Shadow Chancellor gives no reassurance with National Insurance & VAT gaffes

Today's Trivia Question for Alan Johnson:

Which UK tax rate is currently 20%?
a)NI
b)Vat
c)Don't Know

"Why don't you ask if you can phone a friend Alan?"

On the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning, Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson believed that employers’ National Insurance contributions are 20%, more than 50% higher than the actual rate of 12.8%.

Watch the interview here

It would appear that the NI gaffe isn't the only taxing issue Mr Johnson has made a faux pas over this weekend. According to today's Mail on Sunday, just 24 hours earlier Johnson made a basic elementary blunder over VAT: Newspaper article

With this further display of fantasy economics, Labour once again shows that they still offer absolutely no alternative to repaying the £120m PER DAY on the Interest alone on it's debt.

On Mr Johnson's showing, it is easy to see exactly how Labour were unfit in Government and are clearly unfit in Opposition.

Political scare tactics on VAT increase are badly miscalculated

Tomorrow's 2.5% VAT increase, which will raise £13bn towards paying off Labour's legacy of deficit debt, seems to have political opponents across the Nation in a mathematical meltdown.

According to the SNP, the VAT rise could cost Scottish households around £590 a year. http://www.snp.org/node/17581
Of course, issues over potential tax raising has proved to be a bit of a sore point for the Nationalists of late....

On the other hand, Labour leader Ed Miliband said the average family would have to find an extra £7.50 "each and every week", adding up to an extra £389 a year http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12106168

The V.A.T. rise will no doubt be universally unwelcome but sadly necessary, the fire stoked by the media keen to whip the Nation into a frenzy of predictable anti-Government rage.

However, if you go back to the headlines when V.A.T. was reduced from 17.5% to 15% back in 2008 by Labour, the puny amount was hardly noticed by the average shopper, the big stores said it barely increased sales & made little to no difference. No credit was given at all for the modest reduction, only ridicule & criticism.

Lets not forget, former Chancellor Alistair Darling actually wanting to raise VAT to 20% too whilst in office to help reduce his own Government's deficit.

Finally, tomorrow sees 100 days of Blank Paper from Miliband and no alternatives as to how Labour would find the £13bn of cuts required to help reduce Labour's deficit if no VAT increase was implemented. He truly is the Man without a Plan.