The Budget – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

I thought that this title would work best, since it basically forces me to write something that attempts to be – or at least looks like it’s attempting to be – a balanced blog article. Just look at the title there, covering all the opinion positions, forcing me to be both nice and scathing in the same piece - very nice.

It also steals a film title, which automatically makes something as uncool as a budget review cool, right? That’s how it works, isn’t it? You know, a bit like Buzzfeed? C’mon guys, I have long hair and play guitar, that saves me, right?

No? Fair enough. I’m still going to throw in my two pence as the ever perplexed progressive, still failing to find that perfect purveyor of a rational existence anywhere in that spikey little palace of privilege.

The Good

There was good in the budget. It’s  ultimately damaging to attack everything an opponent dishes up, manically waving that sword around until the opponent you are duelling with just stops and looks at you with a look of disgust and bemusement – who is this clown? – and there’s nothing worse in this game than cold, callous condescension. So, let’s start by giving this some props.

The Personal Tax Allowance

Probably the most well publicised pre-budget announcement was the raising of the personal tax allowance. Well, naturally. It’s the Lib Dem’s baby, and essentially the only one of their babies that is going to amount to anything in this world (to take a metaphor from the lives of those in the cabinet), so in their dire position, they obviously want to shout about it.

Only the problem is the two parents are now arguing over this baby. The Tories didn’t even want the baby to start with, but since the baby grew up and started making connections out in the big, wide world, famous flash photography daddy decided the baby might be worth loving after all. No longer cold and distant and denying its existence, now the baby is born purely from the spunk of Blue. My baby, screams daddy!

Meanwhile, the parent that loved and nurtured the little baby, sitting up, feeding it, burping it, changing its shitty little nappies, going in to school to complain about bullies and generally knackering itself out is being shunted out. Because it doesn’t have the same fame or opportunity for the five second pose, it’s pleas for recognition of parenthood have fallen, largely, on deaf ears, meaning gold digging daddy gets most of the glory.

It’s a shame, because it is a Lib Dem policy, 100%, and was a major part of the Lib Dem manifesto in 2010. It means that, essentially, we keep an extra £800 per year – good times.
The problem is, during the televised debates, Cameron actually said that it was not affordable. This is while the abolition of the 50p tax rate was, seemingly, always part of the plan. Now both policies have come into effect, which means the shortfall needs to be found elsewhere.

What with all the business rate cuts and cuts on employer’s national insurance, this has to come from somewhere else, and it’s not going to be the richest that are paying the majority of the bill. It will mainly come from dragging more people from the top end of the 10p tax band and into the 20p tax band. Plus, the money we save through this new raise in the personal tax allowance is going to do little to help with the rising cost of living, which a cut in VAT would undoubtedly help.

Drop on the duty of beer

Good for selfish reasons. I like beer and I like the pub culture that exists here. I like the fact that when it’s sunny, the first port of call is a beer garden rather than the grass for sports or other recreation; I can do my sports inside, anytime. And even if I do decide to fake duel someone in a park on a sunny day, I want post-match refreshment in the form of a pint at the pub. Basically, fun.

Dropping duty on fun, and in a way that should help the pub industry, is good and I’m not going to think any more about it. Life is inherently miserable, working for the scraps off the table of our overlords, so why should I remain perpetually healthy and immortal for them? I know you health campaigners are trying to save me from myself, but I really don’t want your help. Go away.

Air Travel Taxation

To many of my green compadres, this is going to be a rather controversial position to take. I’m not one for raising fuel duty on flights and I’m dead against Green Party plans to do this. Why? Well, simply because such a policy only penalises the poor. Those people that work in soul destroying jobs five days a week for relatively low pay deserve at least one break a year in the sun. Raising this means that you’ll only find rich Brits abroad in odious gold medallions with bloated guts and leathered skin – ew. Meanwhile the rest of us will be forced to make do with the garden shed city down in Jaywick.

Easy access to air travel also promotes good international relations. So long as the peoples of the world are regularly meeting, mixing, stoking up friendships, relationships and ‘bumping nasties’, then relations between regions are only going to get better with each passing generation. I think any sane person is going to hail anything that will weaken nationalistic feeling and make the probability of future major wars less likely.

What with the mixing of people, cheap air travel is also needed so families can better keep in contact over long distances. With a brother over in Hong Kong teaching boxing, I’m happy that we can still conceivably afford to visit each other once a year, rather than once a decade.

Of course, the CO2 emissions do need to be offset in some way, which is why I disagree with pretty much every other cynical energy policy announced in the budget, , gambling with apocalyptic repercussions as the stakes, but I will talk about those later in the ‘ugly’ section.

