritance tax would move to £1m. Within a matter of days, ‘New’ Labour tried to steal Cameron’s thunder by raising the threshold to £600,000 in their pre-budget speech. This, of course, will not affect the position of the masses that vote Labour will it? And, for the enlightened, Darling is only pretending to give something away. Because each individual has a £300,000 exemption, it is possible by Inheritance Tax Planning to create a situation where both exemptions are utilised and, unless I am mistaken, £300,000 plus £300,000 is £600,000 (perhaps not to Darling). So Darling’s ‘give away’ is not a ‘give away’ at all: the new exemption, if I am correct, will not apply to single people or divorcees. So, the only people this will help are those who might not have thought about tax planning. As usual, it is all hot air without substance.
Disguised as simplification (another word for tax increase) there are new proposals for Capital Gains Tax to replace differing rates with a flat rate of tax but without taper relief or indexation. These come into force in April next year.
Early on in the reign of King Tony, we had the now PM pillaging our pension funds by taxing their income which had been tax free. Since then, we are being told about the pension ‘crisis’ by the very same government that wore the Viking helmet in the first place. So, I’ve got good news for you – you are working old chum until you drop, unless you’re a civil servant that is.
We have never been tied up with as much red tape that will strangle us just as surely as it won’t help those poor impecunious folk the regulation is supposed to protect. I mean, how can it be right that every chuffin’ cow in the country needs a passport when a human can turn up at Dover without one and claim asylum? We have succumbed to European policies that allow us to go anywhere within the European Union we like – but who wants to go to Estonia or Lithuania unless you’re in a hen party (does Easy Jet fly there)? The challenge is that this concept works the other way round so that this country can no longer deport undesirables such as murderers and other convicted criminals who, prima facie, have greater human rights than their victims. Turkey is anxious to join the EU but one of the reasons for the delay is because of concerns about their human rights record. Tell me is that their record on the rights of criminals or their victims?
Do not forget that Teflon Tony promised us a referendum on the European Constitution as part of the very manifesto that got him into power last time. This document has become a Chameleon – in other words call it a different document but say the same in it to kid us all that it’s not what it really is. Now Brown will not call a referendum on the premise that the document is different, even though we know that essentially it isn’t – he knows he would lose it in the very same way he knows that his party would lose a snap election, which is why he didn’t call one.
T’was said that we were a nation of shopkeepers – which shops would these be then? Fast food, cafes, wine bars? The only shops controlling the food supply are several large retailers who shaft the high street on the promise of jobs. Very little helps!
We no longer have a high street, only retail parks. Our industrial strength has declined in favour of the new industry – regulation and compliance where those who have actually failed to hack it, can take part in regulating the industry they failed in. Those who can do, those who can’t regulate. Apparently, we need five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to help avoid the nasties in life. Questions for GCSE geography: -
1) What is a green grocer?
2) Where is a green grocer?
3) Is a green grocer an envious grocer?
4) Where do apples come from? – select from a) a tree b) Tesco c) Sainsbury d) not sure.
We cull cattle for TB and protect badgers; we ban fox hunting but kill people with super bugs in hospitals. We have become a nation frightened of our own shadows because we cannot do this or that as a result of some pettifogger in Brussels who says we can’t. We ban the sale of barometers where the chances of a lottery win are greater than injury because of leakage from a glass phial containing a small amount of a substance with which we have been filling teeth for decades. Yet we don’t ban smoking which kills thousands each year. We have become a claim and compensation culture where people look for any excuse for a draw. We are consumed with the concept of fame resulting in the most mediocre of D list celebrities earning a crust by being as fecklessly moronic as they are talentless. We have a country where the voice of the minority outweighs that of the majority and are fast becoming overwhelmed by illegal immigration. Our immigration policy apparently admits undesirables and sends back those that have fought for this country or served in its armed forces. We pay more compensation to a secretary for damaging her thumb than we do to a soldier catastrophically injured in a war we shouldn’t be fighting. So politically correct are we that we are afraid of offending just about anybody. It’s a wonder we can still call Christmas, Christmas though of course we don’t say Happy Christmas anymore we say Seasons Greetings. It doesn’t go so well does it – Merry Season and a Happy New year?
Our ever busy Plod force is out there catching motorists or filling in forms whilst knife and gun criminals run riot – innit! There is greater respect for this culture than there is for senior citizens, one or two who fought for this once green and pleasant land. We have a countryside littered with fast food receptacles and other bric a brac deposited by those succumbing to the apparent epidemic of obesity. We have a government that has us under camera surveillance virtually none stop, either on every street or in those revenue cash cows known as speed cameras. Our government tells us how to bring up our children. Perhaps in light of the loss of the real and traditional version of the family this is necessary. Is it mum and dad, mum and mum or dad and dad? Or is it mum and are you dad, or you dad, or you dad, or you dad? These are my parents, no sorry these are my civil partners. This is my wife David. This is my civil partner Dobbin.
We can’t even look forward to those overpaid passionless pussies known as the England football team to provide anything to look forward to. (I bend at knee and pay homage to our Rugby team, which is magnificent).
So, this is the state of the nation or is it the nation of the state?
As Cicero said – who is watching them who are watching over us?
Only Him upstairs perhaps. Believe in Him, we are all going to need Him.
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