Hamish Champ: A bugger of a Budget
As I feverishly rang various pubco bosses last Wednesday afternoon for their reaction to Alistair Darling's 'stability' Budget I thought back to the last time a Chancellor of the Exchequer made such an impact on my life.
It was the early Seventies. I had rushed home from school, fully expecting to watch my favourite TV programme, Time Tunnel, while drinking a cup of tea and munching on a Wagonwheel.
To my horror however, the screen of my parents' 14 inch black and white set featured not two American scientists being hurled through time and space onto the deck of the Titanic moments before it collided with an iceberg, but was instead populated by middle-aged bespectacled men, their hair slicked over their heads in a rigid side parting, all talking really boring stuff about the economy and income tax to some bloke called Ian Ross.
At my mother's prompting I turned over to the relatively new BBC2 where she assured me I'd find my programmes, only to realise they'd all finished. Bloody Anthony Barber.
I swore I'd never be irritated by a Budget again. I'd stay out and play football instead. Even when I got older and came to be interested in the politics of Red Box day, watching the likes of Nigel Lawson and Norman bloody Lamont handing ridiculous tax breaks to people who didn't need an extra five million quid in the bank, I managed to remain relatively calm, if somewhat indignant.
Until, that is, last Wednesday. Now, I don't believe every Labour MP agrees with the 4p beer duty rise. I'm not even convinced of the argument proffered by some that the Labour government wants to erase pubs from the face of this country. It has, however, chosen to fire off a salvo at an easy target, one that can ill-afford it right now.
Some have asked, given the financial demands on other parts of the economy, education, health service, etc, why should pubs and brewers had been accorded special treatment? As far as I'm aware they weren't asking for any such special treatment; just a fair outcome from Wednesday's speech. And that didn't happen.
Duty rises weren't the only bones of contention last week. There was the petrol rise fudge, and stuff about helping small businesses, somewhat disingenuous given the corporation tax and capital gains tax situations Darling has steered himself into recently.
And then there's the non-dom debate. There are those who say that if we make life here difficult for the immensely rich - eg, they might have to pay a fee for the privilege of living here and enjoying certain... tax advantages - then they will all disappear to Switzerland or the Bahamas and pay naff all over there instead. To which I say charge and be damned.
But instead of slapping these people with something meaningful for the right to abide here in considerable comfort, Darling hits 'em with a £30,000 fee. £30,000? I expect most Russian oil barons 'domiciled' here earn that in interest alone in a matter of seconds.
So it is on a number of topics I find myself concurring with many arch-critics of the current administration, albeit from the opposite end of the political spectrum.
Still, it's nice to agree on something for once, eh?
