editorial cartoons

The Toffs' revolution. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne puts his considerable weight behind a think tank proposal to abolish stamp duty on share trading. This will leave a gap in the treasury coffers of some £4bn, but it is claimed that it will regenerate pensions funds to the tune of £80bn. Who will benefit from this is not made clear. Hard-up City traders? Impecunious pension fund managers? Surely not old-Etonian chums of Cameron and Osborne? This sits in the middle of the Cameron-led Tories' new tax policy, apparently designed to help the poor by lifting low-income groups out of the tax burden. The hoped-for headlines shout the word "pensions" in a populist bid for the peoples' hearts. The design was stolen [surely "parodied"? - Ed.] from an anonymous Chinese Socialist Realist propaganda poster of the Cutural Revolution (see original here; http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/crc.html).

The Guardian; Monday 28/8/06

previous next