According to The Times today

“…Labour ministers…say that delaying the election would give Mr Brown longer to attack Tory economic plans, which they say have been hugely undermined by the pledge to eliminate inheritance tax for all but millionaires and pay for it with a £25,000 annual charge on “nondomicile” residents.”

However yesterday, reported Gabriel Rozenberg, Economics Reporter for The Times,

“The attempts of Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, to discredit the Conservatives’ tax plans were sharply undermined yesterday by his own top civil servant. Nicholas Macpherson, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, admitted that his department’s costing of the Conservatives’ plans for a levy on nondomiciled taxpayers were based on incomplete data. Mr Darling had cited analysis by the Treasury which allegedly proved that the Conservatives could not raise £3.5 billion with their plans. He said the tax would only raise £650 million. But the detailed analysis, released yesterday by the the Treasury, revealed that this was based purely on a mathematical assumption, as the Government had no information on how much Britain’s nondomiciled taxpayers earn overseas, a figure crucial to the calculations. In a letter to George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, Mr Macpherson said that the assumptions used had been “clearly flagged” to his boss. Mr Osborne has called on Mr Darling to apologise.”

In the meantime, Jeff Randall of The Daily Telegraph explains why Labour’s carping on such points doesn’t add up to a convincing argument in any case.

Labour cannot tell the whoppers of old any more and get away with it.   Any spinful pronouncements and funny figures are likely to rebound with a vengeance, as in justice they should.

George Osborne and a sleight of hand by the BBC

...although The Sun would say that, wouldn't it?  I couldn't possibly say, one way or another.

It is understandable that the metropolitan elite which now dominates the upper echelons of Government and the BBC would see little purpose being served by engaging in any form of real, meaningful dialogue with the likes of us, the hoi polloi, given our well documented aversion to the use of deodorant and limited, Neanderthal grasp of the important issues.

Says The Sun,

“The BBC has virtually ignored the debate raging about the new [European] Treaty — despite uproar in all parties and on both sides of the argument.  The same self-censorship is applied to immigration — another enormous issue not to be discussed in front of the licence-payers. It is not just because many of its editors and producers are lefties — though many are. It is an arrogant, lazy assumption that they know best — and ignorant audiences should not be disturbed by matters beyond their ken.”

Indeed.  It is the sheer condescension, which is so offensive.

George Osborne and a sleight of hand by the BBC

The BBC: Soft Left, anti-American (and very pro-European Union)

The BBC and its “culture of bias”

Nobody mention the "Labour" word

Biased Beeb

In today’s Daily Telegraph Andrew Porter, the newspaper’s Political Editor, commenting upon the Conservative post-conference opinion poll surge and in particular the ICM poll in The Guardian which shows support for Labour and the Conservatives as even, says,

 “In addition, a Guardian poll by ICM - which tends to favour the Tories - is thought to have the Conservatives almost neck and neck with Labour.”

As my post here shows, manifestly this is not the case. Where ICM opinion polls can be compared with election results since 2005, Conservative support is almost always underestimated in by a small amount and Labour overestimated by a larger margin. It might be the case that ICM consistently underestimates Conservative support less than the other opinion polls but this still does not add up to its polls “favouring” the Conservatives, merely that ICM is the most accurate amongst an inaccurate bunch.

Long gone are the days in the 1980’s when Gallup used to favour the Conservatives, in the sense that its opinion polls compared very well with actual election results, time after time.

Tories renew election call after poll