Thursday, October 31, 2024

First Budget by First Female Chancellor of the Exchequer

The UK's first woman chancellor might have been expected to introduce a radical budget but sadly her budget was in my opinion, as uninteresting as many if not any, before her appointment. 

The really left wing policies were of course introduced almost as soon as Labour became the governing party again, after 14 years in the wilderness. These policies include the imposition of VAT and business rates on the public schools in the UK. My own view is that the European Court of Human Rights will question this imposition on  freedom of education  grounds. The French and Germans are already moaning about the effect on their UK schools; not to mention forces' personnel.

Taxing non-doms on the other hand does not seem to me to be intrinsically unfair. Those non-doms who only have British domicile for tax reasons, are probably more likely to leave now but Quatar and Monaco are hardly places that I would wish to reside in, for any length of time. 

Other policies that were introduced prior to the budget, were those of increasing train drivers' pay by larger than inflation sums without seeking any improvement in working practices and increasing doctors' pay, though the latter appears fairer given the drop in hospital doctors' income over the years.

I had thought that Labour would introduce road charging of some kind but instead, so far the governing party has frozen fuel tax yet again without mentioning road charging.

In fact, the budget was as non-radical as budgets have been for years despite the media hype in advance to the contrary.



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