Empty Promises, Empty Heads

'We have secured the world, the universe and everything therein' were the words of DUP 'negotiators' after they had completed their talks on shared government with IRA apologists.  Indeed, the DUP website highlights a list of alleged treats the majority population should relish.  One of these concerns a significant package from Gordon Brown.  There has also been talk of lowering the corporation tax in Ulster to bring it more into line with the celtic meerkat to its south.

In truth the only thing promised in the St Andrews Agreement was a hearing with Gordy to assess financial possibilities.  It now looks like the reduction in corporation tax will come to nothing, as rumblings in Scotland effectively prohibit the Chancellor from giving exemptions to only one part of the United Kingdom.  Brown knows full well (as SNP leader, Alex Salmond, correctly points out) that pressure to adapt the tax system in more peripheral areas of the country would become irresistible.  You can also place a reasonably safe bet that where the issue of corporation tax had led, the question of a massive financial package will follow.

These consequential disappointments say much about the amateurish posturing of the Democratic Unionists.  They say even more about a Chancellor heralded by the MSM as a sound financier.  Gordon Brown is a unreconstructed socialist and his stance on corporation tax proves just that.  Rather than waiting to see the natural outworkings of business investment on the back of favourable taxation conditions, Brown would prefer to keep taxes high and determine levels in the immediate term.  Socialist economics are self-perpetuating: tax the rich, redistribute to the poor, and thus keep the poor in an indefinite state of dependence on the existence of socialist principles.  This is what we see in the UK.  London effectively keeps the rest of the Union going.  Its share of government money is lower than in Wales or in Scotland, and in the case of Scotland, the government largesse is wholly unjust.  Gordon Brown would rather tax the hell out of Londoners and those in the south east to keep the likes of Scotland in their accustomed manner, instead of creating a climate of entrepreneurial culture north of the border, in Northern Ireland or, for that matter, in many parts of northern England.

When the DUP meet the Chancellor soon, we will witness the clash of unreconstructed devolutionists and unreconstructed socialists.  What a horrible prospect!