We also need much more encouragement and investment in creating cleaner and renewable fuel sources. Of course, this means ignoring those sweaty, uncomfortable looking people – actually demons shifting around in an ill-fitting human suit – lobbying for oil companies. Anyway, repression is very short-sighted for the oil companies themselves. If you look at electric cigarettes, the tobacco industry initially lobbied against, now they are gnawing on the product with all the gusto of a rabid dog. They are doing well from a market they once wanted sunk.

The bad

The bad is an inevitability. In this world, no government with all its vested interests sticking out from it like tubes from a life support machine is able to deliver a budget that actually caters to the regular people (no matter how much it professes to be a ‘people’s party’ or ‘worker’s party’). Rather it simply serves to placate us while catering to those that have the real power. So now let’s look at the bad, the stuff that has been given to us with one hand while slapping in the face us with the other. Remember, shiny happy people, there’s another level of hell to follow in ‘the ugly’.

Cutting Corporation Tax

According to our ever egalitarian Etonian chancellor, this is a tax to promote the creation of jobs. Rather though, looking at how companies are acting at the moment, it’ll rather lead to more money for directors, other senior staff and shareholders in general.

There has been no evidence of kickbacks recently. Pay has risen inconceivably for the upper quartile, around 12% in 2012 for the bosses of top companies, which has continued since. This is while the rest of us have been floundering on pay freezes, despite sky rocketing prices. As those at the top feast evermore on suckling pig, they find ways to develop better bibs and catch more and more of the crumbs that are supposed to fall from the table to feed us, the mice that scurry by their feet. Seemingly we’re only good enough for the several day old stale crumbs now.

A sensible route to take would to offer substantial cuts only to small to medium, developing businesses, in order to encourage them to grow, create new positions. Much like curing the housing crisis, this can create new ‘homes’ for workers. The shortfall could be made from effective policing of tax for actual corporations; a splitting of the tax policy.

Growing companies generally grow their employees to come to feel part of a business, rather than a replaceable component that can be replaced once worn out – a home rather than a house – unlike cooperate structures. Further encouragement for employee share schemes would also be a sensible way to give Britain’s shat on workforce feel more of a vested interest in the British business and the British economy, of which the recovery only seems to benefit the few.

The tax revenue that is lost here follows in the same vein as the revenue lost from the 50p tax rate. Seeing as the deficit still exists, the revenue must come from somewhere, and inevitably the brunt will be borne by us in some way, despite cuts to things like the personal tax rate.

Low wage rise for public sector workers

So our public sector workers will get a raise, though it seems those nurses and teachers that do so much for us are worth nothing more than a pitiful 1%, not even close to the rate of inflation. The argument that none of us are getting pay rises either is kind of sick. Just because some of us aren’t getting what we deserve, doesn’t mean that should apply across the board.

If one section of society is shown to be getting what they deserve, maybe that will shock others into demanding what they deserve too. If bosses can pay themselves millions in pay raises and bonuses, there is surely money there to share amongst the work force. Whether it’s a failure of education or of parenting, some people need re-education in what it is to share.

ISA Saving Limit Raised to £15000

OK, so this is good for savings. However, £15000 is a rather unobtainable sum of money for most. This is a policy that is solely aimed at the moneyed. It has been deemed a policy to undermine UKIP’s acquisition of the moody ‘my home is my castle’, isolationist middle-England.

The weirdest thing about this is it seems exactly like a give with one hand, take with another situation. More and more people are being dragged into the 40% tax band from the 20%, and a hell of a lot more from the 10% to the 20%, to pay for the tax cuts elsewhere. A number of the savers who are meant to benefit from this will be pulled into this swirling vortex too.

Ultimately, this benefits the very high-earners, mainly because it makes their job easier. Already, you can open more than one savings account, meaning you can simply spread your money around to get around this tax already. Now, the moneyed won’t have to do this so much. They can have fewer accounts. Now they have more time for other things, like golf, or getting better than me at fencing... I know, I find it weird that I do fencing too.

Encouraging everyone to spend less is also a terrible strategy for recovery, when increased spending is needed to make all businesses more profitable. I know we need to be sensible and save for the future, but we will also all die one day. The message should equally be ‘enjoy it while you have it’.

The Ugly

Welcome to the third level of hell. Don’t worry, you won’t want for things to see, there’s plenty to peruse in this gallery. My only fear is you’ll get bored before you get to the end. The stems of your eyes will ache from balancing on them too long and you’ll redirect them at the flashing box in front of you, which is the oracle version of sitting on a sofa. Incidentally, this is probably what you’re doing when watching the TV anyway... or a beanbag, if you like feeling 70’s and dream of Heather Graham.

