Monday 21 June 2010

Yasmin Alibi-Brown on VAT

Oh, the sheer and unadulterated Righteouness of it all:

“Zero-rated items, such as food (1), books (2) and children's clothing (3), shouldn't have VAT applied to them as it would hit the most vulnerable members of society the hardest."

Wot? Of course, we 'shouldn't' have VAT on anything, but let's look at those three items in turn:

1) We would get an average household's food bill down by hundreds of pounds a year if we left the EU.

2) Books? What is she talking about? Has she never heard of public libraries or second hand book or charity shops? I'm not aware that that the ultimate - and as yet undefined - victim group, 'the most vulnerable' would be 'hardest hit' if the price of a new book went up by a quid.

3) Children's clothes are stupendously cheap, cheaper than they have ever been. In any event, has she never heard of hand-me-downs, charity shops etc? Or is she thinking more of Nike trainers? And don't we have Child Benefit (or, G-d forbid, Child Tax Credits) to part-pay the cost of children's clothes?

Problem is of course, it wasn't the Yazzmonster (TM JuliaM) who said that, it was Stephen Robertson, Director General of the British Retail Consortium.

5 comments:

JuliaM said...

Oh, I can't claim credit for the tag - I can't remember where I saw it first, but it was kicking around the innernets for a while...

Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, very modest of you. A laborious Google search on 'blogs suggested that the name was invented by Peter Briffa back in 2003 or thereabouts (there were no hits for 2002 or 2001).

Lola said...

There is only one cure for Jasmin Alibi-Brown-ism - death. She is without doubt the most smug sanctimonious poisonous shit out there.

Peter Briffa said...

Mark, you are indeed correct. My influence on the blogosphere may be somewhat marginal, but I do like to think that that one little word will be written on my gravestone.

"Here lies Peter Briffa, the man who christened her the Yazzmonster".

expat said...

Lola is dead right. She was spouting to a worldwide audience pure (and rather embarrassing) b***s**t on BBC World TV Dateline London prog over the weekend - usually an interesting and generally entertaining half hour..

After two minutes of her brainless cockwaffle (which I think had her co-panellists inwardly cringing) I had to switch back to the football.