UK Budget?

[Peter Presland]

Any comments and feedback on the UK budget? The papers I am seeing are screaming 'Return of the Class War' and 'Return of Old Labor' etc.

Magda

Depressing isn't it? Another reason the top-rate tax hike is receiving so much attention is that the manifesto on which Labour fought the last election specifically stated that the top rate of tax would NOT be raised. That, together with the 'class-war' thing makes a powerful combination in the general politics as theatre and propaganda stakes.

I keep hearing that we will now suffer a 'brain-drain'. Bloody hilarious really; as if the guys in our overweight financial services industries earning in excess of £150K do so on merit and ability. Methinks they need to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 'Fooled by Randomness' which, if done honestly and with a truly open mind, is a rather humbling experience. Let them go I say. We have more than our share of parasitical bankers and other 'financial engineers'. In any event I think the world may be close to rumbling the entire 'financial services' scam so I doubt their particular skills and expertise (except in-so-far-as they know where the bodies are buried so-to-speak) will be much in demand elsewhere - for a while anyway.

As for the National Debt; what is there left to say except that it's obscene and will pauper the next two generations at least? - that is if we actually have another 50 years of the universally assumed 'Growth Paradigm' left, which I for one seriously doubt.