As was written in The Times this morning - not sure the headline grabber of inheritance tax been abolished on houses worth up to £1 million is so good. As they said, was it really in anyone's top 100 needs / wishes for the UK to allow already relatively privileged middle class middle-aged people / kids inherit more tax free? How does it square with HMG's hard-working philosophy to give people hundreds of thousands of pounds they didn't have to work for? A cynical vote grabber with no logic whatsoever.

Around 13 million of the least well off will lose out under this budget according to the IFS. And some of the changes to Tax Credits and Universal Benefit will actually be a disincentive to go out and work.

Changes to VED heralding the return of the gas guzzler.

An overall INCREASE in the tax burden, all done by 'stealth taxes' that the Tories used to bitch and moan about Labour using.

Yeah. Great budget. Not.

I did wonder

I'm not particularly involved with the payroll side of the business that I work for but I wonder if there is a scenario where the likes of one of the large supermarket chains would find it beneficial to cut its non-management roles (ie the infantry who stack shelves or drag pallets out of the warehouse) down to, say, 20 hours per week to minimise their exposure to NI and then introduce an agency to the business who will also employ those same staff on a casual basis to fill in as and when required ?

Can anyone answer the question of whether this will result in a saving to both employers in NI contributions, its certainly not illegal to hold down jobs with two employers and the employee will still be taxed at the same rate as if they were working for just the one so no change there, but will it make a difference to the employer(s) ?

I don't doubt for one minute that its being trialled at a supermarket somewhere.

The thing that's distorting the London property market isn't so much buy-to-let as the government allowing (encouraging?) thousands of billions of money from Russia and elsewhere to be laundered into obscenely priced property portfolios.

The world capital of money laundering.

B&M have taken it a stage further and don't even bother with the whole fanciful idea of paying people to do work for them. They just use free labour in conjunction with the local jobcentre.

Over the last 2 years (May/June 2013 - May/June 2015) our local B&M store has utilised the Work Trial, Mandatory Work Placement and the Work Programme schemes to the extent that they've had a total (so far) of 73 people do 2 weeks full time work for free under the various schemes.

Of the 73 people who did this work -
54 are still unemployed and receiving JSA
9 are currently sanctioned
5 left JSA to go into work
3 were moved from JSA on to "other benefits" ie disability etc
2 ended their JSA claims


None of the 5 who went into work are working at B&M.
That's 5,548 hours of work that at NMW of £6.50 would have cost them just over £36k.
A person doing those 2 weeks should have received just under £500. Instead they simply received their JSA of £142. Effectively they worked for 2 weeks for a wage of £1.89 per hour.

Rant over.

I get stick for my "conspiratorial" thinking. But you really have to wonder about how "neutral" the mainstream media is when the supposed "Best & Brightest" will obsesses over what is little more than the chancellor fiddling about the edges of the economy whilst major corporations and billionaires are working and living entirely at the public's expense.

Moreover, we really have passed the point where something needs to be done about "revolving door" politicians. I mean, what exactly is four or eight years of ostensible "public service" worth if you then employ your knowledge AGAINST the interests of that very same public?

At the VERY LEAST there should be a ten-year public register kept on politicians moving into the private sector. Employer, role etc.

The DWP would justify all of that of course, I'm not sure how because I'd stop listening the moment that IDS opened his frog-like mouth but I'm sure it would be something like "...helping these people back into a work based frame of mind, blah, blah, blah, valuable experience, blah, blah, improves their CV and their chances of gainful employment, blah, blah, gets them off the unemployment figures and makes me look good".

No actually he wouldn't say that last bit but he'd be thinking it.

Please continue your rant because now B&M haver been highlighted for reducing the contracted hours of staff by up to 50%, the remainder is filled with DWP Workprogramme personnel. The upshot is: you go to Jobcentre Plus and tell them you're now working only 10 hours per week, so they give you a slip to send you back to B&M to work the other 10 hours for free.

I wouldn't shop with those 2@s in a month of Sundays