IFS = If you're Fucking Stupid?

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that Alistair Darling needs to raise taxes by £8bn in the budget to meet the government's limits on national debt and the so-called improvements to public finances.

They say that the tax hike which would be the equivalent of 2p on income tax would be "prudent."

No, it wouldn't be prudent. We are looking at a pretty likely economic downturn and the last thing this government needs to do is contractionary fiscal policy. The British tax payer is already paying far too much tax, and since the threshold for the 40% rate has not increased in years, this has been another tax rise by stealth meaning that more and more people are paying the top rate of tax which works out to be about £700 a year.

In its annual Green Budget, the IFS warned that, if the Chancellor does not change course, public sector net debt will breach the Government's self-imposed ceiling of 40% of GDP in 2009 and reach 41.2% by 2012.

Well, that is the economic convergence criteria for membership of the Euro so I don't mind too much about breaking that.

Mr Darling is planning to stay within his fiscal rules over the next five years by increasing the tax burden to a 24-year high and cutting public spending to an eight-year low as a proportion of GDP, said the Green Budget, produced in collaboration with bankers Morgan Stanley.

This would involve the Government taking 48% of the "proceeds of growth", compared to 45% under Labour so far and 30% under the last Conservative administration.

And people think that this government is in control of the economy! Can someone actually point to something that state control has made better? The NHS is in a pretty dire shape, children are leaving school without the required skills to enter the workplace, we have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe, a flourishing underclass, prisons full and prisoners let out early to wander the streets....and yet this government has still managed to run up billions of pounds worth of debt.

I would have thought the best thing to do would be to bugger the "golden rule" and get cutting taxes and stop wasting so much public money on shite that will never work. But please, please don't raise taxes any more.