Bingo Britain: Osborne & Alexander's Patronising Pranks

The Budget has provided few surprises: other than the long trailed rise in the tax threshold to £10,500 after 4 years of austerity and pay decreases, the main thrust is to provide tax breaks for people with money. ISA thresholds are raised from £10,000 to £15,000, while pensioners will be able to take pots of cash out of their annuities, begging the question of what sort of support will be there for those who, longer term, will end up with significantly reduced incomes.

But this is an economy whose much touted "recovery" from the 2008 recession has been stymied by the record levels of inequality - just this week, Oxfam revealed that the five wealthiest people in Britain own more wealth than the poorest 12 million put together. While average wages have declined by over 10% in the last 5 years, the richest have actually become phenomenally better off. However, as they tend not to spend a lot of their money, tying it up instead in property or other savings, this has done nothing to stimulate the flat-lining economy.

What recovery there has been has been fuelled by rising personal debt and, bizarrely, the huge one-off payments for mis-sold PPI policies - the latter alone have pumped a temporary boost of around £3,000 million into the UK economy. As this wave subsides, it seems the "liberalising" of pension pots is hoped to provide a further boost to keep things going, regardless of the longer term consequences for the individuals concerned.

So where do the Tories' Osbonre and Lib Dems' Alexander hope they will spend their money? Well, in a breathtaking display of patronising arrogance, the Coalition has cut duties on bingo halls by even more than bingo companies were asking for after the owners said they would pass a lot of any cut on to their customers in increased prizes.

Yes, that's right: the Government wants to get people out to the bingo to keep Britain working. And at the same time, they've also given tax breaks to the drinks industry (which just happens to feature significantly among donors to the Tories).

So this is the future for our battered country. Benefits are to be capped regardless of need: but tax breaks are given to alcohol and gambling. Marx called it the opiate of the masses, the bread-and-circuses deployed by the ruling classes to numb the senses of the masses and blunt calls for genuine change.

It is a tried and tested formula, but, in the past, our rulers did not act just quite so brazenly as this lot do. And leading the charge, taking any rational person's breath away, is Tory Chair, Grant Shapps MP, who makes no bones about this attempt to desensitise the toiling masses with elusive promises of random riches and a booze-filled twightlight.

The Repugnance of George Osborne

"I regard tax evasion and – indeed – aggressive tax avoidance – as morally repugnant," Mr Osborne said. 

And so, today, in his latest national Budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Gideon Osborne (whose personal fortune is valued at around £4 million) handed the very richest in society a huge tax cut - a 10% reduction from 50p in the pound to 45p on earnings above £150,000 per year - on the spurious grounds that because it was allegedly so high, it deterred our wealthy compatriots from paying their tax. So, by creating perhaps the biggest piece of tax avoidance in history, he has legitimised their non-payment - balancing the cost of doing so by freezing age-related tax allowances for pensioners - greedy old sods that they are (in George's universe, not mine dear reader!).

George is worried that the rich may desert us and go elsewhere. You might wonder where, exactly. Tax havens, George warns - except the British Government, more than any other in the world, could act to end the curse of these pirate enclaves where multinationals and the very richest individuals move their money to avoid contributing a fair share to the societies they live in - seven out of the fourteen non-sovereign tax havens  belong to the British Crown, but our neoliberal Government is doing precisely nothing about the exemptions legally enjoyed by these. This although the havens deprive the UK Treasury of somewhere between £2 billions and £12 billions in lost revenue every year. 

Yes, this is the logic of the new moral crusader in 11 Downing Street, hoisting high the flag of fiduciary purity on his crusade against the repugnant and immoral. Time for us all to pay our way. And if the billionaires don't magically cough up more tax on a lower tax bill (????), well, we'll just slash another £10 billion off the beleaguered welfare budget, ignoring the needs of an increasingly larger elderly population.

Yes, this is the logic of the moral crusader who preaches the virtues of contributing to the common purse while quietly "aggressively avoiding" a huge tax bill himself.

This is the George Osborne who has allegedly avoided paying at least £1.6 million in taxes himself  by means of a Trust Fund that will benefit him personally and family members - however aggressively or not he has done this, we will never know. That is a secret between him and his accountant.