A tax increase to pay for... a tax increase. Brilliant.

From The Mirror:

Almost every person could see their council tax bill rise next year due to the government raising National Insurance to pay for the country’s growing social care bill.

The new levy was announced last week, and will see the National Insurance paid by businesses and individuals rise from 12% to 13.25% next April. Councils with directly-employed staff get part of a £2 billion pot from the government to help with this cost. But MPs last night said the issue will really hit councils which outsource services like bin collections to private companies….

This is arrant nonsense of course on an economic level. It’s all just the government paying money to itself. If HMRC collects more in NIC from people directly or indirectly employed by the government, they can use some of the revenues to increase block grants to councils and it all nets off. But any old excuse to increase taxes. And of course they should have added the ‘social care levy’ to Council Tax in the first place.

I’ve also fixed the banner add for them: