OK, here's the score: we go pub quizzing on a wednesday, and two of the lot who go are staunch Labour supporters...........canvassers, party members etc etc.

The hubby is OK, but the lass is a pain............just like that character on "The Fast Show", the politician who just denied everything.

So...........a couple of weeks ago we're discussing New Labia, and I mention the 60-odd new taxes since they took power and she just denies it. Then challenges me to name them!

Can anyone on here point me in the direction of something that'll shut her up, preferably a list of the new taxes, rather than a baseball bat!

And if anyone can point to a list of the 1218 new crimes they've brought in, that'd be a help too.

TIA,

Alcazar

Why bother? Show her a list printed from the FT, and she'll just say "Ah, that journalist is biased." Save your blood pressure now.

HTH Makes depressing reading though!

Shove that in your pipe and smoke it, pslewis!

I was thinking "FAO: British Public - Bend over and bite that pillow"

AND that's only up to 2000!!!

Unless I'm missing something, there are no NEW taxes in that list. It's a mix of tax adjustments and dropping/altering of tax relief, all on existing taxes. Since every government since taxes were invented has engaged in the same tricks, what's the problem. "Look, Labour has changed taxes around a bit" isn't much of a rallying cry though, is it.

M

and theres only been a measly 70% increase in council tax since they came to power .

Think yourself lucky then. Ours has nearly doubled.

Chip

I don't know about all of the items on the list, but some of them are certainly new taxes. I know about one in detail because it affects me, allow me to explain:

Freelance workers have had to pay a new tax on their earnings. The tax is known by the back door press release through which it was announced ("IR35") and it was introduced with some vague waffley description on who was and wasn't caught. As a result nobody knows who should and shouldn't be paying. Around 500 cases have gone to the inland revenue special commisioners, with unknown costs (probably millions of tax payers money and even more in lost earnings), of which the IR have lost all but a handful.

It personally costs me around £2-3k a year, not in taxes, but in lost earnings as I have to set up all kinds of messy contract negotiations to ensure that I am not caught. From lost earnings, I have actually paid LESS tax, as I suspect many others have; so this wonderful new tax which was supposed to bring a windfall of nearly a billion pounds has cost the country a lot of money and probably gained virtually no tax.

Nice going there from Dawn Primarolo and Gordon Brown. Dawn was quick to call contractors "tax cheats" for abiding by the law, when she was only too quick to refuse to pay her poll tax. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!