Brown is taxing stupidity
Posted on March 22, 2007 by Wynona
Filed Under Ramblings |
[Editor’s note: Wynona is a guest blogger and industry insider I’ve recruited to give our blog some bite. Go on, give her some stick, she deserves it.]
Perhaps the most striking thing about yesterday’s ‘repackaging’ of tax in the UK – for that is what it was of course - is what it says about the level of intelligence a Gordon Brown Government will assume the electorate possesses.
On the strength of the incredibly shallow and almost schoolboy standard of the attempted deception so obviously at the core of yesterday’s Budget announcement, Brown does indeed think the population is stupid.
To be fair, the elaborate smoke and mirrors involved in the big juggle yesterday did take the brains of Brown and Balls to concoct. It is not easy to move so much around to create that first glance look of generosity when the thing was at best neutral and in fact quite painful for the finances of millions of us.
But Gordon’s big cock up was in not recognising the degree to which the spotlight was going to be on this Budget more than any other. It may have taken some deciphering, but not that much before the rather shameful charade was exposed for all of us to see.
The most worrying thing for me was that broadcast on TV later in the evening. Gordon talking directly to his electorate and blatantly, flagrantly attempting to pull the wool over our eyes by talking about the 2p cut in income tax as a great thing whilst dressing up the counterbalancing abolition of the 10% band and increases in NI take as “tax simplification” Astonishing.
If Gordon’s broadcast was a sign of things to come, we can expect even more flagrant lies, spin and political game-playing than we’ve endured through the Bliar years.
Perhaps that is the cause of all of this. Brown has for years witnessed first hand such outrageous spin and manipulation of the media and the public that he now believes deeply that we all have mush for brains and will believe black is white if he smiles enough whilst saying it.
But the sad thing for Brown is that he possess absolutely NONE of the Tony Blair ability to smile and let his charisma, charm and ‘one-of-us’ vibe convince us that tax rises are in fact cuts, that business will be better off, that the Health Service will improve, that education is going to get the additional funding it needs and the rest of the glib nonsense broadcast to us all last night was true.
So now more than ever the country is staring directly at its new leader – at least for a number of months – whether it likes it or not. And the signs so far are that he thinks we’ve been dumbed down far more than we actually have. He can’t see that his predecessor, whist not possessing Brown’s IQ, was a Zen Master of spin and public opinion manipulation. Brown is SO far off being even a promising student of the dark art that it is embarrassing to watch.
So it is more than a little ironic that on the eve of handing over the keys of Number 11 and moving next door, Brown’s final gesture, having taxed everything else we have, is finally trying to tax our stupidity. If we can’t see through yesterday’s blatantly obvious attempted spin and manipulation, then frankly we deserve what we get. And we will be paying the price long after Brown is snug and cosy in Number 10.
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4 Responses to “Brown is taxing stupidity”
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Check out Gordon Brown picking his nose and eating it at yesterday’s PMQs. It’s on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k…wgTvM1DtQo&eurl
Don’t suppose the BBC will be broadcasting this.
Gordon Brown gives it to you with one hand and takes it away with the other.
Well, if its a tax on stupidity, an awful lot of us are going to have to pay it!
No politician ever lost office by underestimating public intelligence.
If you want to see how far down a road of misinformation spin and mudslinging we can be taken, look at the US, who as usual are a few years ahead of us.
It makes you tremble for democracy, really.
It looks like he has played the same tax trick for environmental taxes; there were plenty of carbon (co2) initiatives but will the money really be used to find solutions that mitigate the risks of climate change?