Boris Johnson's tax bribe certainly worked a treat on Alan Sugar

In December 2018 Alan Sugar was furious about the Tory Brexit chaos. He was so furious that he publicly stated that he wanted Boris Johnson to be jailed for the political lies he told during the 2016 EU referendum.

Fast forward just seven months and Sugar is running free publicity for Boris Johnson's bid to become Tory leader and Prime Minister by default.

So what's changed in the meantime?

Boris Johnson hasn't apologised for the lies he told during the EU referendum, in fact his supporters have actually doubled down on his right to lie to the public using spurious appeals to "free speech".

The Tory Brexit chaos hasn't improved a jot. In fact it's far worse. We over-ran the Article 50 deadline and Theresa May was left with no choice but to scuttle off to Europe to pathetically beg for an extension in order to avoid actually following through on her endlessly repeated threats to launch a ruinous "no deal" Brexit meltdown if she didn't get her own way.

Who would have thought that "I'll shoot myself in the head on a specific date if I don't get my own way" would turn out to be an incompetent negotiating strategy?
 

The Tory government's own impact assessments show
that a "no deal" Brexit is the worst possible outcome.

Now we're faced with the prospect of a Boris Johnson-led Tory Brextremist government forcing through the most damaging possible version of Brexit (so bad that it's significantly worse than Theresa May's three times rejected hard-right Brexit proposal) and Sugar is cheering him on from the sidelines.

The only high-profile policy that Johnson has announced is an extraordinary £1,500 per year tax bribe to people earning salaries of above £80,000 per year (with diminishing benefits down to those on £50,000 salaries, and absolutely nothing for anyone earning less than that).

This tax bribe would cost £9.6 billion per year, to be paid for the rest of us in the form of more austerity, more public service cuts, more Tory wage repression, more vandalism of the social safety net ... during the Brexit crisis that Johnson and his ilk wish to manufacture for the benefit of their mega-rich speculator mates who are betting against Britain and British assets in the hope of making a killing on the economic meltdown their Tory chums have promised to deliver.

Consider this egregious Tory tax bribe aimed at the tiny minority of top earners like Sugar and paid for by the rest of us.

And compare it with Jeremy Corbyn's policy of no tax rises for the 95% of lowest earners, and making corporations pay their fair share of tax.

It's absurdly easy to see why Sugar has undergone this remarkable conversion from "lock him up" to "Boris for PM".

He's blatantly just let his greed do his thinking.

And he's done it in such a blatant manner that he's switched from bitterly opposing Brexit to social media cheerleading for one of the most egregious Tory Brextremists!

Sugar's greed-override is so ugly, and selfish, and transparent, that even the most obtuse of people should be able to see it for what it is.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Boris Johnson's tax giveaway is a bribe to those with the actual power to make him Prime Minister

Boris Johnson has announced he plans to introduce a huge tax cut for people earning over £50,000 per year.

Despite mainstream media assertions that this tax cut is aimed at the middle class or the "aspirational class", it's obviously a tax cut aimed at the wealthiest people in society.

You hardly have to be an expert in how marginal tax rates work to understand that the biggest benefits accrue to the highest earners.

Anyone earning below £50,000 per year, which is around 92% of UK workers, will see absolutely no tax reduction whatever.

Some middle class guy earning £55,000 per year is only going to see a 5% tax reduction on £5,000 of his income, which works out at £250 per year.

Meanwhile everyone earning over £80,000 would feel the benefit of the full £1,500.

Boris Johnson's tax giveaway would cost £9.6 billion per year in order to hand out an extra £1,500 per year to the 5% of highest earners with salaries of over £6,667 per month, with diminishing benefits down to those on £4,167 per month, and absolutely nothing for anyone earning less than that!

Some clueless "centrists" like Dan Hodges have been asking why on earth Johnson would announce a policy of enriching the 5% of highest earners at the expense of everyone else, noting that such a policy would play right into the hands of Jeremy Corbyn and surely make him Prime Minister (as if Prime Minister Corbyn would be a terrible thing in comparison to the absolute shit-show of hypocrites, charlatans, and psychopaths that constitutes the Tory leadership race).

The answer to Hodges' question is stunningly obvious.

Boris Johnson likes to play the harmless buffoon, but he actually knows exactly what he's doing here.

He knows the general public don't actually have any say whatever on who becomes the next Tory leader.

The people who actually get a say on who becomes our next Prime Minister are primarily his fellow Tory MPs, who are obviously influenced by the corporate fat cats who bankroll the entire Tory operation.

Then it'll be up to the Tory party membership, who are heavily influenced by mainstream media.

All Tory MPs would personally benefit from Johnson's tax giveaway. The bankers and corporate fat cats who bankroll the Tory party would obviously all see the full benefit of this handout too.

