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£250? Or Chicken feed?

February 2, 2012 12:20 pm

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Yesterday Boris Johnson announced a 1% cut in the Mayor’s share of council tax, saving Band D taxpayers in London just £3.10 a year – not even enough to buy a pint, or the equivalent of an onion a month.

Chicken feed, you might call it…

As Fabian General Secretary Andrew Harrop noted earlier on LabourList:

“If it is, as the Evening Standard asserts, an attempt to “trump” Ken Livingstone’s Fare Deal campaigning, Boris has played the wrong card.”

Ken Livingstone’s “Fare Deal is predicted to save the average Londoner £250, nearly 100 times the £3.10 Londoners would save from Boris Johnson’s “onion cut”. Sometimes for a comparison of this nature, only a bar chart will do:

Anonymous
Yes, but what is Ken’s history on council tax?
GuyM
I think you have completely missed the point.
The 1% cut is a clear headliner that allows the point to be made repeatedly during the election about tax records.
The “Londoners” that Boris is likely to get massive support from are those like me who travel in and out of London each day from the outer ring. We travel by train not bus and the “fare deal” proposal means very little to us when compared to the savings from not increasing council taxes.
I suspect you won’t like how this plays between now and the election.
Livingstone is a traditional tax and spend leftie, his record shows that to be true. If electors vote with their wallets I wonder who they will back?

Anonymous
No Guy, you have missed the point. I live in Zone 5 and travel into London by train and tube. Therefore a 7% fair cut on oyster card will benefit me more (proportionately) than someone in zone 1 or 2.
I stand to gain hundreds of pounds each year through this fare cut…as do many others in the outer ring of London.
That’s loads more than the £3 I’m going to save on council tax.
People aren’t stupid, they know who will leave them better off…

M Cannon
If you think that, check out Mr Gilligan’s figures at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100134393/ken-livingstone-v-boris-johnson-who-has-cost-you-more/
And do you think it right to vote solely on the basis of your own self interest?

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