A Question of Priorities

I am still feeling depressed. It is what is going on around me that makes me feel depressed. Some of it has impressed itself on me personally but this is just a small part of the overall picture. I have not posted anything for nearly 2 months because there was so much that seemed to be wrong that I knew not to what I should direct my attention. But I cannot remain in a state of depressed silence for ever. So I will try to get back on track.

What more can I say about the Olympic Games? Very little that I have not said already. This absurd escapade carries on racking up more and more costs as its absurdity becomes mind numbing. Recently, it has been revealed that there will be a collection of cars supplied to drive the army of officials and hangers-on between hotels and venues. The decision to assemble a fleet of 4,000 BMWs has been criticized by green campaigners — and the rest of us — who point out that spectators with tickets for Olympic events have been urged to reach venues using trains and buses. At least 250 of the highest-ranking officials and politicians are expected to be assigned a chauffeur-driven car for their exclusive use for the entire two weeks of the Games. I don't know if the organizers have got a special deal but the normal price for 4,000 vehicles must be above £100 million. Still, it is probably included in the overall budget and bus drivers, taxi drivers and Joe Public will not mind special lanes being provided for important people like Sepp Blatter et al.

Now, we hear that loads of unsold tickets for Olympic events — including the opening and closing ceremonies and the 100 metre final — have turned up in Spain because not many people over there want to or can afford to come to London in August. No doubt some new and tortured scheme will be devised to allow the tickets to be sold — or they could, I suppose, be given to some totally undeserving men in suits.

The Chancellor, George Osborne, must be uneasy about the cost of the Olympic Games — among his many other worries. This coalition government has been in office now fro 2 years and things are not looking good. The last month or so has been very bad with government showing many signs of incompetence. It started with Osborne's budget which started rows about VAT on hot food — the pasty tax — about the cut in the top rate of income tax from 50p in the £ to 45p in the £ and the slow abolition of the pensioners age related tax relief — the granny tax. These last two were widely condemned because it seemed that tax relief was being given to Osborne's mates — the rich — while penalizing the pensioners — the poor. The 50p rate of tax was counter-productive, the chancellor told us, because it was widely evaded — and, as he told us, he was against evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. Since evasion involves criminality, we would expect him to be against it. But what does he mean by "aggressive avoidance?" If the rich have been escaping payment of the 50p rate, why should we believe that they will not avoid paying the 45p rate? Of course, next year, he will drop the 45p rate to 40p and then we will not have the slightest clue who avoids the tax completely.

The slow erosion of the pensioners age related tax relief will affect me, of course andI I have never been troubled by the tax rate on annual incomes above £150,000. This destruction of an age related tax relief comes after 90 years. It was introduced by Winston Churchill when he was chancellor in Stanley Baldwin's government from 1924 to 1929. It was wrong, Churchill argued, to penalize pensioners by taxing interest on the savings which they had made for their retirement and on which they had already paid tax. Is it being done now for reasons of high principle? No, it is not. It has being done — as I expected it to be done — to placate Nick Clegg's waffling on about making the income tax threshold £10,000 for everyone. "We, the pensioners," I said to myself, "are going to pay for that." And so it has come to pass. You are doing a grand job, Nick.

His latest bee-in-bonnet grand plan is reform of the House of Lords. On the whole, Nick, the House of Lords is not doing a bad job and when the government is lumbered with vast debts and an economy on its back, we do not need to spend any time buggering about with the House of Lords. The government has made very little progress in getting the deficit down; it may have slowed the rate at which it is going up, but it is not coming down. The economy is not expanding and the infrastructure — roads, railways, airports and services, water electricity and gas — are falling apart. That is where energy and effort should be concentrated and forget about most of these vast schemes for messing about with things that can carry on functioning in the meantime. What about a national water grid? It is not a new idea but it is more essential than ever — as we sit here watching the rain fall during the wettest drought since records began.

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