It is said that Obama is rushing to make America a dead-end Nanny State and now with this latest true “labour” budget the UK is heading down the same “Nanny State” route!

The UK Government have truly lost the plot now – what a great idea – Tax the rich and give away £1,000 for people to buy a new car, which not only goes against the “Green Idea” but props up the car companies that are running inefficiently and don’t need a government hand-out! I note that they have committed Britain to cut carbon emissions by 34% by 2020, when the present Cabinet will be long-gone.

The Budget revealed Income Tax for those earning more than £150,000 to rise to 50% from April 2010 together with tax relief on pensions to be reduced for the same high earners from April 2011.

The Chancellor has gone against Labours original pledge of “Not to increase taxes” when they came to power, but Alistair Darling has said that “during these extraordinary times, extra ordinary action needs to be taken“. What he omitted to say with his comments was that he and the rest of the Labour Government have slaughtered the UK economy, with record debt and total mis-management! Also, I missed his apology, perhaps I was not listening properly! What he is failing to recognise is that due to their excessive over spending on the public sector, they have significantly added to the present problem and instead of simply pointing blame elsewhere, they should own up and give up No. 10!

Of course some will argue that the new cars are more CO2 friend, but quite frankly this is total rubbish when you factor in the damage done to the climate through the manufacturing process to build these new cars. I would have more sympathy for this idea if the £1,000 was to go towards the new fuel efficient low carbon-emmission cars.

Why don’t the government recognise that they have truly messed up the UK economy and resign gracefully!

This was a true Labour government budget – it has taken them a few years before they went back to their basics of borrow and spend and ”Tax the Rich to Give to the Poor“, but this time it’s not just to the poor it is also to the “Rich” car manufacturers, but more importantly to pay for their blunders and negligence.

The Government are to increase public sector borrowing by a further £175 billion this year, as confirmed by the Chancellor in his budget – this is a record borrowing figure.

Do the Chancellor and the Prime Minister not realise that the guys they are taxing to the hilt are the ones that go out of their way to set up businesses and create employment. Employment creation makes an economy and provides the resource to pay the taxes through Pay as You Earn (PAYE) and in turn keeps the economy going.

The nanny state moves not only include the car give-away noted above, but also Government support for the economy to protect 500,000 jobs and extra support for people who have been out of work for 12 months through the flexible new deal, plus from January all the under-25s out of work for a year will be offered a job or training place with extra money on top of benefits for those in training. Not to mention the extra £250m funding to help people get work experience in growth industries and extra funding to create 54,000 new places in sixth form education.

And that’s not all the new scheme to guarantee mortgage-backed securities to boost lending on property together with an extension of a year on the Stamp Duty holiday for homes up to £175,000. The Chancellor has also pledged and extra £80m for shared equity mortgage scheme to help boost the housing market and a further £500m to kick-start stalled housing projects, including £100m for local authorities to build energy efficient homes.

Alistair Darling must do more to help the 1.1m low-income households still losing out as a result of the scrapping of the 10p tax rate, MPs have said.

A £2.7bn emergency package announced by the chancellor last month did not go far enough, the cross-party Commons Treasury committee said in a report.

The money had not been “well-targeted”, with £2bn going to middle-income workers who had not lost out, it added.

Mr Darling has said he wants to do more to help those not already compensated.

The committee’s report said the chancellor’s decision to raise the income tax threshold by £600 in May, at a cost of £2.7bn, was “probably the least bad option” to mitigate the impact of the abolition of the 10p rate.

“The government’s short-term priority must be to make every effort to compensate these people in full” John McFall Committee chairman

It found the 5.3m losers from the initial decision were people on low incomes for whom the loss of up to £232 a year had dealt a “significant” blow to their finances.

This, it noted, came at a time of sharply rising prices for essential goods and services.

Some people were still estimated to be up to £112 a year worse off, the report said.

Young workers

The committee found most of those affected were younger workers on low incomes with no children, but the worst-hit group were women between the ages of 60 and 64 with small work pensions.

Committee chairman John McFall said: “The government’s short-term priority must be to make every effort to compensate these people in full.

“The government must not let this issue slide into the background and will need to produce fresh proposals to fully compensate these 1.1m households by the time of the 2008 pre-Budget report.”

The MPs noted the government had yet to make clear whether the package of help given this year – funded by extra state borrowing – would be repeated in the future.

However, any new measures to help those losing out should be made through the tax system, the report suggested.

Child poverty

Frank Field, the Labour backbencher who led the rebellion against the scrapping of the 10p tax rate, said the government’s compensation package was not equal to one million people’s loss.

He said: “We will be looking, when we debate this in the Commons, and when the government promises it will come back in November, for a proper settlement for everyone who lost out on 10p.”

The committee called on Mr Darling to use his autumn pre-Budget report to launch consultations on future changes to income tax, rather than keeping them secret until Budget day.

“The government must now ensure that there is no backsliding and that future reforms to the tax and benefit system do not reverse this very positive development,” said Mr McFall.

The MPs also warned that the immediate need to compensate those who lost out after the scrapping of the 10p tax rate should not detract from the challenge of tackling child and pensioner poverty.

The report called for the creation of a Poverty Commission to look at the effect of public policy on the poorest families.

The decision to scrap the 10p tax rate, made by Gordon Brown in his last Budget as chancellor, came into force in April this year – alongside a reduction in the basic rate of tax from 22% to 20%.

It had threatened to provoke a backbench rebellion by Labour MPs

News reported by BBC