5 Comments

• Tony Dawson 18th Sep '11 - 1:10pm

  Danny’s content was good Delivery slightly better than appalling.

• Brenda Lana Smith R. af D. 18th Sep '11 - 2:05pm

  I sincerely hope that Danny Alexander’s proposed 2,000 additional tax inspectors are better trained than the tax inspector that not only ignored the fact that I am the 78-year-young grateful recipient of a means-tested Pension Credit… but… arbitrarily assumed that my small four-weekly paid State Pension was being paid weekly… and… taxed me accordingly on the private pension content of my DWP means-tested income… while the HMR&C has now refunded the tax irregularly collected during tax year 2010-2011… they still owe me for what they’ve irregularly collected this tax year… it is also worth noting that while I am able and have kept my MP, Dan Rogerson, electronically in the loop… HMR&C doesn’t offer this electronic facility and has consistently offered an apology for their tardy five-week SNAIL-MAIL response to my Royal Mailed letters… this is all patently wrong… I have a right to enjoy and dispose of my pension income while I am alive… and… the HMR&C potentially denying me such through no fault of my own infringes on my human rights…

  Respectfully…

  Brenda Lana Smith, R.af D.
  Lib-Dem membership #86229285

• Charles 18th Sep '11 - 2:14pm

  Having to spend a billion in order to raise two billion is just another sign that our tax rates are to high. Add in the loss of growth caused by depriving the private sector of spending or investment of over a billion pounds and you can see why our economy is so troubled.

• Jedibeeftrix 18th Sep '11 - 6:30pm

  re Danny Alexander today labelling anti-Europeans enemies of growth

  I am fully agreed with his push for the £12,000 threshold for Income tax, but where Europe is concerned I might equally accuse pro-Europeans of being enemies of representative-democracy.

  The ‘remorseless-logic’ of a currency union is that it must evolve into a fiscal and political union if it is to have a viable future, which is fine if the constituent peoples of europe are happy to become a single polity.

  However, not only have the eurozone governments failed to acquire the consent of their electorates, they have failed to even ask for it, so what you see now is authoritarianism masked as necessity and we all know where that leads.

  A nation-state is effectively a collective agreement that a people are a family, who have sufficient trust in each other to accept indirect governance from representatives of the prevailing will of a majority, it is also a collective agreement to work together for the benefit of the whole rather than the individual. In short it is a marriage which results in a transfer union.

  If the purpose of the European project was to create a happier Europe, more at ease with its neighbours and less prone to industrial warfare, at what point did the means become confused with the ends? That is to say, to the point where ever-deeper-union is deemed to be a good thing regardless of the fact that it is now leading to a less happy Europe, because the model of governance is perceived to be unrepresentative and unaccountable!

  If ever-deeper-union is to lead to social-unrest and civil-strife how does this promote economic growth?

• Chris 19th Sep '11 - 12:01am

  The government is pledging to raise billions of pounds by clamping down on “morally indefensible” tax evasion, a senior Lib Dem minister has said.
  Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander announced plans to attack offshore havens and other tax “dodges”.
  Likening tax evaders to benefit cheats, he told the party’s conference the measures could raise £7bn a year by 2015, helping to cut the deficit.
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11359306

  19 September 2010 Last updated at 18:26