Norman Tebbit doesn't get out much

Doing his merry best to keep the LibLabCon cartel going, he has this to say:

"... only one party leader seems to have grasped that, if you construct a system where unskilled people are worse off by taking a job than by staying on welfare, they remain trapped in poverty – and that is Nick Clegg... the two main parties are unwilling to bite on the bullet and commit themseves to raising the income tax threshold from £6,475 to something like £10,000 or £12,000."

Sure, on a few issues, the Lib Dems are right - such as doubling the tax free personal allowance. They recently ditched their eminently sensible policy of replacing the hodge-podge of old age benefits with a Citizen's Pension; but to be fair, they also ditched their crass vote-buying policy of scrapping tuition fees (preferring to suggest they'd be phased out over six years), but hey.

Luckily, the first commenter says what I would have said if I could be arsed to register and leave a comment:

SoftMicro on Jan 13th, 2010 at 11:57 am: May I quote the UKIP website, from their policies in brief page? “We will take 4.5 million people out of tax with a simple Flat Tax (with National Insurance) starting at £10,000.” If you look at their other policies there, they are very compatible with what most grass-roots Tories want (as opposed to what the LibDems and the Vichy Elite at the top of the Tory party want). This is why the Telegraph blogs are full of ex-Tory voters saying they will be voting UKIP – and therefore why Cameron’s lead is only about half what it should be.

PS, we've re-worked the figures, the suggested personal allowance of £10,000 from 2006 is now more like £11,500, and the flat tax policy is really four-policies-in-one; increase the personal allowance; scrap higher rate tax; radical simplification (in particular getting rid of tax-breaks that only benefit higher rate taxpayers in the first place); and making the tax system mesh with the welfare system. All a bit complicated for the likes of Norman Tebbit.