The pasty tax revolt

Budgets usually don't sound so good on Day Two, and so it's proving with the discovery that yesterday's announcement of measures by the Office of Tax Simplification to end VAT anomalies is today branded The Great Pasty Tax Swindle (#pastytax on Twitter everywhere.) Funnily enough the idea of a tax on Cornish pasties did not feature in a recent ComRes poll designed to identify the most unpopular taxes in Britain today. Of course, it's not really a tax on pasties specifically - it's just VAT, extended, and catching pasties in its net. I wonder how many of those Cornish MPs who today are working themselves into a frenzy in defence of the pasty remember voting to increase VAT to 20%? And will they now vote against the budget?