Salaries of £80k+ are hardly uncommon in newsrooms, and all political editors will be taking home bigger salaries than that.

And it's hard to say for sure (because the Tories are so reluctant to admit how many members they've got, let alone who they are) but a hefty proportion of them are likely to be "I'm alright Jack" bastards on incomes of above six grand a month who are still perfectly happy with Tory austerity fanaticism, even after nine ruinous years, because the dire consequences always fall on other people.

In other words Boris Johnson's tax giveaway isn't aimed at generating public popularity at all, it's aimed at winning the support of those with the actual power to make him Prime Minister.

His winning strategy is to appeal to the personal greed of high income Tories and mainstream media hacks, and screw everyone else.

It's nothing short of a £9.6 billion bribe to the wealthiest people in society, paid for by the rest of us, with the sole purpose of persuading the extremely wealthy to give him the power he craves.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Ruth Davidson's self-disproving lie

The Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson is a ridiculously brazen person, but on April 6th 2018 she truly excelled herself by posting a self-disproving lie on Twitter.

• Who could forget Ruth Davidson's brass necked photo shoot in a disability mobility vehicle during the 2017 General Election campaign at the very same time as her beloved Tory party were stripping 800 mobility cars per week from disabled people up and down the country?

• Who could forget Ruth Davidson's pretending to be an opponent of bigotry and sectarianism, then sitting by and doing absolutely nothing as Theresa May lobbed a £1 billion bribe at the sectarian DUP bigots to prop up her government?

• Who could forget Ruth Davidson allowing a pair of revoltingly bigoted Tory councillors simply slide back into the party after the fuss had died down?

• And who could forget her completely disregarding longstanding rules and conventions about politicising the armed forces by cosplaying as a soldier for the cameras?

Even after all of this utterly brazen behaviour Davidson's latest effort is truly astounding. She's sent out a Tweet claiming that Scottish Income Tax payers earning over £26,000 will pay more tax under the SNP.

Not only is this claim a lie, it's actually contradicted by the newspaper clippings that she attached to her Tweet. The second attatched image includes a handy chart which clearly demonstrates that those earning £26,000 per year will pay £70 per year less in tax, and that only those earning over £33,000 will have to pay marginally more Income Tax in order to help fund the numerous things that make Scotland a much fairer society than England (free university tuition, free prescriptions, baby boxes, free eye care, free elderly care ...).

Just consider the arrogance of Ruth Davidson's self-disproving lie. And just think about how little regard Ruth Davidson must have for the people she's attempting to convince with it.

She obviously sees potential Scottish Tory voters as a spectacularly gullible bunch of barely literate knuckle-draggers if she thinks they'll be won over by a lie so blatant that it actually contradicts itself.

Still, given all the damage the Tories have inflicted on Scotland and the Scottish economy over the decades, Scottish Tory voters must be either absolutely riddled with gullibility, or be such servile and self-hating lowlifes that they actually get some kind of warped kick out of being lied to and mistreated by their merciless (and mainly English) Tory overlords.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Want to know why your Council tax is going up again?

If you want to know why your Council Tax bill is going up, but the services your local council provide are worse than they've ever been before, I've got the answer for you.

The reason that councils across the country are increasing Council Tax bills whilst simultaneously cutting what they actually spend on services is that the Tory government have slashed central government funding for local governments by 67% since 2010, and they're still slashing away at the Communities and Local Government budget now.

This sustained Tory attack on local government funding means that councils have way less money to spend on maintaining local infrastructure and services.

• Local councils have far less to spend on waste services, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that a huge number of councils have reduced bin collections to fortnightly.

• Local councils have far less to spend on local amenities like libraries, public toilets, leisure centres, and public spaces like parks and indoor markets, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that they're being closed down and sold off to property developers.

• Local councils have far less to spend on running their planning departments, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that simple planning applications are taking longer than ever to process.

• Local councils have far less to spend on highway maintenance, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that our roads are deteriorating so badly.

• Local councils have far less to spend on youth services, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that councils up and down the country have cut back on youth clubs andother programmes to keep young people occupied and out of trouble.

• Local councils have far less to spend on social care services for the frail and elderly, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that millions of elderly and infirm people are being left with totally inadequate care, meaning they end up in hospitals, which puts a lot more strain on the NHS (which the Tories are also deliberately under-funding).

The infuriating thing is that despite the devastating impact of these ideologically driven Tory cuts going on all around us, our local councils have no choice but to raise Council Tax rates in a desperate attempt to plug a few of the most serious of the gaps.

So where has all the money gone that the Tories have saved by slashing the Communities and Local Government budget to pieces?

While they've been gutting local government budget the Tory government have simultaneously been distributing lavish tax cuts and handouts to corporations and the mega-rich.

They've slashed the top rate of income tax to give an average £100,000 annual tax break to Britain's 13,000 income millionaires, and since 2010 they've cut the corporation tax rate from 28% to just 19% today, (which is by far the lowest in the G7).

Then there's all the handouts the Tories have given to corporations and the rich through ridiculously one-sided outsourcing contracts that cost more to run than they'll ever actually save, rip-off privatisation scams to flog off public property at way below its true market value, and the wholesale give-away of public property to wealthy Tory donors.

So the next time you ask yourself why you're paying way more Council Tax when your local services are worse than they've ever been before ... some smug corporate fat cat somewhere has purchased a brand new luxury yacht to berth in Monaco, or blasted six figures on a classic Aston Martin to add to his already extensive car collection.

Thanks to the Tory ideological obsession with the upwards redistribution of wealth, that's what you're paying for.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The Scottish Tory Annie Wells and her contempt for poor and ordinary people

The Tory MSP Annie Wells has come out with an extraordinary attack on millions of ordinary people that implies those earning below £33,000 per year are not ambitious hard-working or successful.

She posted her insulting Twitter rant in response to the Scottish government budget that included small income tax rises for people earning above £33,000 per year.

Her Tweet claimed that the progressive tax reforms implemented by the SNP government sent a message "don't be ambitious, don't be hard-working, don't be successful" to higher income Scots who have to pay a little bit more tax to fund public services, and things like free university education and free prescriptions. The clear implication of her rant being that people who earn less than £33,000 per year are not ambitious, not hard-working, and not successful.

This obnoxious elitist stance is yet another Tory assertion of the self-attribution fallacy: The warped idea that there is a form of natural economic justice at play ensuring that rich people become rich because they're superior, and poorer people remain poorer because of some inherent failing or moral deficiency (not because society is rigged against them and in favour of out-of-touch elitists like Annie Wells).

To put her toxic views into context the starting salary of a police officer in Scotland is £23, 493, a nurse starts on £22,128, and a firefighter begins on £22,017. All of these people earn at least £10,000 below Annie Wells' cutoff point.

Even if these public sector workers work hard over the years and climb the pay scale to eventually earn above £33,000, the SNP budget also includes decent pay raises for public sector workers, so they might have to pay a few extra pence a week in tax, but in return for much better pay than their counterparts in the rest of the UK. If they were lucky enough to benefit from Scotland's policy of free university education, they'd also save a fortune by not having to pay out chunks of their salary every month on aspiration tax either.

Annie Wells earns £60,000 per year as a member of the Scottish Parliament, which means she's raging that she's facing a 29p per week increase in income tax.

As many people have asserted, tax is the subscription fee we pay to live in a civilised society. Annie doesn't want to pay a tiny bit more because she's a high profile member of a political party that has spent seven long years actively repressing the wages of UK workers, and especially public sector workers like police, NHS staff and fire fighters.

It's vital to acknowledge that not all high earners are as selfish as Annie and her Tory chums. Several of people responded to her insulting Tweet by saying that they're perfectly happy to pay a few quid extra in tax to make Scotland a better and more progressive country (see image).

Annie is furious because she's bitterly opposed to the concept of a society where public sector workers wages rise in line with inflation. She's also firmly opposed to the idea of a society in which education is treated as social good that benefits all of society, rather than a commodity to be sold at the highest possible price so that people from ordinary backgrounds who aspire to better themselves end up in £50,000+ debt (like students in England do thanks to her Tory party colleagues' imposition of the highest public university tuition fees in the world).

Annie's contemptuous Tweet crying that a minority of Scottish people who are doing really quite well in life might have to pay an extra few pennies a week in order to make Scotland a slightly fairer and more civilised place just goes to prove how out-of-touch she is with the realities faced by millions of Scottish people who aren't doing as well as she is financially, and the fact that like most Tories, she only really gives a damn about serving the interests of the rich.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Why would any ordinary working person dream of voting Tory?

The Labour Party manifesto pledges to not raise Income Tax or National Insurance for the 95% of ordinary workers.

All workers should read the relevant parts of the Labour manifesto. which are their economic strategy (which contains the 95% pledge)and also the important section on securing a fair deal at work.

Theresa May loves to pretend to be on the side of working people, but since 2010 UK workers have suffered the worst slump in the purchasing power of their wages since records began.

The only other economy in the developed world where wages have slumped as badly as the UK is crisis-stricken Greece.

The difference of course is that Greece were forced to impose ruinous austerity and severe wage repression by the Troika. The Tories imposed their destructive austerity dogma and crushed our wages out of choice, because they wanted to.

