Political rethinking. On the 16.03.08, on the BBC programme, The Politics Show, David Cameron was talking as if he had just discovered the wheel. His point was that our financial situation, coupled with that of the world, currently, was such that no party, if it came into office, could guarantee tax cuts. At first I thought that this statement was not only a given, it has also applied for at least the last two years when our internal debt, let alone our national debt, has been allowed to grow beyond all reason, and more people than I have been screaming about this for even longer than two years. Then I started thinking more deeply. Just take one case, let’s take the rise in tax on fuel. The week before there was a big rise in the cost of fuel there was no mention by the government that it was running out of cash and had a need to raise another hefty tax. Then the cost of fuel went up, the VAT along with it, so the government now had a swingeing rise in taxation, because not only was the fuel going up in price, but everything such as transportation, that fuel affected, also increased in price and so the VAT went up again. The irony of this is that we are being taxed in this way by a number of causes, such as the rising cost of wheat and so on. If Cameron, unlike the Conservative Party, feels that there is no case for cutting taxation because we are in a parlous state, I find that there is a dichotomy here, some of the taxes have to be raised for the reasons he states, but these sideways increases are a different kettle of fish, if there was no need for the tax prior to these rises in prices, then there should be no need for the increased taxation after the prices are risen, so there is actually a case for some reduction in tax. Am I wrong?
Not another tax? Nine years ago I had a very serious hip operation which has since made it impossible for me to get in and out of standard cars with anything like ease. Once I had recovered from the operation I bought a Renault Scenic at a price higher than I would normally have paid because this allowed me to step up and step down into and out of the car, without a struggle. The car is now nine years old and has only done just over 45,000 miles, and yet as far as I understand I am in a higher tax bracket and in consequence not only is my motoring expensive, but now is even more so. I live in one of those hinterlands where public transport is alright for long distances but hopeless for shopping. As you know I am in my late 80s and therefore a pensioner, and in consequence still need the car, as I can only walk very short distances. I do not believe that I am the only case, but the Chancellor’s broad brush has taken no account of parents with squads of kids sharing the driving to school, and thus being green, and old idiot’s like me, who feel they have done their fair share for their country, all being penalised because he, the Chancellor, can’t balance the books.
MRSA etc, when alphabet diseases are debated on television, inevitably some person is shown shoving a colossal, two-handed, feather duster, about a yard wide, with fluffy edges, across the floor or along the walls. Away back in the 50s a wonder brush, along with a bottle of gunge, was invented for people to be able to rub over their cars and give them a quick clean, allegedly collecting all the dust as it went. They went out of favour fairly quickly because they were a seven day wonder, and in the long run were not efficient, and we all went back to using soap and water. When I see these broad mops being shoved round the floors of airports, railway stations, supermarkets and worst of all hospital floors and walls, I know from my long experience that those mops are only shoving the muck or germs from one place to another. When I was in hospital in the 30s with fractures, I had plenty of time to analyse the way in which the nurses scrubbed everything in sight including me. The fact that we didn’t have penicillin as a do all remedy for the hypochondriacs, went some way to us not having any of these alphabet diseases. I just wonder if the health service has bothered to carry out experimentation on a scientific scale, to discover if these hairy mops actually do what they are supposed to do