A new Conservative party poster appeared to be backfiring last night as media commentators attacked the ad and a new spoof site was set up to parody the campaign
A new Conservative party poster appeared to be backfiring last night with a range of media commentators attacking the ad and a new spoof site set up to parody the campaign.
Trailed on Conservative Home yesterday, a new posted outlining that, “Now Gordon wants £20,000 when you die” will appear at 18 sites nationwide. But writing on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, Peter Hoskin describes the poster as “disingenuous”:
Andy Burnham this morning denied the death tax claim with the words, “The Guardian story suggests a £20,000 flat levy. I’m not currently considering that as a lead option for reform.” Sure, the Health Secretary has left himself some wiggle room – he could still introduce the levy. But the fact remains that the death tax isn’t current Labour policy. It may never be. And it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
On politics.co.uk, Alex Stevenson writes that Andrew Lansley’s decision to push the death tax line even after Burnham’s statement was “only a flimsy covering over the scare tactics so keenly seized on by the opposition.” On Sky’s Boulton & Co. Miranda Richardson says, “It seems a somewhat wishy-washy basis on which to campaign.”
Clifford Singer, the man behind the viral MyDavidCameron spoof poster site, quickly launched a MyToryTombstone site. An online generator will be in place soon but in the meantime, the graphically skilled can email their posters to [email protected].
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37 Responses to “New Tory ad backfires”
Stefan Baskerville
RT @wdjstraw: The Nasty Party is Back http://bit.ly/auEaM4 RT @Kevin_Maguire: Broon to Cam: "They are the same old Tories."
Henry
Roger,
I was baffled as to why the Tory boys (& girls) behind Cameron looked so bored. Aren’t they meant to clap & look excited or something? Admittedly his delivery of the speech left something to be desired, as well as the content, but that’s not the point…
Maybe they were uncomfortable wearing ‘normal’ clothes.
Roger
And another thing from myself.
The Tory proposal is to take £8,000 from you at 65 and give you free social care in return.
The option fromn the Green paper they are pretending is Labour policy might take £20,000 off you when you die in exchange for a right to free social care.
Here’s something – if you open up Excel, put in £8,000 and calculate compound interest at say 5% for 20 years (which is roughly what your life expectancy is at 65) – you get £20,212.
So by not keeping that £8,000 and investing it in an annuity you are depriving your loved ones of exactly the same amount of unearned income that a £20k inheritance levy would ‘take away’ from them.
So the Green Paper option if somebody had the guts to implement it would give you a right to free social care and recoup the cost from the estates of those who can afford it when they die.
The Tory proposal effectively just gives unfeasibly cheap long term care insurance to those who can spare £8,000 at retirement and makes the taxpayer cover the huge difference between that sum and actual costs averaging £30,000 – while doing nothing at all for everyone else.
Of the two the Green Paper proposal is in fact the most fiscally and actuarially sound – which is why genuine experts like Lipsey think it is the better idea.
Roger
Henry,
They do look bored – sitting staring at someone’s expensively-suited back, listening to talking points you’ve already heard multiple times before and idly wondering whether all your chums are going to make terrible fun of you when they see how crap you look in the picture does that to you.
And of course if they were real students at least one would be yawning, two texting and another trying to do the demon horns sign behind Call Me Dave’s head.
And I don’t know about you but I’ve helped arrange many, many rooms for meetings of all types and sizes and never put a whole bunch of seats behind a speaker like that.
Henry
Hmm, you’d think with all that money, they’d know how to arrange this kind of thing. Still, even Cameron sounded bored delivering his cheap litttle lines.