Tim Worstall

Polly Pot.

Not a lot to say about Polly Pot today, rather think she wrote on autopilot. Perhaps Scott or Scott will have more. One trivial point:

Fear of crime does well
for the Tories too. So did their plan to cut council tax for pensioners
that would, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, deliver
£9.04 a week to the richest pensioners, £5.12 to the middle, but
nothing to the poorest who are on benefits.

Would that be because pensioners on benefits only pay 20% of Council Tax or because they pay 0% of Council Tax? Not certain myself but I’m sure someone else knows.

Anyone noticed that her email address no longer appears at the bottom of her column? Too many harangues from the likes of us? firstname.lastname@guardian.co.uk for all Grauniad journos.

In

2 responses

  1. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    Yes, there is a Council tax benefit that probably covers 100% of the cost. But she does have a point here – it’s a really stupid move by the Tories, giving tax cuts to a section of society which is generally very wealthy. Tactically good, but strategically stupid. See Blimpish’s blog over the last couple of days for more.

    Reply
  2. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    A reasonable way to handle the oldies problem would be to index-link the old age pension to neither the Retail Price Index nor an Earnings Index, but instead to a cost-of-living index designed to reflect the cost of outgoings of the dear old things. Thus, there’d be a heavy weighting for Council Tax and a zero weighting for condoms.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Tim Worstall

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading