Interesting to see on the BBC at 5.30 am that “the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is majority-owned by the taxpayer, has so far only committed to pass on the cut in full to business customers, saying it needed to strike a balance between borrowers and savers.”
Unfortunately, the government (*WE*) now own a majority holding in RBS and the needs of savers are, perhaps, less important than the needs of borrowers. It may be, by 11.00 on Friday morning, RBS will be issuing a different statement? Who knows…?
I am looking forward to the Banks returning excessive overdraft charges to customers…. seems to be coming? We live in strange times. Captain Mainwaring from Dad’s Army would not have approved. Mind you, it is unlikely, ‘qua’ bank manger, that he would have approved of any of the 125% mortgages and loans advertised on daytime television in recent years. But… there we are.
I may well go over to a branch of RBS tomorrow and see how our new nationalised bank is doing. I’ll take my own coffee. Wouldn’t want them to make any unnecessary expenditure. In fact… a new idea for the recession…. *Bus Tours* (There may well be buses available) to our new English / British heritage sights – branches of RBS, Northern Rock, HBOS, Woolworths? and god knows how many other businesses Cyclops intends to rescue…
(I’m a Scot – and some Bravehearts and other Scots will hate this – but RBS and HBOS have not, as far as I can see, been bought by Scots taxpayers accountable to Alex Salmond and his dream of Scotland forming part of an arc of Nordic/Icelandic/Scandinavian Prosperity – they have been bought by British taxpayers.)
I could be wrong. I probably am wrong – but… hey… the £1 million a year boys and girls in the banking sector ballsed up big time – and they are supposed to know what they are doing – ?
Ah well. It is Friday…. and as Britain doesn’t work that hard on Fridays (or at all in some cases) – perhaps this is best left to Monday afternoon, or perhaps, Tuesday… when we can actually cope after the weekend with doing any work. Three Day week? Britain has been doing a three day week for years – unfortunately, some are only getting pay for three days now, not the usual five – and that is the tragedy, that is the issue which really needs to be addressed if Brown is to kick start the economy. 2.5% reductions in VAT ? To use the vernacular beloved of our american cousins… this is ‘pissing in the wind’. The “We are passing on the 2.5 VAT Cut” notices in shop windows is both laughable and sad. I assume that if businesses do not pass it on they are levying tax illegally and all sorts of problems will result? Again, I could be wrong on that. I shall phone The Speaker and see if he knows any law.
“I assume that if businesses do not pass it on they are levying tax illegally and all sorts of problems will result?”
Well no, that’s why it’s such an inverted tit-arse situation of a tax change. A shopkeeper can sell his wares for whatever price the customer is willing to pay. So, when the VAT rate was 17.5% a product selling for £4.99 combined a shopkeeper element of £4.25 (keeping everything to the nearest penny) and VAT was 74p. If he knows he can still sell it for £4.99 he will do so, the only difference will be that the shopkeeper element goes up to £4.34 and the VAT falls to 65p. The shopkeeper makes an additional 9p, Mr Darling loses 9p and the customer pays the same.
What is actually happening, of course, is even worse for the Treasury than that because shops are having to cut prices to shift goods. The £4.99 item no longer commands £4.99, people are only prepared to pay £4.29 for it, so the shopkeeper receives £4.29 and has to account to the Revenue for 15/115ths of that, so his personal cut is £3.73 and the VAT is 56p, Mr Darling loses 18p.
Cutting VAT increases shopkeepers’ margins a little (a good thing when they are taking huge chunks off their mark-up just to shift stuff), but it makes no difference to market prices because people will still pay what they can afford. The loser is the Revenue, viz all of us.