Taxing issues
Brian Monteith’s bizarre claim that tax rises will damage “... jobs, public services and the fight against poverty” is almost Orwellian in its absurdity (Scotsman, November 27).
By his double-think standards Brexit no doubt means a brave, new, prosperous UK. Good luck on that one.
Grassroots Tories have, of course, always complained about the ‘idle and work shy’ bleeding the state dry due to bogus benefit claims as well as bemoaning the fact that they also have to pay taxes and community charges that only subsidise the poor.
However, should they fail to have their bins emptied on time or have a pothole outside their house fixed, they are the first to rail about it on these pages.
In reality it has always been Tories who want something for nothing rather than those less fortunate. They want a clean, safe, efficient environment, like we all do, but they are the ones who are not prepared to pay the going rate for it. On top of this, the obscenity of the Conservative government seriously considering tax cuts to those who really don’t need them merely highlights the greed and dogma riddled throughout their party.
Margaret Thatcher was right about one thing: as far as Tories are concerned, there is no such thing as society, only the individual and to hell with everyone else.
D. MITCHELL Cramond, Edinburgh Brian Monteith’s interesting article (“Chancellor has snatched away any justification for tax rises”, Scotsman, November 27) gives an unrepentant neo-liberal view of how tax cuts and tax simplifi- cation will help with growth.
He says the Office for Budget Responsibility has been always wrong, so should be ignored.
Perhaps all economic predictions can be wrong. George Osborne after all was wrong about how soon we’d get debt down.
OBR recognised it was wrong in the past to claim that productivity would rise. Its view now agrees with the CBI that a lot of our firms are technologically unfit for international competition. Most commentators think that government had been too London-centred so we need a lot spent on the Northern powerhouse. The Tory plan to increase apprenticeships failed, so attention is moving to the analysis of how our economic development compares with Germany. Cabinet is moving towards economic strategy and support for business.
When our government has (unlike most other countries) been uninterested in economic strategy for so long, we find ourselves with a lot of catching up to do. We either agree that failure to catch up puts us in peril or we accept that those who claim to have fortune-telling wisdom based on neo-liberal ideology are right. Were they right about us being better off the day we leave Europe? Were they right to think £10 billion would be immediately available for the NHS? I am not sure they are capable of thinking outside an ideological box
ANDREW VASS Corbiehill Place, Edinburgh