Mike's Columns in the Portsmouth News
Give us better pensions, a tax cut and stop wasting money on unnecessary projects
I am delighted the Council recently backed my motion to give the Freedom of the City to Harry Redknapp and Pompey’s cup winning squad. It is a well-deserved honour and like all Pompey fans, I am looking forward to the coming football season with the club in Europe for the first time.
Being Prime Minister is a bit like being a football manager. And if Harry has proved successful, then Gordon Brown certainly hasn’t.
Across the country, everyone is facing increased pressure from rising fuel and food costs. So the Lib Dems would give a couple on average earnings a £1,500 a year tax cut as part of a fully costed proposal. We would do this by making the tax system fairer. The scope for this is shown by the revelation that cleaners face a higher tax rate than the venture capitalists whose offices they clean. To equalise the tax system, I would have the super-rich wave good-bye to their tax dodges that less well-off people don’t get.
And I would spend taxpayers’ money better. This Government has wasted £7 billion on the Iraq War, £20 billion on a national NHS computer system that according to doctors hardly works and a projected £30 billion on unnecessary ID cards. That’s a total of £2,000 per taxpayer wasted on these three things alone.
Tragically more older people die during the winter from cold in this country than in Norway or Sweeden. And Britain has one of the worst state pensions in Europe. But pensioners would now be over £2,000 a year better off if the Tories hadn’t cut the link between pensions and earnings. So I want the link between earnings and the state pension restored immediately.
Just as a football manager must devise the right strategy and priorities for their team, so a Prime Minister must do the same for their country. This autumn Gordon should announce an immediate restoration of the link between earnings and the state pension, implement our proposals for £1,500 tax cut and stop wasting Government money on grandiose and unnecessary projects. Then he would be leading the country in the right direction!
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