In case you haven’t visited it before, there is a brilliant new blog by Conservative Agent Andrew Kennedy. He is the agent for my home constituency of Tunbridge Wells. He’s just written a “blogpost”: headlined ‘Ever Wondered Why…’. He writes…

‘In these times of austerity…’

  1. Why a young family on a below average wage pay additional taxes so my wealthy in-laws can have a free TV licence, winter fuel allowance and ‘free’ bus travel?
  2. Why do my wealthy in-laws have to donate the value of these benefits to their Church because the state doesn’t allow them to return the value of the Exchequer?
  3. Why the British state runs a broadcasting company and taxes people to watch it, regardless of whether they do so or not?
  4. Why so many hard working families are bringing up children in cramped and unsuitable accommodation whilst down the road a single retired pensioner lives alone in two or three bedroom social housing, with his/her rent being subsidised through the taxes paid by the over-crowded family along the street who cannot afford to move?
  5. Why people think taxpayers, many poorer than them, should subsidise their parents care / nursing home bills so they can inherit their property?
  6. Why do I pay additional tax to subsidise my brother and sister-in-law’s child benefit, when my brother-in-law earns four times what I do?
  7. Why, if we can charge tourists for the food they buy in the shops, can we not charge them for the treatment they receive in our hospitals?
  8. Why do we pay stamp duty when we sell a home which has been paid for out of taxed income?
  9. Why is the newly introduced benefit cap of £500 pw still higher than the average working-family earns in Chatham ?
  10. Why does the government think higher tobacco tax reduces the desire to smoke, but does not think the same applies to income tax’s effect on the desire to work hard.

Quite simply brilliant. Make sure you bookmark his blog.