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* * * News for 23rd March 2006 * * *

All of Medway, and beyond! : 23rd March 2006

Money Gordon Brown's Budget Implications

The Seven Deadly Serious Sins omitted from the Chancellor's Budget announced on 22nd March 200

This website doesn't usually cover what is essentially national news, but the implications of Gordon Brown's budget this year will have real impact on Medway residents. Therefore it is only right that all living here should be made aware of them, as (for example) a higher tax burden on people takes away from the money they would be able to spend in our shops, and extra burdens on Medway-based employers might lead them to have to shed jobs.

So, here are seven such things that were not mentioned in the Budget:

  1. Betrayal of pensioners. The £200 payment made to pensioners before the election to help with council tax bills has been abolished. It was the centre-piece of his Budget last year and not mentioned in his Budget this year (see page 188 of the budget document);
  2. Gordon Brown did not mention the fact that this Budget adds £5·5 billion to Britain's tax bill—already the highest ever—over three years. Of this £5·5 billion, £4·8 billion was not even contained in the Budget measures announced yesterday. Tax as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been revised up from 40·7% to 41% by 2010/11;
  3. Even after that, Brown has revised up his borrowing over the next six years to £175 billion over the next six years—£7,000 per family. The current deficit for next year almost doubled from £4 billion to £7 billion;
  4. Brown made much of environmental taxation but the proportion of taxes raised by environmental taxes has fallen from 6·4% to 6·2% (page 262). The Climate Change Levy will according to the Red Book raise less revenue in the next three years after the changes he announced. Friends of the Earth responded by saying: "Gordon Brown's latest Budget will do little to tackle the huge challenges posed by climate change";
  5. There was no mention of the National Health Service (NHS) at all. For years the Chancellor made the NHS his priority. Now it is in financial crisis he simply ignores its existence;
  6. There were no measures to implement the Turner Report or to restore incentives to save;
  7. The Treasury have revised down long-term productivity growth from 2% to 1·75%.
It is obvious from all of this that Medway residents (and others) will once again be worse off as a result of this Chancellor's budgets. In particular, pensioners—of whom there are a large number living in the Medway area—have fared badly.