UK 19:26 Friday, 23 October 2026
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George Osborne will deliver a budget of cheap bribes and minor tweakings. I have an alternative set of proposals which is genuinely radical and would put the UK and its finances back on a firm footing. In this podcast I outline my alternative Budget 2015 and commend it to the House.
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Comments
Daniel Victor
Mmmm…..not bad,Tom,but I can’t see George running with this one – he’s already got his case packed.I especially agree about the foreign aid,though.To David Cameron ‘You sound proud of the fact that you’ve protected foreign aid.Who on earth asked you to ?’.
J P Spaghetti
Gosh – I found myself agreeing with most of that. Re. retirement age, I gather based on what I’ve read that when state pensions were first introduced it wasn’t unusual for people to enter the workplace at 15 or even 14. Now, however, it seems everyone under the age of 30 is on some course or another – even if they’re dense – so it’s not as if people would be working much longer anyway. Re. ‘university’ courses, I think we should reintroduce grants for those wishing to pursue useful stuff but cap student numbers severely (say 5% and no more – if you want a degree in Renaissance Haberdashery you pay for it).
Not sure about scrapping inheritance tax myself, though, as it invariably boils down mostly to property and so this would now generally bestow such an unfair financial advantage purely through an accident of birth (though I realise beneficiaries need not be offspring – they could be cats) I fail to see how the notion of meritocracy wouldn’t be even more severely undermined. In days of yore when people inherited vast estates they also inherited the responsibility to maintain them and this would have involved employing a workforce, so that wasn’t so bad. Perhaps if people were required to have tattooed on their foreheads the amount they inherit :-)? Anyway, lunch over – just as he’s started!
drunken sailor
What about scrapping all the ridiculous subsidies for pseudo green schemes like covering perfectly good farmer’s fields with solar panels. If generating energy by alternative means is cost effective then it does not need massive government subsidies. If it is so grossly uneconomic that massive long term subsidies are needed to get people to do it then it should not be done.
Yes there will be tears from those who have benefited from the scam and expected to continue to benefit, but tough, We need to save the country from bankruptcy not pretend to save the planet in such a grossly ineffectual way.
Dumpling
Drunken Sailor makes a good point. How come you left the windfarm brigade alone?