Quite how stupid are they?

I understand that politicians lie all the time. This is fine, provided nobody believes them. What annoys me is when Joe Public falls for it; and what really frightens me is when politicians actually seem to believe their own lies.

Anyroad, I finally received a reply to my letter inviting my MP to sign Bob Spink's EDM calling for the tax-free personal allowance to be increased to £10,000. NB, my MP forwarded this to HM Treasury, who replied as follows:

"I am afraid that increasing the personal allowance by this amount would be an untargeted (sic) measure, the most benefit would go to those on higher incomes who pay 40% tax."

Dude, WTF? I explained in my original letter that the revenue loss could be minimised by reducing the higher rate threshold so that higher earners are no better off (which is exactly what they did last month - personal allowance went up by £600 and the higher rate threshold came down by £1,200). FFS, even if they didn't do this, only 15% of taxpayers are higher rate, so by definition, 85% of the benefit would go to basic rate taxpayers.

"Moreover, it would be of no benefit to the poorest individuals who currently do not have enough income to pay any tax or national insurance"

Oh, just f*** off! The idea is to reduce the tax burden on those earning between £6,000 and £10,000. These low earners are already losing 39p in Working Tax Credits for every £1 they earn; if you take another 31p tax off their meagre wages ...

"Funding any increase in the personal allowance by scrapping working tax credits, or restricting relief for pension contributions to the basic rate as your constituent suggests, would go against Government policies of directly targeting (sic) those at risk from poverty and encouraging pensions saving"

Jumping Jack F*** on a bike! In my original letter I suggested "scrapping Working Tax Credits for those earning over £10,000 (who even under the current system pay more in PAYE than they receive in WTC)". It is a simple verifiable fact that a single earner over 25 earning £9,000-odd per annum pays about £19 a week in tax/NI and receives, in theory at least, about £19 a week in WTC.

Now, Nulab are supposed to be left-wing, I can sort of understand why any idea that benefits higher earners (however modestly) does not appeal (her first argument, which I dealt with in my original letter and repeated above). Fine. But that's the whole point of restricting relief for pension contributions to the basic rate! Does the stupid bitch who replied to my MP not know that over half the total tax reliefs for pension contributions accrue to higher rate taxpayers?