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The Times of reckoning for Brown<br>Pensions revelations will carry a heavy price<br>William Rees-Mogg
In more than 220 years The Times has published many historic reports; few of them have been more significant than last Saturday’s exposure of the Civil Service briefings before Gordon Brown’s 1997 stealth tax on pension funds. There had been no doubt about the original facts: the July 1997 Budget deprived pension funds of £5 billion of tax relief on their income. There was no doubt of the consequences: the British system of final-salary pensions was wrecked, though the public sector was largely spared.
A vital question could not be answered for the past ten years: had the Chancellor been alerted by his officials to the possible consequences of this decision? Using the Freedom of Information Act, after a two-year battle, The Times was able to force the publication of the Treasury advice. These papers show that Mr Brown had indeed been given warning but had decided to go ahead. The disaster that followed had been foreseen. The Chancellor decided to take the £5 billion, knowing that he might be damaging both the pension system and the stock market. He has nobody to blame but himself; equally, the public has nobody to blame but him.
The Chancellor had been told that his decision would knock “a big holeâ€ÂÂ
I think if he knew that this tax change was going to wreck final salary pension schemes and he went ahead and did it anyway, he owes a lot of people an apology.
If does not bode well for his leadeship claims at present.
This has affected millions of people.
It will be interesting of how he is going to get himself out of this dilemma.
Regards- Matron<br>:cool:
I think if he knew that this tax change was going to wreck final salary pension schemes and he went ahead and did it anyway, he owes a lot of people an apology.
I don’t like the word "wreck", it’s just emotive.
Brown knew that this decision would take billions out of the pension schemes each year and into treasury coffers.
That’s why he did it. It was a tax rise.
What confuses me is that it’s taken 10 years for people to notice.
Steve
Tell me Steve, when did you first notice it?
(Edited by KILROY at 4:49 pm on April 3, 2007)
The actuaries I know say Brown just gave companies an excuse to do what they’d been gagging to do for years.
In other words it would have happened anyway.
<br>
Tell me Steve, when did you first notice it?
When he announced it.
It wasn’t like it was complicated or hidden.
Steve
Although I can’t remember exactly when, I believe I moaned about this stealth tax in an earlier post in the lounge some time ago.<br>Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of this stealth tax, what I find particularly galling is Brown and the Treasury’s reluctance to give the info asked for by the The Times under the Freedom of Information Act: they knew they had made a balls up. Oh why can’t politicians just say "sorry, I was completely wrong" instead of the lies, spin and deceit they fall back upon ?
(Edited by insomniac at 3:02 pm on April 4, 2007)
Brown would last forever on Betfair for the following reasons;
1. It’s not his money <br>2. He will never be held accoutable
the bloke is a gansta and set to be one of our only unelected leaders ever.
Dave…I’m surprised…a man of your intelligence you have no idea how our political system works…When did you last vote for a Prime Minister?
You seem to be implying that there might be some sort of leadership contest Pete and not a smooth transfer of power .. I mean, Gordon has even met George Bush recently and by all accounts they got on really well.
Hi Dave…done and dusted I think…I was surprised by your seriousness…we couldn’t make it up. :)
I notice that Gordon Brown is calling himself a "conviction politician".
Clearly a term thought up in the new labour spin dept to undermine useless Dave, but clearly a poor description of an English Thatcherite who used to be a Scottish social democrat.
I’d like to see Tony Blair become a conviction politician … with the conviction in question handed down to him in the Hague …
Steve
It is a meaningless phrase. If you don’t believe in anything, whether you’re a politician, a brain surgeon, a road-sweeper, or a wedding photographer, you’re pretty much screwed. Imho, obviously…
Fair enough Marb – at least you’re not sitting on the fence!
Sadly nowadays, the main Politicians in all parties know what the country needs and spout suitable platitudes but none of the bugg@rs has the faintest idea how the **** to actually bring these things to pass.
None of them have run a business or lived on a sink estate or had their kids go through the lottery that is state education. Even if they had the brains to know how to reduce crime, immigration, the burgeoning state pension crisis, NHS waiting lists, etc. etc. the odds are our membership of the EU and our embracing of the European Human Rights Charter would stop them in their tracks.
We’re stuffed.
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