Thursday 22 March 2012

22nd March 2012

I guess if you are a teetotal, non-smoking, millionaire who is not planning to move house then you welcomed the budget with a smile.

If on the other hand, back in the real world, you are a pensioner who likes a G&T before supper and a smoke after, then you wouldn't be best pleased with the news that you are about to have most of your pension increase, that is the part not eroded by inflation already, disappear in increased taxes.

And be frightened, be very frightened because the Chancellor's words will come back to haunt you when he returns to demand that another billion or two is to be wiped off the welfare budget.

I was waiting to hear the chorus again, the one about all being in it together?

This is a quote from the Eton College web-site:

'Our primary aim is to encourage each Etonian to be a self-confident, inquiring, tolerant, positive young man, a well rounded character with an independent mind, an individual who respects the differences of others'.


By the time he leaves the (sic) school, we want each boy to have that true sense of self-worth which will enable him to stand up for himself and for a purpose greater than himself, and in doing so, to be of true value to society'.


If you are in the slightest bit interested you might like to know that there is a sale on at the Eton College Gift shop, 25% off until Sunday, so if you rush you might be lucky and save yourself a bit of money.

For example:

A meticulously modelled pewter school boy (Cameron? Osborne?) wearing school dress sitting snugly (should that be smugly?) on top of a pencil.

Pencils come in Red or Blue, (blue preferred I imagine!).

This gift (was £4 25 now priced at a bargain £3 19) comes with a warning, Keep away from small children and babies, to which we now add pensioners, young unemployed and anyone on welfare!

Imagine the fun you could have with two figures, Tweedle Cameron and Tweedle Osborne, figuratively knocking their little pewter heads together whilst revising your budget downwards (Lidl Gin it seems from now on?).

Also of interest at www.etoncollege.com is the Political Society Report.

Recent Speakers include:

Former President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose protection reputedly costs the Metropolitan Police £25000 a day, Andrew Lansley talking about health reforms, former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, speaking about defence, but who apparently answered, in reply to a question about Margaret Thatcher, that she was 'the greatest living conservative without a doubt'.

David Blunket appeared arguing for a 'comprehensive political narrative' or was that a comprehensive school political narrative or just a different narrative to the one propounded by the con-dem Government about Labour spending all the money on keeping people luxuriously unemployed?

Another speaker was Lord Pearson, (described by the BBC as the Eton educated insurance broker who is always up for a fight, the bigger the opponent the better, apparently in the past he has laid into Lloyds of London, the Home Office and Marxism!) who argued that we (should that be Eton or the UK as a whole?) were better off out of the EU.

The Liberals of course, agree with Nick, that the tax thresh hold has been raised but if that is the headline it hardly denotes fairness all round because as usual the unfairness is in the small print ..........


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