I am seriously pissed off.

[FabIsVeryFestive]

Not so much that everyone earning £20,000 or more are to be paying more tax, because for one it isn't a huge amount of money but because it seems to me ordinary people are being punished for the bankers being wankers recession and how will it get people spending again when they have even less money?

"Is that really true? Surely it was a global recession that started in the US with the sub prime thing and spread across the world?"

I don't think that any other European nation is looking at bringing in a 50% tax on large bonuses.

Personally I suspect the 50% tax is just something to try and please the public and that the Government knows that banks will find ways around it.

The tax is absolutely something to appease the public. How on earth can it be anything but when it only lasts for a few months and doesn't affect guaranteed bonuses? Bankers are already doing secret deals to wait a bit for their bonus, I'm sure...

as was said above,we all took the credit for the boom but we try to pass every ounce of blame to the bankers for the bust. while i think everyone accepts that they played a hugely significant part in it all there is blame to be shared out amongst those of us who borrowed beyond our means as well.

I heard that bankers already take a huge proportion of their salary in shares, for which they only pay the low capital gains tax, rather than the higher rate tax. If they already pull a fast one, then they will just get worse.

'while i think everyone accepts that they played a hugely significant part in it all there is blame to be shared out amongst those of us who borrowed beyond our means as well.'
Actually MQ, whilst I am usually the first one to hold my hand up if I feel I have been responsible for something, I really don't feel I am at all responsible for the bust.

I think it is great - I shall benifit from this one as I earn under 20K and was kicked in the teeth with the 10p rate being stript from the budget - no I get that money back in my pocket at last something for the poor

It's true what Osbourne said about a labour government bankrupting the country, they did it before and they have done it this time, while GB loves to point a finger at the sub prime market in the US the fact still remains that if he was truely 'prudent' then there would be great wads of cash from the 'boom' of which he could now draw to ease the suffering of the country, cuts would not be so hard and deep.

Our local council built up a nice pile of money under the conservatives whilst keeping the services ticking over nicely then in an unpresidented (for our area) local election Labour became the majority party and in the four years they spent nearly all the money in the coffers on projects that could not be sustained (too expensive when the money ran out )or were wrong for the area or people didn't want, when the conservative took over four years later their was no 'buffer' money with which to provide the services people needed and things had to be cut.

Labour ride on the wave of spend, spend, spend and the people will like us, but what the people do not like is the big crash when all the money runs out and it's not just the 'new' services that are cut but the existing ones that are vital for many families such as the elderly or people with disabilities.

Shares in what Undercova?

Good point BadgersPaws, although I do think bankers have it good. I agree though they could get it better elsewhere if they go, and hence can make such threats.

I am curious as to how they take their clients with them. (Sorry if this is revealing woeful ignorance on my part.)

Also never forget how Gordon Brown also ruined the pensions industry by placing windfall taxes on the pension funds in 1997 - that's why so many companies (like Royal Mail) have such massive deficits and why final salary schemes have had to close.

He presided over the banks, and a clearly unsustainable boom in house prices, and yes, there are also a lot of citizens in this country who should take some of the blame as well - many lived beyond their means or saw their property value as wealth to spend which now means that those of us who save for things and took out modest mortgages of 2/3 times our salary have to pay. No one was forcing us to take out ridiculous mortgages - if people had stood their ground property prices would never have inflated so unsustainably.

Also (sorry on a rant about how shit a chancellor GB actually was), over the past 10 years many businesses have left the UK to establish themselves elsewhere. We have no real (other than the financial sector) wealth creating industries anymore - farming and manufacture are nearly dead, we have dumbed down maths and science so much that we have very little world class engineering or digital technology. The UK's economy keeps me awake at night it really does - and a lot of these problems would be with us even if the banks had behaved!