SNAPS FOR SATURDAY CELEBRATES THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU THE AUTUMN STATEMENT (WINTER EDITION)...

Scotland welcomes the Autumn Statement, or Budget as we would call it, even if it is late (December is winter here), and none of it does us any good at all. Some of it will actually do harm, particularly to the old, and the poor. But what do you expect from a bunch of self serving flea bags like the Tories?

Never mind. Think of all the fun we will have with the Federal road signs.

Or the Treasury as some people like to call it euphemistically 

They are apparently going to go after the tax dodgers,
 just like they said they would do every year since 2010.

It's a government of caring sharing people
They care about themselves and they share with  their friends
and the bankers. Just call him Rich for short.

As they used to sing in the 60s:
"Things go better with Coke!"

This sort of a  .... no just this sort.

And "the brains" of the organisation.
Well, you didn't think he thought up all this by himself,
did you?
I'd imagine tying his laces uses up his daily share of intellect.

Well, you have to turn up for the important stuff.

Click to make the thieving bitch bigger.

IDS wins a prize.

Just like his granny... the rust bucket.
Where there is discord, let us bring war.
Where there is hunger, let us bring starvation.
And where there is misery,
let see what we can do to increase it!...

...Obviously except for "people like us"...

...Unless they aren't donors to the Conservative Party
in which case they are despicable...tax avoiding scumbags... obviously.

Oh yeah, I know there should have been a Liberal or two in there too, becasue they are part of the government and Danny Right Hand Man Alexander was almost certainly largely involved in the autumn statement, but they seem to have been forgotten. There was no news about any of them, except apparently Nick Clegg saying he wanted to spend more time away from the Commons (which I am sure will be arranged for him in a few months time... around May probably).

However, for those who like that sort of thing, here's a picture of Danny, looking cute...as ever.

SOME THINGS WE CANNOT COMMENT ON...YOU KNOW, THE THINGS THAT MAKE US LOOK RIDICULOUS!

Why would we be surprised at this double standard?

I seem to recall exactly the same argument being used when Labour supporting Jimmy Carr was discovered to be a bit creative about paying his  taxes, in that he wasn't much doing it. 

Cameron was on him like a ton of bricks, and only remembered that prime ministers don't comment on individual cases when it turned out his mate, the Tory Gary Barlow, obe, from Take That, was also on the fiddle. 

At least their double standards are consistent. 

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Now that BetterTogether are Better Apart, run by the Conservatives and the Liberals, we discover that the joke ex prime minister and part time MP, Gordon Brown, has renounced his North British nationality, which he so proudly trumpeted whilst on his first visit to the USA as prime minister some years ago, just before he saved the world. He has presumably applied for, and been granted Scottish nationality, of which he is also proud.

Cometh the day, cometh the appropriate nationality.

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Has anyone told Alistair Darling that the Tories and The Liberals, are now running Better Together? Is there redundancy pay?

TAKE THAT PRIME MINISTER

Further to the last post.... not not The Last Post, just the last post... and Danny Alexander's comments on Jimmy Carr, no less an exulted figure than the prime minister himself (everybody stand in hushed and awed respect) has weighed in with his 1/2p worth in the debate on moral repugnance.


It seems Camernob also feels a revulsion at the LEFT-WING entertainer's tax regime (a tax regime which, the moment he thought it looked like costing him ticket sales, or tv gigs, he appears to have abandoned with left-wing fervour, agonising over the error of his ways). 


However, when asked by ITN’s Tom Bradby how he felt about Gary Barlow, another entertainer, but this time a RIGHT-WING one, and whether Mr Barlow should now return the OBE he got for his part in organising the Queen's Jubilee concert, Camergit passed up the chance to comment on his fellow Tory, saying he "would not give a running commentary on different people’s tax affairs” as “that would not be right”.  

It shouldn't be any surprise to those of us who know and loathe the schoolboy prime minister's ability to U-turn on a U-turn, and simultaneously feel two different things about the same thing, that he could actually believe that it is wrong for him to comment on people's tax affairs, except in the case of people who make a living out of making a fool of him. So watch out Mr Hislop and Ms Toksvig, and a cast of thousands... 


Amazingly, or not, the idiot that plays the part of the prime minister had nothing to say about Philip Green, one of his advisors, who is doing nothing wrong by transferring the ownership of his company to his Monegasque wife, knowing that she will not be obliged to pay a €cent in tax, based as she is in her home country of Monaco. 


Nor was he prepared to talk about Ashcroft, Goldman-Sacks or Vodafone. Well of course he couldn't. It wouldn't be right for him to give a running commentary, blah, blah, blah.

He also strangely appears to be prepared to give succour to French tax dodgers, no matter how morally repugnant they are. Indeed he said he will roll out the red carpet for them, if they wish to come to England to escape the new and very popular French president's proposed 75% tax on the highest earners. (So is it now 'British jobs for British people, and morally repugnant French tax evaders'...?). 


The wine must have been flowing and he must have had rather too much of it... or maybe he really is just that stupid and naive about the way that so called allies behave.


One of the candidate's for the presiding officer's position in the new parliament, Claude Bartelon, implied that he thought that Mr C had imbibed a little, and pointed out that there were already many French people who lived in England, but that most had to have their children educated in France, and all their medical needs catered for in France, because the quality of all public service was so low in England. 


Oh well... as my granny would say...'whit's gaed tae gie's no ull tae tak', or as they might say in France :Ce qui on est content à donner, on ne doit pas être mécontent à recevoir.

THE SOLUTION IS IN YOUR HANDS, DANNY

Multi-millionaires who use tax avoidance schemes to pay low income tax are the ‘moral equivalent of benefit cheats’, a Cabinet Minister said yesterday.


That Cabinet Minister was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander.

In fact this is not really true. Tax avoidance is legal, and if something is legal it can hardly be as morally repugnant as something which is not. Indeed some parliamentarians, and close advisers to the government practise it in spades. Many City bankers and financiers, possibly even most, wouldn't be without it. 

On the other hand, benefit cheating is illegal, as indeed is the cheating that went on in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords, and probably still does. That is theft, as is taking benefits to which you are not entitled.

[The main difference between these two seems to be that the penalties from stealing from the state if you are in receipt of benefits are more severe than standing up in front of a load of other cheats and apologising, which is the average punishment for a  politician.]

However, that's not really my point. As I said, these tax avoidance schemes, such as that practised by Jimmy Carr, publicised all over the papers today, are perfectly legal.

Mr Alexander is chief secretary to the treasury, one place down from the secretary of state. If he is as offended by these people as I am, the solution would appear to be in his hands. 

Why does he not make it illegal to avoid tax?

Simples?

Yeah, like a Tory government will let that one through, even for a little while (like so much of the last budget!!)!!

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