Gordon Brown hints at help for savers in the next budget
Gordon Brown has given his most blatant hint to date that UK savers will receive some form of assistance in next month's budget. Despite months of protests from UK savers, who have seen their interest on savings obliterated over the last 12 months, there has been no iota of help from the UK authorities although we now await next month's budget with anticipation.
While Gordon Brown has been very vocal in his criticism of the Conservative Party, at least David Cameron has issued a number of significant changes which his government would bring in if returned to power next year. These include abolishing tax on savings income for all basic rate taxpayers and lifting the personal allowances for pensioners by £2000 a year. Whether Gordon Brown will copy these proposals remains to be seen but he has a history of picking up on other people's ideas.
While the idea of assistance from the government has caught the eye of many savers in the UK Gordon Brown now runs the risk of building up the anticipation and expectation to a level which he cannot fulfil. We saw this with income tax policies in the past whereby the abolition of the 10p tax rate caused a serious rift within the Labour Party and eventually forced the Prime Minister into an embarrassing U-turn. Will he make the same mistakes again?
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