Plumbing new depths

According to him, the highest-earning fifth of the population will pay a larger proportion of its income as a result of measures introduced over the past two years than any other fifth of the population.

Osborne is such a slippery character, which dictates caution in accepting his data without further analysis.

He plays fast and loose with the figures, as in deciding to include £3.5 billion from the auction of the 4G mobile spectrum in this year's figures when the sale is scheduled to take place next year.

The Chancellor ought to explain whether his assertion of a greater responsibility placed on the rich includes the effect of VAT and higher National Insurance contributions.

VAT, which the conservative coalition has increased substantially, is a regressive tax, affecting poorer people more sharply, while graduated National Insurance payments are subject to a cut-off point to prevent the rich from paying what they should.

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However, it should be remembered that the richest section of the population does not rely solely on income for its wealth.

One example is the multimillionaire Chancellor who flipped his second home from his London townhouse to his Cheshire farmhouse, increased his mortgage, receiving over £100,000 in parliamentary expenses, and then sold off the London property at a profit of three-quarters of a million pounds.

No wonder he swats aside questions about whether the reduction in the top rate of income tax affects him personally.

In common with the rest of the top 10 per cent of Britain's wealthy, who collectively own half of all this country's assets, his property appreciates irrespective of his current salary or income tax liability.

Contrast the impunity to tax tinkering for this opulent minority with the effect of Osborne's latest assault on the incomes of low-paid workers.

Despite government rhetoric about favouring strivers over skivers and ministerial insistence that their priority is to encourage people to go from benefits to jobs, it is hammering working people whose low incomes make them reliant on in-work benefits.

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Imposing a 1 per cent "rise" on these benefits while food, fares, clothes, gas, electricity and water prices go through the roof is a deliberate ploy to squeeze their living standards.

Difficult though it may be to imagine the government sinking lower, its announcement that hundreds more disabled Remploy staff face the chop, even though just 40 of their 1,200 fellow workers thrown out on the cobbles in August have found a job, plumbs new depths.

Disabled charities' collusion with government privatisation dogma emphasises the need for resolute opposition to neoliberal policies.

While disabled and low-paid workers, with families on benefits, contemplate the hardships that face them, tax-dodger supreme Starbucks announces that it expects to pay corporation tax in Britain of "somewhere in the range of £10 million" in the next two years.

Does it expect a fanfare of congratulation or thanks from a grateful nation?

Its cavalier statement illustrates that in Tory Britain transnational corporations and the rich pay as little tax as they wish and get away with it.

Restructuring the tax system, plugging loopholes and closing down tax avoidance havens is vital, but so is democratic public ownership, especially of banks, utilities and retail monopolies.