Tuesday 24 July 2012

Cash In Hand

It was just over four weeks ago when the coalition, namely Cameron, walked straight into a perfectly avoidable tax bear trap, regarding that time Jimmy Carr.

One would think lessons would have been learned but oh no. David Gauke, the Exchequer Secretary decides to take on (probably) the majority of the British public at a time of economic uncertainty and accuse them of being morally wrong by paying plumbers etc cash in hand. Leaving aside that most of us are certainly not going to take any lectures from MPs on morals when they quite happily rip off expenses and spend hard-earned taxpayers' money on a whim such as here...
Commons Speaker John Bercow charged taxpayers £624 to have his chauffeur rush him to Devon for a ‘dirty weekend’ with wife Sally before she entered Celebrity Big Brother.
....such sanctimonious pontification from an MP is obviously going to lead to papers asking awkward questions. And so it proves:
People who pay plumbers and cleaners cash in hand are doing nothing illegal or immoral, a cabinet minister insisted on Tuesday, as senior members of the Government were forced to admit engaging in the practice themselves. 
David Cameron and other senior cabinet ministers including Nick Clegg and George Osborne admitted that they had paid traders cash in hand in the past. And an analysis of expenses claims by The Daily Telegraph showed that two other members of the government — Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary and Sir George Young, Leader of the House of Commons — paid suppliers hundreds of pounds in cash, and claimed back the money from the taxpayer. 
One is tempted yet again to accuse the coalition of being amateurs but I do wonder if that is too much of a compliment.

3 comments:

  1. Luke 6:42

    "How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

    Completely lost on Gauke and the rest of the Government.

    £350 million MORE to be paid over to the EU on top of the billions already squandered this year because we were outvoted (ie our neighbours help themselves to our money. THAT's what's immoral.

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  2. Interesting that we all believe in something essentially illegal and I include myself - great believer in cash in hand. Never ever did it in my life though - no, I'm an angel.

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  3. SO often builders twist your arm to do it though. I had some work done at my house a few weeks ago by a firm called GWT and when it came to Friday 4pm they were saying to me, plese love give us some of the money in cash because we just need to payu wages....I had to dig my heels in and say NO.

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