Budget throws less well-off few crumbs

IN his attempt to present a sow’s ear of a budget as a silk purse (Letters, November 3), Peter Booth, chair of the South West Conservatives, scores ten out of ten for effort. Shame about the budget itself.

It demonstrated that Mr Hammond and his advisers have recognised the popularity of

Labour’s plans and come up with a few measures that give a flimsy impression of imitating them. Similarly they have realised that fewer people are buying into their cruel mythology about austerity, so they announce it’s at an end.

It’s very telling that several top Tories are furious with the BBC for its less than ecstatic response to the budget. Considering the fact that the corporation’s current affairs team is largely led and staffed by Conservative Party alumni and acolytes, one would have to conclude that even they couldn’t endorse such an embarrassing fudge.

The less well-off have been thrown crumbs while the well-off have just been made even better off. In the past eight years, the already high level of income inequality in this country has spiralled; it’s the inevitable result of our crazy adherence to a law of the jungle market economy and Tory policies that enable obscene tax breaks and wealth growth. No one should be surprised that Mrs May quietly scrapped plans to oblige listed companies to reveal the differential between top and bottom employees’ wages.

Mr Booth concludes his letter with tosh about Labour being to blame for the international financial crisis of the late Noughties (corporate greed), and the prospect of Corbyn raising taxes to their highest level in peacetime history and sending debt soaring. Well, the Tories have already done that with debt, and his point about taxation is completely disingenuous. Under the next

Labour government taxes will still be around or just below the European norm – although the amount actually collected will certainly rise!

What a disappointing budget. Inequality will go on soaring, and, most importantly, with recent reports confirming the accelerating rate of global warming and ecological degradation, there were no credible measures whatsoever towards curbing our rush to self-destruction. Bravo, Mr Hammond.