Own goal by the Bitchy Boys

"BBC Radio 4 Poll Reveals Tax-Payers' Attitudes to British Tax System" reports News on News. The sub-head spins it as "taxpayers say they would prefer to have a simpler and easier to understand tax system, even if it means they have to pay more tax as a result", but that's just a replay of the late 1990s loaded question that found people prepared to pay more tax - IF it led to better services.

Other findings show that the vast majority do not believe they get value for money from the taxes they pay, a dispiriting finding for the inhabitants of Planet Ponzi.

25 to 34 year-olds were consistently the least positive towards taxation, and people aged 55 to 64 the most positive. People aged 55 and over were less likely to feel they are taxed more heavily than they should be (29 per cent). But this rose to 44 per cent when posed to people aged between 25 and 34.

Well there's a shock. When you rob young Peter to pay old Paul, you can depend on support from old Paul.

People in social groups AB (30 per cent) and C1 (31 per cent) were more likely than people in social groups C2 (20 per cent) and DE (19 per cent) to say the taxes they pay benefit them as it pays for services they use. 

Reversing the spin, I believe that works out as 70 and 69 percent of the relatively wealthy ABs and C1s, and 80 percent of the lower middle class C2s, who do not believe that they get direct value for money. They do not seem to have been asked if they thought their taxes were well spent keeping the proles happy.

But the proles are NOT happy. The highest proportion of people (81 percent) who do not feel their taxes bring them commensurate benefits is among the DEs, the greatest recipients of transfer payments.

Let's hear it for the Welfare State - an expensive, wasteful and demoralising creator of mass discontent