The Pastie Tax.

This is something that happened in British politics during my last significant Internet outages. Although it wasn't actually that important it's something I would of liked to have commented on at the time. So on 9/4/12 I guess I'll do it now.

On Wednesday March 21st (21/4/12) the UK Chief Finance Minister George Osborne introduced the national budget for the fiscal year 2012/13. At the time me and pretty much everyone else said it was a budget for the rich at the expense of the poor. I decided to illustrate my point through the cutting of tax on low yield electronic gambling machines from 20% to 5%. In the days following the budget though journalists working for I think "The Sun" newspaper went through the details and discovered that the budget also introduced Value Added Tax (VAT) at 20% on hot takeaway food. VAT is supposed to be a sales tax we pay on luxury goods so the fact the government is now classing food to be a luxury is in itself worry.

An example of hot takeaway food that most people are familiar with is the Cornish Pastie. Although the exact recipe is a point of contention between cooks a Cornish Pastie is basically ground/minced beef, potatoes and swede wrapped up in puff-pastry and then cooked. It was developed by Cornish tin miners in about the 18th century. The idea was that they could bring the pastie down the mine in their pockets and then heat them up on a shovel above an open fire. Therefore the are probably the ultimate in working class food. As they're also quite healthy as far as cheap, convenience food goes Cornish Pasties should be a staple amongst office workers who have to buy their lunch but want to say money. Increasing their cost by 20% makes life even more difficult for people who are already struggling to cope during the recession. To make matters worse the budget didn't levy 20% on VAT on Caviar - surely the ultimate luxury food.

So the whole thing started as a newspaper trying to explain the budget to it's readers without using words like "low yeild, electronic gambling machines." However the story broke just ahead of the Bradford-west bye-election so Britain's politicians all leapt on the issue trying to win votes by proving how much they love pasties. So I think I should declare that like quite a large number of people in Britain I am partial to a Cornish pastie every now and again.