From the budget report, I’ve attempted to knock up a simple tax graph showing you who will be worse off and who better off under Gordon Brown’s new plans. He’s announced a cut of 2p in the basic rate of tax effective next April, but he’s also abolishing the starting 10% rate of tax, with no concomitant increase in personal thresholds announced. Here’s the basic effect – the blue line is the new tax regime as if applied today, the purple line is the current regime:


There are some caveats: Brown is making working tax credits more generous, so they will continue to a higher level, helping people on the lowest incomes (that’s my attempted interpretation anyway); and the top NI threshold will be raised, increasing slightly the NI paid by the richest.

The upshot, though, as far as I can see, is that if you earn in the £7k-£18k band, you’ll pay more tax despite this headline tax cut. The biggest beneficiaries appear, from the graph, to be those earning around £36k a year.

This is all rather back of the envelope so corrections welcome…

Update: Ryan’s worked out that £18,605 is the salary figure when you switch from loss to gain.

Thanks to the marvellous BBC programme catalogue prototype, you can – assuming you’re, er, not too old – see what was on TV on the day you were born, and even, if you know your time of birth, at the very moment you entered the world.

My mum was missing out on Sunday Worship: I, Where Are We Now? on BBC1 and an Open University programme on BBC2.

The link you need is in the format http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/on_this_day/yyyy/mm/dd where yyyy is the full year, mm is the month in two digits (e.g., 04 for April), and dd for the day.

From this we can see that the newly-thirtysomething Stephen Tall has the privilege of being born on the day the fourth episode of the fantastic Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng-Chiang first aired, while today’s birthday boy Duncan had the pleasure of a budget reply party political broadcast from the SDP/Liberal Alliance featuring Roy Jenkins.

Only one of these TV programmes featured a giant rat. I leave you to guess which 🙂

Blogging, blogging, dieting, blogging, exercise, watching a soon to return BBC sci-fi series, beer, indie music, smiling, blogging, and cake.

Lots of interesting discussion in the office today about how to write good blog headlines (sparked by Copyblogger). Key tips (beyond the obvious “Don’t sound dull”) seem to include engaging the reader by phrasing the post title in the third person – “How you can lose weight!” rather than “Dieting guidelines from semi-professionals” – numerical lists, enticing secrect and questions.

Obviously it’s not quite as simple as that, and the tricks you use depend on what fits with the blog content, but how to construct post titles that draw the reader in is certainly something worth thinking about, at least in a “professional blogging” context. Readers can rest assured that this site, however, will continue to use tongue-in-cheek, humorous, or just plain lazy headlines.

Not a good day for the Tories today.

First off, their sole Scottish MP, David Mundell, has been slagging off his Holyrood colleagues – albeit in a “confidential briefing paper”.

Said to be a briefing for David Cameron, it accuses MSPs of failing to understand the party’s new moderate approach and reportedly says: “There are more obvious problems than solutions emanating from Scotland from a party point of view.”

Mr Mundell said Miss Goldie made a “reasonable start” as leader but had begun to attract adverse comment for “lack of activity and strategic thought.”

Not news perhaps to those living in Scotland, but interesting to hear it from the country’s only Tory MP. Topping this off, though, Patrick Mercer, the Tory frontbencher, has quit after making comments about ethnic minority soldiers.

There’s more from the BBC.