The wrong kind of race

Of course, when these overpaid business reps talk about competition, they've got a particular game in mind.

Most of them have been taught its intricacies during a lifetime of moneymaking at any cost.

Unfortunately, like the bullied schoolboy doing anything to get in with the popular kids, Chancellor Alistair Darling seems to want to join in the fun, pledging recently "to maintain the most competitive corporation tax rate of any major economy."

We certainly shouldn't be fooled by CBI claims to be acting in the best interests of "UK plc."

The man heading up the latest CBI propaganda offensive, well-paid Charles Alexander, works by day for GE Capital.

It's part of a behemoth of a company once known as General Electric.

From relatively humble beginnings in the United States, it has grown to become a multinational monster employing over 300,000 people globally and chewing up smaller firms left, right and centre.

Like all its peers, its main aim is to generate super profits.

To do this, it employs a rather nasty little tactic, playing off one country against the other in a race to the bottom on corporation tax and insecure working practices.

We must be clear - the UK plc that we'd see if the CBI and its ilk had their way would be an employer from hell, a sweatshop hothouse where workers turned in seven-day weeks on a pittance to make ends meet, all in the name of competitiveness, of course.

This may seem like scaremongering nonsense, but let us not forget that this was exactly how things used to be for the majority of British workers - until the trade union movement flexed its muscles.

So, here's to a "more competitive" tax system, one that ensures that the hard-working majority of the population are winners, rather than a tiny, self-interested elite.

Deeper duty

HIGH street bank Halifax plc is the latest interested party demanding that the Chancellor bring in a higher threshold for stamp duty, apparently to ease the pressure of first-time buyers.

This brings to mind the old saying caveat emptor - buyer beware. After all, demands for this change are coming from extremely suspicious quarters - namely, a cabal of estate agents, mortgage lenders and the Tory Party.

They are completely obscuring the real issue - the rise in house prices, which has put that most basic of commodities out of reach of large swathes of the British population.

And who's been profiting from the frenzied orgy in the housing market over the few years? Precisely the interests which are now calling for changes to stamp duty rules.

The Chancellor may well have such a tax change in mind in this week's budget.

But this issue runs much deeper, encompassing a dire shortage of low-rent state housing, the buy-to-let frenzy and profit-hungry leeches at every level.

Until the government intervenes to prevent the rampant profiteering of estate agents, mortgage lenders and their bedfellows, there will be no end to the financial uncertainty, poor housing and rental slavery which much of the British population is forced to endure.