EU RAIDS SAVINGS AND FREE PRESS UNDER ATTACK

When it comes to the European Union then almost anything it does has an April 1st feel about it.  However reading the news today that the Cypriot bail-out involves the EU skimming up to 10% from ordinary savers' bank accounts still has an unreal feel about it.

Cyprus is the fifth Euro nation to need a bail-out.  Unlike the previous four however, the EU is proposing to do this by raiding the savings accounts at Cypriot banks and confiscating up to 10%.  They are calling it a tax.  But it is not a tax on the income - a percentage tax on the interest earned.  It is not a tax on a capital gain.  It is taking a piece of savers' capital - savings that have been put aside from taxed income.  So they are calling it a tax but it is not a tax.  It is simply the confiscation of savers' capital - from ordinary people like you and me.  If you have modest savings in a bank account can you be sure in the future that the EU won't be coming after a slice of your capital?  With its democratic deficit anything is possible with the EU.

Of course the Left don't like capital.  The LibDems and Labour's love affair with a mansion tax is no different.  It would be levied without any reference to how much income an individual might have.  Not content with taking tax from income they now want to skim capital.  Why you might ask?  Its not just the desire to spend more in the public sector but it is also that most base of human instincts - the envy of others - those with savings, those with bigger houses.

The Left even call a reduction in benefit payments to those living in subsidised housing larger than they need a tax - a "bedroom tax".  The next time YOU pay your mortgage or rent perhaps you may spare a moment or two to share the outrage of the Left that others getting free housing will receive 14% less in their housing benefit payment if they have a spare bedroom.  Or perhaps like me, you don't like the idea of the government borrowing money that our children will have to pay back in order to keep some people in free housing bigger than they need.

One other bit of news......

This Monday Labour and LibDems are voting together in an attempt to end our free press.  Not just those disgraceful hacking tabloids but also newspapers like the Daily Telegraph who broke the MP expenses scandal.  And not just newspapers but also websites that include news-related material.  So this blog and thousands of others could be brought under central politician control.  Centuries of tradition of publishing freedom (at least for newspapers, obviously not this blog!) are under threat from the Left.

So in the future they could stop the reporting on such things as the NHS killing thousands by the neglect of nurses apparently "too posh to wash" and too qualified to lower themselves to provide the basic care to sick and elderly patients.  Media controlled by politicians would make politicians' lives easier but would keep the public in the dark.

If you, like me, value the individual ahead of the state then you too will shun all this crazy left-wing ideology when you're at the ballot box.


UPDATE : Horse trading and compromise appear to have been the order of the day on Monday prior to the vote on press control in Parliament.  All sides claim to have won!

Here's a fascinating article on the folly of the EU raid on Cypriot bank accounts http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1363613568.php