Monday, October 23, 2006

Who'll get the sack...half a million nurses or half a million teachers?

Labour has now done the figures on last week’s Conservative Tax Report which outlined plans for £21 billion in tax cuts.

The planned cuts are so huge, that they could only be paid for with massive cuts in public spending affecting schools, hospitals and our police.

So, do you prefer to sack 525,000 teachers, or 600,000 nurses, or 210,000 doctors?

Or perhaps the Tories would rather scrap the current Government plans for 840 new schools – including the first new secondary school to be built in Lincolnshire for a generation.

The slash’n’burn same old Tory policy would mean spending cuts for the many to benefit a few – that’s why members of the Lincolnshire-based Midlands Industrial Council which bankrolls Camerons Conservative popped the champers last week.

You don’t have to take Labour’s word.

This from the financial wire service Reuters reporting on the Conservative Tax Report:

Robert Chote, Director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, told BBC Radio:

This package, if it were to be implemented in its entirety, is likely to benefit people on relatively high incomes rather than people on relatively low incomes.

That would certainly be true of the income tax cuts, which help people in the middle or towards the top, and the same with cuts in inheritance tax and capital gains tax.

Increases in environmental taxes tend to be, at best, neutral across the income distribution or tend to hit the least well-off harder than the best-off.

And today, hypocrisy as Cameron pretended to champion older people – without mentioning his commitment to scrap the New Deal for Older People which has helped thousands back into work.

Cameron’s Conservatives have slumped from plus-14 points in the polls when he became Leader to minus-2 points today.

Can't think why...

No comments: