Cartoon by Peter BrookesFollowing on from the government's astonishing climbdown over a one off fuel payment to poorer people, I wondered how long it would take me to compile a list of the Top Ten Gordon Brown U Turns. Here goes...
1. 10p Tax
2. No hospital visits to victims by knife crime criminals
3. Reclassification of cannabis
4. Raising Inheritance Tax threshholds
5. Building on the green belt - eco towns
6. One off fuel rebate
7. Non Doms
8. Super Casinos
9. Rescue package for pensioners who lost pensions when their company went bankrupt
10. Not attending the Olympic opening ceremony
It took all of three minutes to come up with that little list. I am sure there are plenty more to add to it. Each one adds to the impression of a listless, directionless government.
I am still at a loss to understand this U Turn on the fuel payments. Did they really think the energy companies would agree to pay for it. What we have got is government by gimmick. They announce things before they have fully thought them through. Gordon Brown explains the climbdown on the fuel payment by saying that he's not interested in short term gimmicks. Perhaps he could explain the cut in stamp duty then because there isn't a single person in the housing sector who thinks it will have any effect at all. Indeed, the Treasury could have told him so, because they tried it in 1992 under Norman Lamont - and it did nothing to revive the housing market.
28 comments:
The only u-turn I want from this obnoxious Scotsman is the one that he will do that takes him back to Scotland on a permanent basis.
How aboutclimbing down from holding an election and reversing the promise to hold a referendum?
If he believed in long-term measures we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place because he would have continued to pay down debt while the economy grew from 2001 to 2007.
Having said that I am pleased he didn't go for the fuel rebate because it will just push prices up for all.
1. OK, fair enough.
2. The plan was never to send criminals to visit their victoms, they were just thinking of showing the results of knife crime on people. Plus it was never announced, just leaked, so BZZT.
3. Brown didn't classify it C in the first place, so how can this be a Brown U-Turn?
4. OK
5. OK
6. Not going ahead with an option that was overheard on a train is a policy u-turn now?
7. The rich get richer. Are you saying a Conservative govt wouldn't bend over for the non doms and offer up their prostates?
8. See 3
9. OK, don't know about this one
10. When did he ever say he was going to? Going from announcing nothing to announcing not attending is a U-Turn?
Don't confuse me with a lefty, or a righty, but your list is a stretch at best.
Iain
You should not mock the afflicted.
Government by gimmick! Absolubtely not as was posted elsewhere..
New big, bold, energy policy consists of..
1] wrapping pensioners in that tinfoil stuff the emergency services use.
2]Eligible parents with 2 or more children,over 70's and those on benefits may claim up to 15% off thermal knickers from Woolworths.
3} Couples electric blanket allowance extended to nearly 8 people countrywide.
4] McCavity Wall insulation available to all. {10% off if you mention Andy Burnham's name}
5] Windmill capable of powering a kettle. Relaxation in planning laws enabling them to be built inside, near a window, for tower block dwellers or families without gardens.
6] A bag of charcol briquettes available free to every home.
7] Winter fuel payment of £240 will be made to some 1,000,000 pensioners. {payable in the June 09 pensions}
8]Powered 'bath tidal barrier that can harness the energy of your movements in the bath.Capable of powering a phillips ladyshave over the course of a week
9]anything that we can 'future' announce to look like we are doing something now..erm nuclear power stations, new coal power stations, green power and all the other stuff that we should have done already and will take a decade to get on stream.
You have to admit, its a vote winner.
Don't forget the election that never was. That must surely count!
Brown did once say that if the English wanted their own parliament
he had no problems with that.
He did a u turn on that one.
Opposing competition in schools.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/24/politicsandsport.schoolsports
Housing policy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2645555/Claimants-working-the-system-to-get-council-houses-says-minister.html
You should do a top 30 Iain.
The fuel payments thing will be an even more spectacular political own-goal than Ten Pence.
You've just got to hand it to Brown. No-one can more effectively scupper his innumerable efforts to relaunch himself than he can. Every time he manages, after a Herculanean effort, to drag himself out of the political mud he flops straight back into it, head first. A born loser.
One thing he could turn on is having a referendum on the EU.
I noticed on the TV news that at the UKIP Conference ("third phone box on the right outside the conference centre")Farage challenged Cameron to put his money where his mouth is and declare that the Conservatives will have a referendum on whether to revoke the Lisbon Treaty.
Expect great silence from "Call me Dave" on that one - sadly he is as craven as Brown is on the EU.
Off topic
The BBC are advertising a forthcoming series on Climate Change (BBC Two, Sunday 9:00 PM) - explaining why they got it wrong in 1975 to say an ice age was on the way - yet can now be completely trusted on the Global Warming claims.
Will it be yet another being 'economical with the whole truth' jobbie? Having heard an interview about the programme this morning I suspect so.
"What we have got is government by gimmick."
