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A major manifesto lie

I missed one earlier (though, actually, this is such a whopper it probably needs a post of its own anyway):

A family with two children pays no net tax until their earnings reach £21,000.

That sounds good. It’s from the Labour manifesto. But, as usual, it’s not even a half-truth. FactCheck have discovered that they’d have to pay £1234.04 in National Insurance.

Now, before some Blairite comes back with the claim that National Insurance is not a tax, let me remind them of Mr Blair’s own preface, to which I’ve added some bold:

We do not duck the tough choices – from independence for the Bank of England to the tax rise we made for the NHS, to the war in Iraq.

The ‘tax rise for the NHS’ was an increase in National Insurance rates. So the party leader thinks National Insurance is a tax.

So, without doubt, the first claim must, quite simply, be a lie. Has Labour not learned anything from the lies they told about Iraq?

This post was filed under: Election 2005.

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12:45
21st February 2007.

This post has been referenced by another on this site:
sjhoward.co.uk » But, are you happy?




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