Stupid chancellor, stupid budget

[lizziec]

The Chancellor is a prick, I am not impressed with today's budget. At all.

At least the Daily Mash does The Budget made me laugh. So I'm sharing it.

Comments

[red-pill.livejournal.com]

ive had a peek. alot of money on sprits. whys he a prick?

[trappermcintyre.livejournal.com]

My major problems so far:

• Beer up by 4p a pint, wine 14p a bottle, spirits 55p a bottle and cider 3p a litre by Sunday.


• Duties on alcohol will go up by 2% above inflation in each of the next four years.


• From 2009, major reform of the vehicle excise duty


• Funding set aside for road-pricing proposals.


• From April 2010, all long-term recipients of incapacity benefit will attend work capacity programmes.


• New measures at Heathrow and other airports, using biometric technology, to speed up the time it takes to get through security checks.


• Laws will be introduced by 2009 to tax plastic bags if shops do not do more to charge for their use.


• £26m to help make homes greener.

A lot of it is just gimmiks. The 26m to make homes greener will barely scratch the surface - it's less than a pound per head. The incapacity benefit changes will make it harder and more intimidating for genuine claimants. The biometrics will probably make things worse and just be used by the government as a reason why people should get ID cards. Alcohol charges really hit social drinkers, and won't make a blind bit of difference to binge drinkers. White lightening, strong larger and alcopops will still be cheap enough for those who should be discouraged, while responsible drinkers are being heavily penalised. The carrier bags thing is all smoke and mirrors too - it doesn't deal with excess packaging that is really the problem and carriers make up less than 1% of landfill, and I'm willing to bet that a lot of people reuse them as bin bags like ben and I do. Once this comes in we'll have to buy them instead, which actually makes less sense to me. Argh!

[skeldof.livejournal.com]

Funding set aside for road-pricing proposals.

What that mean? Is that the daft pay-per-mile tax, on top of the massive fuel tax and pay-to-use-roads tax?

It's all bollocks from listening to too many damn hippy groups and doing it wrong.

Banning single-use plastic bags isn't the root of the problem. It's a general social issue of being litter bugs.

Wanker.