Philip Hammond has defended ditching the national insurance rise for the self-employed that was the centrepiece of his first budget, just a week after delivering it.
Oh, dear, how sad, never mind… Seriously, why did he even think this was a viable idea? The claims that they are still trotting out; that this in some way made the tax system more fair simply does not hold up to even the scantiest of scrutiny. Raising taxes is never fair. Tax is not fair. Tax is theft. Given this, government should be seeking to minimise tax to as low as is possible.
I was mulling this very point this morning while soaking in the bath. When we are about to get a council tax rise, the local authority will send out a consultation asking us which services we feel that are least important (and more important – but most of them aren’t, so I mark them down accordingly). The result is those who pay get to have a say on priority. We ignore the “pay us more money or the babies get it” blackmail. Consequently, there have been years when there is no rise and presumably somewhere a diversity outreach coordinator does, indeed, get it. My heart bleeds of course.
So, why not do this with national government? Let us, the electors and paymasters, decide where our priorities lie? And if there isn’t a big enough pot, well, something has to stop being funded. They won’t do it, of course. Which would doubtless give Deborah Arnott and her fellow parasites in the fake charity racket cause to breathe easy. After all, if the average taxpayer had to choose; these people would be having to dust off their CVs and get productive work.
We could also hypothecate our taxes. So, if I don’t want to fund the public health scam, then I withhold money – the only exceptions being those essentials that government should be funding such as defence and a judicial system – I can live with health and education as well, for example. The rest, though, can mostly be cut drastically – especially the third sector.
Nice idea. Will never happen.
Then I got out of the bath, so that was that. The idea went down the plughole.
But that U-turn. You’d need a heart of stone…