Slowing Down
Only posted just under 9000 words in February. It's a shorter month, but only by one day.
Maybe I've said everything there is to say. On the other hand, I'm busier and busier with responsibilities being heaped upon me. I'm the plate spinning man round here, right enough.
It's annual review time soon, don't know what my feelings are. While everything is more expensive, even if just by a percent or two, over the past 12 months I've been worse off than I was the previous 12 months, because of the tax changes. After my pay rise last April and Gordon Brown's fiddling with the tax system, I was about £8 a month worse off.
Running and jumping just to be standing still and all that.
If The Weasel steps down and Gordon Brown becomes PM, I can't help thinking he'll get to fiddle around in all other kinds of places. The mind at work behind the tax changes over the past few years seems to me to be untidily anal, if you know what I mean. A contradiction in terms. There is no elegant simplicity about what he's been doing. In order to avoid headlines about across-the-board tax rises, he's shaved a little here, added a little there, and it's all very messy. You have to be anal to keep track of it all.
Personally I'd have been more in favour of an across the board rise for everyone. In fact, let's go the whole hog and do away with all the little taxes and just have one big tax. I think it would work out at around 30-something percent. As Terry Jones pointed out in that Medieval Lives programme, we have to work more days to be free of our taxes than the average 12th Century peasant did.
Don't mistake me, I think we should pay tax, and I believe in the redistribution of wealth. What I object to is the smoke and mirrors approach to taxation, because it's insulting. Like, did they think I wouldn't notice I was £8 a month worse off, even after a 3.5% pay rise? Just be honest about it and pile it on please.
Maybe I've said everything there is to say. On the other hand, I'm busier and busier with responsibilities being heaped upon me. I'm the plate spinning man round here, right enough.
It's annual review time soon, don't know what my feelings are. While everything is more expensive, even if just by a percent or two, over the past 12 months I've been worse off than I was the previous 12 months, because of the tax changes. After my pay rise last April and Gordon Brown's fiddling with the tax system, I was about £8 a month worse off.
Running and jumping just to be standing still and all that.
If The Weasel steps down and Gordon Brown becomes PM, I can't help thinking he'll get to fiddle around in all other kinds of places. The mind at work behind the tax changes over the past few years seems to me to be untidily anal, if you know what I mean. A contradiction in terms. There is no elegant simplicity about what he's been doing. In order to avoid headlines about across-the-board tax rises, he's shaved a little here, added a little there, and it's all very messy. You have to be anal to keep track of it all.
Personally I'd have been more in favour of an across the board rise for everyone. In fact, let's go the whole hog and do away with all the little taxes and just have one big tax. I think it would work out at around 30-something percent. As Terry Jones pointed out in that Medieval Lives programme, we have to work more days to be free of our taxes than the average 12th Century peasant did.
Don't mistake me, I think we should pay tax, and I believe in the redistribution of wealth. What I object to is the smoke and mirrors approach to taxation, because it's insulting. Like, did they think I wouldn't notice I was £8 a month worse off, even after a 3.5% pay rise? Just be honest about it and pile it on please.
posted by Anonymous at
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
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