One of the most notable things about Theresa May's 2017 General Election manifesto is that she decided to delete David Cameron's 2015 pledge to not raise Income Tax or National Insurance until 2020.

Just ask yourself why they would have deleted those pledges if they had no intention of hiking taxes?

There's no other explanation is there?

We all know that Theresa May and her Chancellor Philip Hammond tried to break Cameron's National Insurance pledge by announcing their hike in NI for self-employed workers. Thankfully she was made to do one of her countless U-turns on this occasion, but the tax raising intention was absolutely clear.

The Tories are clearly mad keen to hike taxes on ordinary working people, and it's only the fact they didn't have a big majority that stopped them from getting away with their National Insurance hike in March.

In the final week of the election Theresa May's Defence minister Michael Fallon suddenly decided to pledge on tax rises for the super-rich 5%!

The choice is now absolutely clear.

You've got a party that is financed by millions of small donations from ordinary workers that is promising to not raise taxes for the 95% ...

And you've got a party that is financed by a small number of massive donations from millionaires that is promising not to raise taxes on the 5%!

If you're an ordinary working person and you vote Tory, you're so obviously voting against your own economic best interests it's ridiculous.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Are you a political sleepwalker?

Has any political leader ever gone into an election campaign with such a nasty, divisive and unpopular set of policies as Theresa May?

Just think about what she's saying she will do:

• Theresa May and the Tories are planning to asset strip elderly people for suffering age-related diseases. They try to claim it's necessary to extract the value of pensioners' houses in order to fund social care because there isn't enough cash, but somehow there is enough cash for them to hand out a mind-boggling £70 billion in tax breaks for their corporate mates.

• Theresa May and the Tories are planning to snatch free school meals from infant school children. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party have the opposite idea of extending this scheme to primary school kids too. The contrast couldn't be starker. One party wants all kids to get at least one decent healthy meal per day, regardless of class, colour or creed. The other party wants the children of the poor to be so starving hungry so they can't concentrate on their school work.

• Theresa May and the Tories have openly ditched the 2015 pledges to not increase Income Tax and National Insurance. We know they already tried to hike National Insurance in March 2017, but were forced to U-turn by the opposition parties and a Tory backbench rebellion. If Theresa May wins a landslide she'll be able to raise taxes on workers' pay with impunity. Labour has pledged not to raise taxes for the 95%.

• Theresa May and the Tories are intent on playing a reckless game of brinkmanship with the entire future of the UK. Their so-called "negotiating strategy" has been an ever escalating sequence of threats and then a shockingly unstable paranoid rant outside Downing Street when Theresa May got rattled by what was published in a German newspaper article! The "no deal" Brexit May has been threatening would be a catastrophe for the UK economy (even the Tories are calling it "the nuclear option") and a thumping Tory majority would give Theresa May the means to deliver what the hard-right of the Tory party have wanted all along.

• Theresa May and the Tories are plotting to bring back the barbaric practice of ripping live foxes to pieces with packs of dogs. 84% of people oppose this depravity, but bringing it back is one of Theresa May's big priorities.

• Theresa May and the Tories are intent on throwing away the Leveson report into press standards. They want to let their chums in the right-wing press can pretend that the hacking of a dead teenage girl never really happened, and that there should be no consequences, and the right-wing press are repaying this favour with the most biased one-sided pro-Tory drivel imaginable during the election campaign.

• Theresa May and the Tories have announced a very sinister sounding crackdown on the Internet. They want to give themselves the power to decide what counts as "objective" news, and what people should be allowed to see and share on social media. What's the betting that independent media sites that criticise the government (like this one) would be repressed, while the extreme-right propaganda rags (S*n/Daily Mail/Telegraph/Express) would be allowed to continue spreading their divisive hatemongering and lies with impunity?

• Theresa May and the Tories are keen to defend communist China's huge stakes in vital UK infrastructure and services (the National Grid, rail franchises, water companies). Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party want to repatriate these services and run the for the good of the British economy, and the good of the British people. Amazingly Theresa May has the brass neck to question Jeremy Corbyn's patriotism!

There's literally something outrageous and unacceptable for pretty much everyone. For the elderly there's the asset stripping of their homes and the scrapped Triple lock on their pensions, for the children there's food snatching and education cuts, for working people there's the spectre of Tory tax rises and an economically ruinous "nuclear Brexit", for patriots there's pro-Chinese Tory treachery,for liberal people there's even more meddling with the Internet in order to stifle dissent, and for non-barbaric people there's fox hunting!

Despite all of these horrific policies the political sleepwalkers will be coming out in their millions to vote Tory on June 8th.

Please tell me you're not one of these drones who will actually go out and vote Tory just because the mainstream media told you to ...

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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