I don’t understand you, really I don’t. The immediate cause of my bewilderment was a piece on this site, yesterday by Matthew Hancock MP, attacking Ed Balls. In normal circumstances, I would have offered to hold his coat, but Hancock wrote:
‘Balls takes positions he knows not to be true, like the ridiculous claim that taxes on banks are falling when in fact they are going up.’
On cue, this morning’s papers reported that
‘Barclays paid out just £113m in corporation tax in 2009, despite making a pre-tax profit of £11.6bn.’
Why does Hancock pretend otherwise? Why is he happy for his constituents to pay tax, the banks dodge?
More generally, what gives with the wider defence of the banks? Tories of all people ought to hate the bank bailout. Their every fibre ought to revolt against the state using public money to reward failure.
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