Not so sure we have government by gimmick - gimmicks can be very successful in raising popularity. What we do have is government by blind panic. Policy making is now a desperate scattergun approach to try to stop the mass exodus of voters from the Labour party. The only real debate is on which of the Labour party policies will become as notorious as John Major's cone hotline...
Agh! - The cone hotline, it all comes flooding back now...
Gordon is adept at digging himself deeper into a hole - must be that PhD of his that qualifies him for such 'intelligence'.
Those negotiations in full:
Darling (pounding table). "Now look here - you're all rolling in cash and we are broke. So you are going to give us piles of cash."
Oil companies: "No we're not."
Darling (muttering) "Windfall tax...."
Oil companies "Just you try - and we feck off to Ireland."
Darling (meekly) Biscuit?
http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/news/boltonnews/3644185.Fred_Dibnah_s_historic_house_fails_to__sell_at_auction/
is well worth a read. The new Stamp Duty rules will in effect speed up the house price slide. Anybody selling a house will in effect have to reduce the price to less than £175,000 even if they want £225,000, watch this space.
Freedom to Prosper
Gordon is famous for not thinking things through.
Corporation tax, income tax, VAT, inheritance tax, stamp duty and capital gains tax, have ALL had measures implemented or announced, which have been retracted or failed to materialise. Not a good record for a Chancellor, but then I find it easy to forget that this man is a towering intellectual.
Corporation tax was the nil rate £10,000 profit band which enabled people to form their own company and get £10,000 tax free by way of dividend. Reversed after a few years because it was way too embarrassing to reverse it sooner!
Income tax is the 10% rate band.
VAT was the reduction on fuel that never happened.
Inheritance tax was the matching of the Tory proposals that were later watered down.
Stamp duty was trailered as being a big measure, but in the event only raised the threshold by £50,000 saving first time buyers 1% of £50,000 = £500 - peanuts.
And capital gains tax was the removal of taper relief which ended in a U-turn, by providing everyone with a pot of tax free gains for life.
Even though I have given only one example for each, you can see that every single major tax has been FUd by Brown. I =have left out such gems as him telling everyone that a second home, fine wines and works of art could form part of your private pension fund - then chaging his mind at the last minute after many people had set up such funds. And people still say he was a great Chancellor and a towering intellectual.
Has there ever been a Chancellor who got so many things wrong so often?
For anyone who cared to look, he was always going to be "A f****** useless Prime Minister.
It's easy to sweep technical failures under the carpet as Chancellor (apparently!) but a bit harder as PM...
Gordon Brown is the physical manifestation of the word "hapless". I cannot recall a single politician who has made so many errors which were entirely of his own making. The reason he U turns is that he dreams up all these clever wheezes by himself, announces or leaks them to show how brilliant he is and then comes face to face with the stark reality that his ideas were totally bonkers after all. More Stan Laurel than Mr Bean I'd say.
going and not going to Lisbon to sign the treaty. A physical and metaphysical u-turn in act.
"More Stan Laurel than Mr Bean I'd say."
No.
Frank Spencer !
Alan Douglas
When, oh, when, is someone going to stand up for the people of this country.
It's fine for Brown to hand out £1bn of taxpayers money (oh, sorry, further borrowings)to try to bounce mugs into buying a property and bail out the big builders.
It's fine to bail out Northern Wreck to the tune of £100bn of taxpayers cash (oh, sorry, further borrowings) to save a few Labour voters their jobs in Sunderland.
It's fine to bail out the banks to the tune of £200bn of taxpayers cash (oh, sorry, the Bank of England cash)to save the banking system.
But £100 to some poor old sole on £90 a week trying to eat and breathe.
Sorry, no chance.
Now all you need, Iain, is to do a 'YouTube' video with the Alan Freeman chart music, and copious references to 'Not 'arf..' and 'Lots of kisses on the bottom',
Oo er, missus...
errr ... Lisbon? That whole EU constitution thing?
John Miller, 3.21pm "Stamp duty was trailered as being a big measure, but in the event only raised the threshold by £50,000 saving first time buyers 1% of £50,000 = £500 - peanuts."
Unfortunately stamp duty doesn't work like that, and the rate is payable on the entire amount, so it's 1% of £175,000 = £1,750. That's why it's such a stupid tax. The saving is still peanuts - wait a fortnight and the value of the property will have fallen that much anyway. As a potential first-time buyer it's certainly not convincing me.
Just as a matter of intellectual curiosity; can anyone remember any single event in the last three months which has been good news for the government? Or any piece of bad news which has not, at least in part, been self-inflicted?
NB. Olympic gold medals don't count, because Boris stole the limelight.
I wonder what it is like to be paying a mortgage of a thousand pounds a month whilst the property drops by two thousand a month.
freedom to prosper
Re the Fuel U-turn..Times Online has an article here about it.The EU wouldn't let Brown fund the fuel handouts as it vetoed his "pollution permits" scheme on businesses.The BBC had a totally different explanation,of course.Funny,that.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4670604.ece
Me again,10.17pm.The link ended up short.It's
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4670604.ece
Post a Comment