HAVE YOU HAD ANY ELECTION MATERIAL?

John brought up an interesting point on Munguin's last article, and I thought that it really needed a better airing than at the bottom of a day-old story.

He wrote: You may recall that I mentioned a leaflet from a local Labour candidate which made no mention whatsoever of Labour's proposal of a tax-rise of 1p across all tax bands and I wondered if this was a 'one-off' omission by the local candidate or whether it was wide-spread by all candidates? Perhaps some of your readers might have received similar leaflets? 

I think that it would be an interesting exercise for readers who have received any party literature to share any apparent inaccuracies or glaring omissions in them, so putting up taxes in the case of Labour, or the reduction in public services that will be the inevitable result of reducing taxes in the cases of the Tories... the fact that the Tories have more or less wiped their toxic name off everything and replaced it with Ruth Davidson.

Have the Liberals or UKIP put out something that is economical with the truth... and does anyone care? 

This election, overshadowed as it is by Cameron's ridiculous and undemocratic decision to run an EU referendum campaign concurrently,  is mainly a contest for second place between two partners in the last referendum Better Together or Project Fear coalition, but let's not forget that the Greens and the SNP are sending out leaflets too. Are there errors or omissions in them?

Are  errors down to purely local decisions made by the candidate and his or her agent or are they widespread. In other words is there a "don't talk about the tax rises" type policy from head office, or is candidate Jock McBloggs leaving out things he's not comfortable with? 

(Remember, of course, that in a  doorstep leaflet you can't include the whole party manifesto!)

Oh, and  is anyone getting leaflets from RISE?

So if you get anything through your door (and you are minded to do this), please let us know.

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John raised another interesting point. 

When Scottish Labour proposed their tax increase policy across the board, they very reasonably decided that those earning under £20,000 should be given a rebate. 

(The inadequacies of the system currently devolved does not allow for a change in tax free allowance, the bands, nor any kind of rebate. The  questionably legal rebate proposed by SLAB  would have had to be managed by local authorities at considerable cost and a great deal of prying!) 

However, when Labour discovered that the UK tax free allowance was being raised by George Osborne to £11,000, it decided to drop the somewhat clumsy rebate proposals. This means that those earning over £11,000 will not be liable to pay the increase in taxes that Labour wants to introduce.

John,  and now Munguin, wonder why SLAB's website appears to not mention this. 

Any ideas?

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Niko highlighted another totally separate but every bit as important point in the same Munguin article. This Guardian piece looks at how the DWP are treating people who are dependent on Tax Credits becasue they are not in full time work (including those who are on zero hour contracts, which sometimes are 40 hours or more on occasions). 

The system is operating in trial areas at the moment (something which seems inherently wrong to me in any case. All areas of "our united kingdom", as Dodgy Dave would have it, are, or should be, subject to the same terms and conditions where matters of UK-wide government policy still holds). However, it is, in the future, to be rolled out across these islands.

It's another way of smacking down the people who aren't lucky enough to have a full time solid job. They, in many cases, are the REAL strivers in the UK. The people who often get up at silly o'clock to do horrible unrewarding jobs in bad conditions, and with no security at all.  Compare them to the fat cat bankers, politicians and those who have fallen into cushie numbers because of their connections.

What a wonderful country this is if you got to a good school at £50,000+ a year, and have a daddy who can get you into Oxford no matter how thick you are, then have a word... and get you a nice little number with one of his friends.

If not, not so great!