Loans Scotland

In a shocking volte-face that left the good people of the central belt speechless, the Labour government has decided to start supporting married couples with the admission that “children notice” when their parents are married. As Chief Secretary to the Treasury says “I don’t seek to preach to anybody, but in an abstract way I think it’s better when children are in a home where their parents are married and I think children do notice if their parents are married or not.” errrrrrrr right!

However, there is a lot of members of the labour nomenklatura who have an ideologicaly aversion to marriage arguing that it diminishes single parents so dont expect Labour to support marriage immediately… there is another year or two until the next election, for god’s sake.

This wouldn’t be a tory policy would it.

Read more about it in the torygraph

Research from Orange (the mobile phone to internet company) discovered that one third of respondents who wanted to start a business in England and Scotland were worried that starting a business would effect their lovelife. Other concerns among those who had considered starting a business included the fear of becoming more aggressive (33%), of adding pressure to family life (25%) and of getting less sleep (32%).

Almost half the people were thinking about setting up a business, but most had one fear or another about failure. One of the characteristics of entrepreneurs is both a drive to succeed and a lack of fear. What I do not know is whether this is a byproduct of entrepreneurship or a prerequisite. What is certain is that most people will not start their own business and for most people they will really miss out on the excitement of creating and making something happen.

Here in Scotland, we really suffer from a fear that leads to few people starting meaningful entrepreneurial businesses as opposed to small lifestyle businesses. What people should realise is that starting a business means you do lose sleep, you do worry, you lose focus on the family… however it also means that that become precise, sharp. In short the world is in focus.

It is becoming a fact of life that every labour budget offers fantastic tax cuts from different member of our community (god I hate that word) which are later revealed to have been nullified by swingeing tax rises somewhere else.

Two techniques are favoured: introduce benefits which can only be enjoyed after an Operation Overlord level of form filling which nobody can be bothered to do or create a blizzard of tax changes which confound even experts.

The most recent example is this week where another tax cutting budget has after some analysis turned out to be tax raising with most families facing another £50 tax per week by 2012.

The IFS has successfully analysed the small print of the budget and identified that across a wide range of areas the government will either raise money through fiscal drag or increase it by tinkering with details and numbers.

As with every labour budget - a silver lining rapidly becoming a cloud

Taxpayers Alliance is predicting that average council taxes will rise by another £375 over the next 5 years. Unsurprisingly everybody involved is blaming everybody else for the problems. Hazel Blears is almost certain to have some very rocky times ahead as she tries to defend a settlement that everybody else is describing as the harshest of all time for local councils

For council tax payer, what to do? Not a lot except leave the country.