Statement on inequality

Inequality, or equality for that matter, is seemingly not a word that is taught at Eton. If you look in any dictionary in that establishment, you’ll find the word scrubbed from its pages. In more recent years, a clever virus has been installed on the Eton network that corrupts any computer that connects to it. Now any use of the word ‘equal’ or ‘equality’ on web pages become simply a mess of pixels.

Apparently, according to Osborne, inequality is at its lowest in 25 years. However, a study released by Oxfam suggests that Britain’s five richest families are materially and financially richer than the poorest 20% of the country (12.5 million) put together. The tax breaks for the rich and powerful are, according to our government, supposed to trickle down to us, when this study suggest something quite different.

Promotion of Financial Services

No British government will ever be willing to challenge the dominance of the financial sector, and this is despite all the devastation it caused with the financial crisis. Supporters of the financial sector like to blame Labour for our troubles, but it’s insane to believe that our little island’s government could cause a global economic catastrophe by hiring too many nurses and teachers and paying them a little better. That is a ludicrous position to take and is the equivalent of a dog barking repeatedly at the door when no one is there.
Still, the biggest ambition of the budget is to further promote its growth. It is an industry that provides nothing for anyone except for those that are part of the club. They make froth, money from money, or money from nothing. In fact, I honestly wonder what the fuck it is they actually do all day.

They create nothing that is of benefit to mankind. They develop nothing. They provide nothing that makes life better or more enjoyable or easier for anyone. As far as I can tell, spend their days playing an amped up version of roulette. Yet it gets the miracle grow, while the other growing industries only get a few spades of manure. Industries that could provide concrete worth, such as technological, software or renewable and clean energy for our species as a whole play second fiddle to the phantom money.

Making work pay

I’d say this was probably the most ridiculous statement of the entire budget. Of course, it’s one that’s been parroted by both parties of the coalition for the last few years when referring to welfare caps. Well, how does simply worsening conditions actually make work pay?

I suppose the strategy they are going for is similar to osmosis or conduction, as in the movement of solvent molecules through a partially permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration or heat from hot to cold. Only, instead of ‘heating up’ or ‘increasing the concentration’ of work, making conditions better and the entire situation more attractive so it comes to engulf everything, instead they drop the ‘heat’ or dilute the solution further on the other side, causing a forced movement.

After that incredibly trite description, basically what I’m saying is they haven’t made work pay. They’ve just made sure conditions outside of work are so intolerable you have to work. I know most people will say that’s fair enough, but my problem is the wording. They have not improved wages or the benefit conditions companies provide their workers. Work still pays poorly in most cases, and the government rewarded the architects with tax cuts. If they want to say ‘making work pay’, that should mean forcibly improving remuneration for all, if they wanted that statement to be true that is.

Dropping energy taxation

So, I support the air travel taxation announcement, which I know won’t please some, but I have given my reasons above. I believe such policies need to be fair, and a rise in air travel tax, like VAT, effect mainly the poorer in society. I believe tax should be progressive, not regressive.

Cutting tax for energy intensive industries, however, makes no sense at all. Companies that blast out carbon and other chemical emissions, covering the entire area in ugly, noxious clouds are being rewarded for pollution. This comes from the government that claimed it would be the greenest every - what a joke.
We are not promoting or investing anywhere near enough in clean and renewable energy sources. Instead, fracking is taking centre stage, and when people protest against it, they are pounded on by the police. Of course, when a few country folk in tweed stand in the wind farms in the Tory heartland, those plans are scuppered without more even a murmur.

I’m afraid, if we want to continue on this energy intensive road, we have to force these clean energy sources on the public, much like the government have forced fracking on so many of us. The lobbyists must be ignored and, in this case, progress must be forced. I believe in freedom, but it’s impossible to be free in a world of scorched earth; a wilderness reminiscent of the Eastern Front of both World Wars.

So...?

The economy is apparently to grow to pre-crisis levels in the near future, yet we’re all worse off than we were before. Well, not all of us, there are some in society that have profited off people’s suffering. But this is typical of the society we live in. During the First World War, many industrialists grew obscenely rich of weapons, shell and chemical weapon production. Same goes with World War II, profit off the suffering off others that continues today.

So, the budget for working people (according to Osborne), is really a budget of ‘be happy with what you’re given’. Of course as prices rise elsewhere, our gains look more and more pathetic. Those that have grown more bloated fill themselves to burst on ever growing profits, continuing to use the falsities of the economic crisis as cover for our poor pays.

During the opposition’s response, Ed Miliband demanded that Osborne and Cameron rule out more tax cuts for millionaires. Naturally, they couldn’t. That’s because we’re not all in it together. The budget gives the illusion of serving us, when really it’s the same as always. The rich pay no more, the powerful shirk their societal responsibilities, and our ‘savings’ find their way back into the system and back in to the pockets of the ‘deserving rich’. Cheers, guys.