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| A pasty, today |
David Cameron is embroiled in a Prime Ministerial cock up, nicknamed pastygate, similar to Tony Blairs reminiscences about watching a footballer play who actually retired when he was four years old. Must have been some footballer. The Prime Ministers comments related to the introduction of VAT on food products sold about ambient temperature. He said he loved a pasty (a meat and potato filled pastry casing in case you didn’t know) and indeed had consumed one from a popular chain of hot pasty shops at Leeds train station recently.
Of course the shop had closed 5 years ago and a bit of back-peddling ensued.
Pastygate hides in reality another stealth tax on ordinary people though. And if it isn’t, if the retailers absorb the cost of 20% VAT and keep the price the same, then prices elsewhere will creep up elsewhere to compensate. The end result will be less pennies in our pockets.
I love the weeks after a budget, all the headline grabbing tax cuts are forgotten about and the implications of tax hikes are beginning to come out. Before the epic Daddacool diet kicked in, I liked a good pasty, especially on a cold lunchtime, straight out of the paper bag. But no more, and this stealth tax makes it even more unlikely I’ll return to my bad ways…