George Osborne has cut the deficit at the same pace as Alistair Darling said that he would. He seems terribly pleased with himself.
The policy on non-doms is a watered down version of the one for which Ed Miliband was pilloried before the Election. By the way, is Osborne a non-domiciled Irishman? He certainly could be. Has anyone ever bothered to check?
Labour needs to demand that its full policy on non-domicility, that of outright abolition, be implemented, and must put that to a division of the House, along with the proposed deregulation of Sunday trading, and along with the proposed hypothecation of the revenue from Vehicle Excise Duty.
That last might be called Clarkson's Law.
But it is a basic factual error, unique to Britain, that motorists, as such, somehow own the roads because "we pay for them" through road tax and petrol duty, which are not particularly large contributions to the colossal central and local government cost of the road network, nor will they be even under Clarkson's Law.
In what kind of country can Jeremy Clarkson be regarded as a figure of enormous influence over a key area of public policy, with something approaching a personal veto?
As an alternative to Clarkson's Law, Labour needs to propose a dramatic reduction in petrol duty, and either the same for road tax, or else, quite conceivably, its abolition altogether.
Jeremy Clarkson, of what is now the safely Labour Ward of Chipping Norton, what would you say to that? You would be saying something quite different a couple of years later, when the implications had sunk in. But by then, it would be too late.
Tuition fees do deter people from higher eduction, but it is maintenance costs that really lock people out.
The rent to live in a Durham college, which at least in the first year is very much the point of being at one, is significantly higher than the maximum student loan.
Yes, that includes food. But you would need to eat, anyway. And it is not exactly Brideshead Revisited or Porterhouse Blue most, or in some cases practically all, of the time.
By contrast, the Bullingdon Club uniform costs more than the maintenance grant that Osborne has just scrapped.
The changes to child tax credits bespeak a complete inability to comprehend that anyone might become poor. People might perfectly easily have been able to "afford" their children. Until they lost their jobs. Or fell ill. Or became disabled.
For we have been here before. The changes to disability provision have already bespoken a complete inability to comprehend that anyone might become disabled, either.
This Government had already decided that you can only be disabled if you were born that way to a father who had inherited £30 million and then become Prime Minister.
Now, it has decided that you can only be poor if you were born that way and you therefore determined, from a very early age and with no possibility that anything might not always turn out as planned, to have no more than precisely two children.
If the rich are to have lots of children, but the poor are to restrict themselves to two each, then there will come to be far more rich people than poor ones, at least born in this country.
But the never-born workers would not even be made up by immigration. To such a regime as that, immigration from where? Immigration by whom?
Would they come here nevertheless, having been lured by the Living Wage?
Osborne has promised nothing more than 2011's Living Wage in 2016, with a lower age limit that gives yet another demonstration of his total lack of understanding of ordinary middle or working-class life.
The changes to tax credits will render the whole thing meaningless and worthless.
So, there are two more points on which Labour needs to divide the House: no minimum age at least above the school-leaving age, since Sixth Form Saturday jobs and so on might indeed require a different provision; and the real Living Wage, as very carefully calculated by the specialists in the field, a calculation which most certainly does include, in great detail, how businesses are to bear the cost.
No small part of anyone's pay will always go on housing costs, and the restriction to the standard rate of mortgage interest tax relief on buy-to-let properties will be pointless without rent controls. Landlords will simply put up the rent in order to make up the loss.
There is no point in saying that, "They couldn't." That rents are already as high as they are, more than demonstrates that indeed they could.
There is nothing wrong with being a landlord, any more than with having a business in general.
But, especially when there are fiscal privileges but not only for that reason, there has to be regulation of this or any other line of business.
Rent controls. As in those noted Stalinist basket cases, Germany and the United States. And beginning with a ban on any passing on in rent of this change to mortgage interest tax relief.
Yet another thing on which the Commons needs to be given a vote.
Come on, Labour. Over to you.
But it is a basic factual error, unique to Britain, that motorists, as such, somehow own the roads because "we pay for them" through road tax and petrol duty, which are not particularly large contributions to the colossal central and local government cost of the road network, nor will they be even under Clarkson's Law.
In what kind of country can Jeremy Clarkson be regarded as a figure of enormous influence over a key area of public policy, with something approaching a personal veto?
As an alternative to Clarkson's Law, Labour needs to propose a dramatic reduction in petrol duty, and either the same for road tax, or else, quite conceivably, its abolition altogether.
Jeremy Clarkson, of what is now the safely Labour Ward of Chipping Norton, what would you say to that? You would be saying something quite different a couple of years later, when the implications had sunk in. But by then, it would be too late.
Tuition fees do deter people from higher eduction, but it is maintenance costs that really lock people out.
The rent to live in a Durham college, which at least in the first year is very much the point of being at one, is significantly higher than the maximum student loan.
Yes, that includes food. But you would need to eat, anyway. And it is not exactly Brideshead Revisited or Porterhouse Blue most, or in some cases practically all, of the time.
By contrast, the Bullingdon Club uniform costs more than the maintenance grant that Osborne has just scrapped.
The changes to child tax credits bespeak a complete inability to comprehend that anyone might become poor. People might perfectly easily have been able to "afford" their children. Until they lost their jobs. Or fell ill. Or became disabled.
For we have been here before. The changes to disability provision have already bespoken a complete inability to comprehend that anyone might become disabled, either.
This Government had already decided that you can only be disabled if you were born that way to a father who had inherited £30 million and then become Prime Minister.
Now, it has decided that you can only be poor if you were born that way and you therefore determined, from a very early age and with no possibility that anything might not always turn out as planned, to have no more than precisely two children.
If the rich are to have lots of children, but the poor are to restrict themselves to two each, then there will come to be far more rich people than poor ones, at least born in this country.
But the never-born workers would not even be made up by immigration. To such a regime as that, immigration from where? Immigration by whom?
Would they come here nevertheless, having been lured by the Living Wage?
Osborne has promised nothing more than 2011's Living Wage in 2016, with a lower age limit that gives yet another demonstration of his total lack of understanding of ordinary middle or working-class life.
The changes to tax credits will render the whole thing meaningless and worthless.
So, there are two more points on which Labour needs to divide the House: no minimum age at least above the school-leaving age, since Sixth Form Saturday jobs and so on might indeed require a different provision; and the real Living Wage, as very carefully calculated by the specialists in the field, a calculation which most certainly does include, in great detail, how businesses are to bear the cost.
No small part of anyone's pay will always go on housing costs, and the restriction to the standard rate of mortgage interest tax relief on buy-to-let properties will be pointless without rent controls. Landlords will simply put up the rent in order to make up the loss.
There is no point in saying that, "They couldn't." That rents are already as high as they are, more than demonstrates that indeed they could.
There is nothing wrong with being a landlord, any more than with having a business in general.
But, especially when there are fiscal privileges but not only for that reason, there has to be regulation of this or any other line of business.
Rent controls. As in those noted Stalinist basket cases, Germany and the United States. And beginning with a ban on any passing on in rent of this change to mortgage interest tax relief.
Yet another thing on which the Commons needs to be given a vote.
Come on, Labour. Over to you.
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