Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Obvious outrage...

It was obvious that it would happen: not only that MPs start their holidays today (Parliament recess until OCTOBER) but that they would "bury" reams of bad news at the last minute. The Times tells us that..."Ministers bury £32bn tax crisis as recess starts":

"A mountain of bad news was buried by the Government as it rushed out reports and 26 ministerial statements the day before MPs go on holiday. Whitehall sources said that many of the reports were ready to be published weeks ago, and would normally be released in stages, but ministers had insisted they all be delayed till yesterday."

I'm not sure what enrages me more, this news or whether that they won't be back until October 12th! [parliament.uk].

"It also emerged that HM Revenue and Customs has set aside nearly £5 billion to deal with potential claims after a legal victory over VAT by a relative of Ian Fleming, the author"...Baldinio...where are you?

Update Wed 22nd
: Labour seem to have benefitted from this: "The Labour party has been the surprise recipient of a £4.6m ($7.5m) pre-election boost after a successful claim for past overpayments of value added tax." [Financial Times]

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6 comments:

Name Witheld said...

Hi Span,

Like you I've ben wondering where Paul has been lately. It's almost a month since his last post and I must admit I'm starting to get a it worried.

Span Ows said...

Hi Shytalk..and I'm away. I'll send him a message via his blog. Apparently he is on Facebook and Flikr but I don't know the addresses so don't know whether he has posted lately elsewhere or not.

I'm "back to normal" next week.

Paul said...

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the concern - I'm touched. Had a few problems and haven't been feeling too sociable to be honest, even managed to stay clear of the Net for a week at one point!

Started loads of posts but haven't finished any, I've been reading your posts and apologise for not replying earlier.

Hope to post again soon, thanks again for the concern and I hope you are both well.

Span Ows said...

Thanks for the update! Hope the problems get sorted soon.

Writing a post about being threatened by yoofs then going quiet was bound to cause concern!

Name Witheld said...

That's a relief! I put two and two together and got ninety four! So much for a PhD in maths! I'm really glad to hear that you're O.K., Paul.

Hope to be hearing more from you soon and, like Span, I hope you get those difficulties sorted very soon.

P.S. Yes, I realise that I'm sending a message to a guy on the south coast by means of a blog based in Barcelona but, hey, via t'internet!!!

Span Ows said...

hahaha, good point although not too uncommon these days. There was a story of a 'saved' suicide in the US because soemone in the UK was worried (not family or anything, 'just' a facebook virtual friend) and the word went through UK facebook family to police to embassy to US ploice to local police to US actual family to persons house...!!!