Darling denies ‘stealth tax’ claims
Thursday 25th March 2010, 9:10AM GMT.
Chancellor Alistair Darling has defended putting off difficult decisions about the deficit and denied hiding a tax hike for millions with his Budget speech.
The Tories have accused the Labour Chancellor of concealing a tax rise for 30 million workers from a freezing of tax bands.
Opposition MPs and some economists have also claimed he failed to set out a credible strategy for cutting the nation’s record debt.
But Mr Darling hit back, accusing the Tories of being “conspicuously silent” on their own plans for taxes and spending cuts. He said: “If we took public spending away now we’d risk tipping the country back into recession. That is not a risk I’m willing to take.”
On tax allowances, he claimed they were frozen because they were set at a time of negative inflation in September. He said increasing them as the Tories have suggested would cost £2 billion. “If that really is their policy they need to say where the money is coming from,” he told GMTV.
The Chancellor’s budget drew up the battlelines for a general election expected on May 6 by squeezing the better off to fund help to new homebuyers, the elderly and the young unemployed.
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So he helped those people who are probably unlikely to vote.
Bring on the Tories as this country needs change and a new direction.
Need less red-tape and nazi dictatorship laws.
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The tories are no better, just a different cheek of the same backside, in fact every party is a joke, surely I’m not the only one who has noticed a pattern here? Every party promises us the world, they will tell you anything to get your vote – even use salesman tactics, then once in power everything goes out of the window, the hidden agenda goes on regardless of who’s in power, a hidden system to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer, don’t believe a word any politician says, they are proven liars.
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After thirteen years of Labour ‘spin’ (a politically acceptable word for ‘lies’), deceit and double dealing we should know without question that the freezing of the tax bands IS yet another stealth tax with loads more to come after the election should they stay in power. If the Chancellor truly wants to con the average man-in-the-street into believing that a fourth term of Labour is the panacea for all our problems then he surely needs to give a little more thought to his ‘spin’ on the facts of his own budget.
Surely one of the reasons we have a budget is to respond in a timely manner to the turbulent nature of our economy yet he tells us that the decision to ‘fix’ the bands was made in September 2009 during a time of negative inflation. Total Tripe! Firstly I would dispute that we have ever had negative inflation during this governments term, yet more deceit, but leaving that aside we have a Chancellor that has been printing money via the process of ‘quantitative easing’ and stoking up the price of fuel at the pumps both directly and indirectly. Both of these practices are highly inflationary and yet the Chancellor makes a statement in March 2010 based on a factor that he was unable to forecast in September 2009.
That’s bad enough in itself yet the same man, the same government, tells us that the huge debt problems that they largely created, will be halved in four years based on their forecast of economic growth over the same period.
How can they have an accurate view on growth over four years when they cannot forecast self created inflation over six months? The truth is its all lies! The Labour Party is more focussed on keeping power for the Labour Party regardless of how it damages our country. For Darling to say that the Tories need to show where the money is coming from if it were their policy to ensure the tax bands keep in line with inflation would be reasonable if were not for the fact that any party taking over from Labour will have a mountain of problems to deal with all resulting from Labours gross mismanaging of our country at every level.
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