Last night’s Party Election Broadcast by the Liberal Democrats concentrated on the significant raising of the tax threshold that comes in this month. The “stronger economy in a fairer society enabling everyone to get on in life” mantra was repeated heavily. The work of local Liberal Democrat councillors in creating jobs and protecting services was also mentioned.
The Broadcast had earlier been trailed to members in an email from Elizabeth Jewkes, the party member who had proposed its inclusion in the manifesto. She said:
Just a few years ago, in 2009, I attended our conference in Bournemouth as an ordinary party member & proposed that nobody should pay tax on the first £10,000 they earn.
If you told me at the time that just a few years later the Lib Dems, in government, would have made this tax cut a reality for millions of working people, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Of course, we all know that it’s now happening – a huge £700 tax cut for millions of people – but most of the public don’t.
It’s our job to tell them, and we need your help. Tonight, our latest party political broadcast is launching, and it’s all about the difference our tax cut is making to ordinary working people.
If you haven’t seen the Broadcast, it’s available on You Tube and below.
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9 Comments
This was a broadcast that the party gets for the council elections.
As usual , a wasted opportunity.
(I used to have this argument back in the 1970s/early 1980s and for a year or two we won the argument and had broadcasts that were genuinely about the council elections. But that has not happened for a long time. It’s a shocking indication of the attitudes of the powers that be, really).
Tony Greaves
I’m going to use my tax cut to pay for repairs to my bike’s buckled wheel. It buckled riding over a pothole that the council have been tardy about filling in because their budget is stretched to breaking point thanks to the coalition.
Lord Greaves,
I think it reflects the importance people place on national issues (or how they perceive the performance of the national Government) even in elections which have little impact on those issues. Sadly, people have been voting against good Lib Dem Councillors based on the actions, rightly or wrongly, of our Parliamentarians and decisions made in Westminster and so it is important to counter those impressions whenever we can. It also saves more space in Focus for promoting our local achievements.
The message in this PPB was dishonest drivel. People are getting an Income Taxcut, not a ‘Tax cut’. Other Tax, Tax Credit and Benefit changes are also impinging negatively on their finances and their lives, as are pay freezes, changes in service provision etc.
Most people are not daft. They realise the overall situation and might accept a more balanced presentation of these tax cuts measures as ‘minimalising damage’ of the required austerity to targeted groups, and respect those describing this.
If only that were largely true. The OBR figures show that those who are doing best are the middle to upper-middle deciles with the top and bottom deciles being hit hardest.
@Richard Shaw :
“I think it reflects the importance people place on national issues”
I think it reflects the cluelessness of the people who are determining Lib Dem media strategy. Probably the same people responsible for an awful lot of the rest of the mire we are in right now.
@Richard Shaw
“It also saves more space in Focus for promoting our local achievements.”
As agent and candidate in local elections on many occasions, I rarely placed national issues in a local Focus. The local electors wanted to know what we would do for them on the local council, and what issues we had campaigned on for local people. And guess what…..they were successful. Wake up Liberal Democrats and remember what made you successful in the past, before it’s too late.
Can anyone explain why all the interviewees but one came from south of the line from the Severn to the Wash? I suppose these were target areas but it ignores huge swathes of England urban and rural.
Re: g: potholes are with us always. I’ve worked on this problem with things like “report-a-road” all through the boom years.
Re: Tony Dawson: I agree with your comments. It would be really useful to have a broad idea of how the personal allowance rise (and childcare provision) compares with the benefits cap on, say a low paid couple with two children.
But whatever the situation we have to start with the fact that we are in hard times.
Apostrophe abuse on the TV ad! Careless or getting down with the people?
Not one contributor – or plant! – in last night’s local election broadcast said that they would actually go out and spend their ‘new £600 tax reduction’ in creating much needed growth in the UK. The said that they would save the money, pay down their fuel bills, put it away for their children’s future, etc. If the LibDems are going to ‘plant’ soundbites, couldn’t they have scripted something where a contributor said ‘I’m going to buy a new sofa from DFS’ or ‘I’m putting the money towards a new Homebase kitchen or Bathstore bathroom’? Those companies might have chipped in towards the cost of the broadcast too!