‘Middle Class’ or just aspiring? Mr Miliband has a u-turn for you.

[Isitmebut]

Mr Miliband is now promising that ‘the squeezed middle’ classes lot would somehow improve under Labour, by government dictate in 2015 no less, yet based on their recent record, their hypocrisy is actually laughable.

When Labour left office in 1979, having left the lower rates of income tax around 32% and the upper as high as 83% (with the tax on investment income 98%), Labour promised wary voters prior to the 1997 election, income tax would NOT go up – but failed to mention how taxes on middle class wealth WOULD go up.

In 1997 our Private Pensions were the best funded in Europe, so Brown raided them by taking away tax relief, at a stroke to take well over £100 bil away, over years, on an amortised basis, future pension payments. This was also a very large nail in the coffin of Private Sector Final Salary pensions, as it put company scheme costs up – as well as putting up the cost to taxpayers of funding Public Sector Final Salary schemes – so all designed to hit the middle classes most.

In 1997 if you bought a home, the Stamp Tax was a flat rate of 1%, but under Labour is was graduated upwards with a top rate for whatever priced property in the ££millions above – hence average sized families had to pay the government many ££thousands for the privilege of moving – effectively designed to affect the middle classes most.

In Council Tax charges, the larger the family home you bought, the more tax you paid per month, so who suffered the most when Council taxes went up over 110% over 13-years, if NOT the middle classes?

And what was Prescott’s plan to increase Council Tax (never implemented as their parliamentary majority shrank) on home improvements and nice views all about, monitored by the likes of Rightmove’s data base, if not a tax on middle class aspirations?

In wages, in ‘real’ terms, the middle class wages stagnated, as Brown used ‘fiscal drag’ e.g. not increasing allowances with inflation, to ensure they paid the top 40% faster, which included many front line public sector workers and their overtime pay, not obviously considered ‘middle class’.

With the selling of 40% of our gold under $300 an ounce (and went over $1,900 an ounce), that no government before them had done, even in economic crisis times, NONE of these measures were mentioned in their 1997 Manifesto.

At least in their 2010 manifesto they promised more tax rises than cuts compared to others, they just didn’t itemise them, how 1997 was that? Mr Miliband therefore needs to tell the people how he can NOW protect the middle classes and also how he will fund it e.g. who gets stuffed.

If companies think Labour will expand their rhetoric of controlling prices and profits, to loading the tax burden on them, like the 50% Corporate Tax on ANY profits back in 1979, it will kill our investment, job creation and the economic recovery, stone dead.

[JassyRadlett]

And... Breathe.

[Isitmebut]

Thank you J.R.....I'm also sitting in the lotus position; it was either that rant or a quick rub down with an Argos catalog.

[nonmifairidere]

Ah, middle-class aspirations 2014 - having lots of that shows you can afford lots of stuff. Life wouldn't be worth living without the competitive life-styling, would it?

[Isitmebut]

If it's sooo important for Mr Miliband to campaign on, who are we to disappoint him in NOT aspiring? Unless of course his record on the subject shows he's offer to solve the fallout of Labour's own administration is at best, somewhat disingenuous.

[longfingernails]

Labour are economic charlatans. They can't stop borrowing, spending, and wasting.

[Isitmebut]

7 April 2014; “Ed Miliband has promised to rescue Britain’s struggling middle classes by boosting their living standards as he warns that the “cost-of-living crisis” will last for at least another five years.”

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-ed-miliband-to-the-rescue-of-the-middle-classes-as-labour-leader-says-costofliving-crisis-will-be-at-heart-of-election-manifesto-9242442.html

“In his article, Mr Miliband seizes on new figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the fiscal watchdog, showing the traditional link under which earnings rise in line with economic growth is broken and will remain so well into the next five-year Parliament. “Real earnings will on average increase at only half the level of economic growth in 2015 and will still lag behind even in 2018,” he says.”


On the 16th January when I began this thread on similar false claims by Miliband that he would be the champion of the Middle Classes, I showed categorically that many of Labour’s policies from 1997 to 2010 i.e. House Stamp Tax, Council Tax, taking away tax relief on Private Pensions and additionally ‘under indexing’ the rise in IHT had DIRECTLY hit the middle classes, probably more than any other social class.

And this was without the extra post 2010 general election taxes, over and above the figures mentioned by the Conservative and Lib Dems in their manifestos.

Mr Miliband also states again that Labour could have both guaranteed above inflation cost of living rises for the masses for this parliament, but now adds from the 2015 parliament as well.

As THE core Labour policy I have been trying to find out HOW on another post, as unless Labour gives away more in taxation (increasing national debt) or hammers the Private Sector (decreasing investment and jobs), it beats the pooh out of me, how this can be achieved.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2044969--Cost-of-Living-a-cunning-plan

Labour while in government campaigned for the whole 2010 General Election without giving specifics of their ‘cut less, spend and tax more’, policies to limit the damage at the election - yet has falsely claimed some moral high ground and have ‘opposed’ probably 99% of the coalitions policies.

Labour should be allowed to fool the people again in 2015, by NOT coming clean on how they would ‘control’ our ‘cost of living’, as if even possible, ‘the people’ might not like the repercussions.