The Mini-Budget - Kwarteng U-turns on 45% Top Rate

@strathmore , It’s going to be hard to beat wot Thatcher did !!
:confounded::confounded::confounded:

Alas, I think that the bit:

" *The TPA’s dynamic tax model was built in collaboration with the consultants Europe Economics , the firm where Matt Sinclair worked before moving to Downing Street to become the PM’s chief economic adviser"

is the giveaway comment. They’re agreeing with themselves rather than a peer review.

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@wendeey , l wonder what the asssumptions are , in order to arrive at that
conclusion, Wendee ?? :thinking::thinking:

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The assumptions are that cannabis and cocaine are excellent additives to already wayward mental thought processes :roll_eyes:

Dunno haven’t listened to the hour long video included in the article as yet.

Who funds these so called think tanks? The money sources are often cited as ‘highly opaque’ - which is a polite way of saying that they hide their funding sources. Obviously because nothing dodgy to see. No overseas money here. Cough.
And nothing dodgy about how the try to shape UK political policy. In fact its been well documented. In his autobiography ‘Think Tank’, Madsen Pirie, founder of the Adam Smith Institute, explained how it worked. Every Saturday, in a wine bar in Leicester Square, staff from the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs would sit down with Conservative researchers and leader writers and columnists from the Times and Telegraph to plan “strategy for the week and months ahead” and “co-ordinate our activities to make us more effective collectively”. The Daily Mail then weighed in to help the lobbyists refine their arguments and ensure there was a supportive article on its leader page every time they published a report. (I’ll admit I copied this from the Guardian.)
So it seems that both PMs and policy can be bought by overseas millionaires. Tory fans should consider that when they next wave their union jack.

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There’s an episode of Star Trek in which Spock concludes that the logical thing to do is to panic and go for a complete burn of the remaining fuel on the shuttle he and a few others are on.

Allegorical?

Let’s hope that it works this time too.

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Apologies if this has already been mentioned but the lifting of the stamp duty from 125k to 250k is not necessarily to help first time buyers…First time buyers do not pay stamp duty on 425k

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You’re quite right … :+1:

What does Kwarteng’s stamp duty cut mean for UK homebuyers?

The chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, has confirmed a permanent stamp duty cut, with no tax to be paid on properties up to the value of £250,000.

Kwarteng announced the policy in a mini-budget on Friday, almost a year after the last stamp duty holiday ended. He also increased the threshold for first-time buyers to £425,000.

:slightly_smiling_face:

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who is Andrew Lilico?

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Not entirely clear after a quick Google, but he did write an article in the spectator and closed with this:

So I would guess that the odds are that she will be able to claim vindication, and Friday may well go down in history alongside other famously vindicated ‘fiscal events’ such as the 1977, 1981 or 1986 Budgets. It may be a gamble. And it may not work. But it’s worth a try.

Clearly suggesting it’s a bit more of a gamble than the previous article suggests, as the words “odds” and “guess” indicate. Worth a punt? Hmm.

So unelected representatives gambling with the economic future of the country - not much changes.

I read that he is a committed “Anglican Christian” and has five children. Who does that remind you of?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng confirms U-turn on top rate of tax

Kwasi Kwarteng has confirmed he will not pursue cutting the 45p rate of income tax on people earning more than £150,000 a year

Announcing his plans to ditch the 45p rate cut, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng said the plans had become a “distraction from our overriding mission to tackle the challenges facing the country”.

Kwarteng says the government’s plans were designed to “build a more prosperous economy”.

Pressed on whose idea it was to ditch the plan after Prime Minister Liz Truss expressed support for it yesterday, Kwarteng says it was a decision reached collaboratively. He says he’s taken responsibility for the plan, after listening to colleagues, stakeholders and voters.

This is a massive and humiliating U-turn.

It comes only a day after Liz Truss insisted she would not abandon the tax cut for the wealthiest. It would also seem to undermine her central argument that growth depends in large part on lower taxes to attract entrepreneurs.

The Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves thinks the damage is done - that the increase in the cost of borrowing has already happened and that will mean higher mortgage rates.

The party is arguing the U-turn needs to go a lot further.

“They need to reverse their whole economic, discredited trickle-down strategy," Reeves says this morning.

You could not make it up. What a mess.
But not a mess for the hedge funds who bet against the pound and against government bonds. They still made a tidy profit.

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Oh this is such a surprise…:face_with_monocle: A government who does U-Turns, who would have thought! :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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This man should quit. He should also face jail for what he has done. Champagne with the hedge managers = collusion.

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Au contraire. Has anyone mentioned to possibility that this was always part of the cunning plan to make it look like they are a listening government who cares about public opinion?

When they said “We get it, we listened” they didn’t mean listening to us. Just to clarify.

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Indeed … their own MPs were going to vote against the 45% … better to “listen” than be “told” … :wink:

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