Gordon Brown's 2008 Budget

Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; latterly Chancellor of the Exchequer) has upped the basic rate of income tax from 10% to 20% for people earning less than GBP18,000 a year (About USD36,000).

If we were at war with the rest of the world; suffering famine, plague or pestilence; in a state of national emergency; facing the end of the world; melting down the railings to make Spitfires; there might be some justification.

But to make me give his bloody government 20% of my meagre income instead of 10%; to double the annual amount with which I have to subsidise illegal wars is, for a labour government - a *labour* government! - breathtakingly un-socialist!

He ought to be ashamed, and I hope he is.