If I turn up at home drunk in the small hours of tomorrow morning asking to borrow money, I will probably be asked to justify it.
Imagine I then spend an hour or so rambling on about what a good state the household finances are in and how confident I am that we will whether the current storm of bills on the doormat; then take the money, return to the pub and send home a weighty report detailling my true intentions.
Well, I'd be staying in the pub for a long time, before returning to collect my belongings from the doorstep. Yet after following roughly the same course of action yesterday, Alistair Darling is now going about his normal life as though nothing has happened.
Darling bored the House of Commons - and most of the nation - to tears with his dull, rambling speech, which appeared to contain more references to economic stability than actual policies or tax changes. I don't think he mentioned employers once.
Then he submitted the actual report, which contained a raft of measures, including the removal of a concession allowing employment agencies to charge VAT solely on the commission element of their supplies, rather than on the entire cost of placing a temporary worker.
This will effectively be a temp tax on employers.
How about a tax on empty words and hidden taxes? The government would never need to borrow again.
