Mystery solved.
It sound scary. Even the dog Maximus was fooled. A woman explained her Saturday night fright.
“It was such a hot and sticky day that it was too stuffy in the house, so I went outside and happened to glance upwards,” said Diane, who lives in Maes y Ffynnon.
“It was late, between midnight and 12.30am, and I first saw one orange blob to start with, then there were three, then five. That’s when I thought I had better get my camera, and I managed to take a couple of pictures but I started to think they might have been balloons.
“After looking at the shots I thought: ‘They are definitely not balloons.’ I had never seen that shape and colour before, and they were moving in sequence – it was really strange.”
She added: “I even checked whether there were any balloon fairs or races going on in the area, but there was none. They were moving very slowly and the whole thing lasted about three to four minutes. The shape of them was difficult to make out – they weren’t round or square. The top of them looked like the outline of a car, but the bottom was flat.”
Even her pet dog, an eight-year-old bullmastiff called Maximus, picked up on the strange happenings. “It all makes sense now – just a few seconds before I saw the shapes, he made a strange whining sound,” Diane added.
“The hair was up on his back and he didn’t bark. It was as if he knew something was there that shouldn’t be and he was on his guard. Maximus is normally such a placid dog and I don’t hear a peep from him.
“They say dogs have a sixth sense and I genuinely believe that now. He looks after me so well.”
Not this time Diane. The five lights in the sky were celebrating the 50th birthday of a nephew of mine. The party was in the grounds of a posh hotel a few miles from where this lady lives. The display of sky candles is very impressive. But definitely not out of this world.
Tragic Welsh presence
There are times when it's best to be wrong.
On Saturday an excited voice from the Wales on Sunday newspaper broke the news that there are now more soldiers from Wales in Afghanistan than in any deployment since Malaya. Would I comment?
I told her that I congratulate the brave soldiers and wish them a safe return. But I also expressed regret that they are being exposed to deadly peril in a war that is making no progress. I warned that the large local presence is likely to lead to a surge in casualties. A story was published yesterday in the paper.
Within hours the sad news arrived. A young soldier from Llanelli has died. He is 174th on the list of UK fatalities. I will pay a tribute to him and the others in my debate on Wednesday.
Key stages in the 10p tax saga
A. The poor lose out
Gordon Brown in his last Budget of 2007 announced that in the following tax year, 2008-09, the standard rate would be cut by 2p to 20 per cent and the 10p starting rate would be doubled to that 20 per cent rate.
The 2p cut in the standard rate cost £9.6bn. Replacing the 10p with a 20p starting rate increased tax revenues by £8.6bn.
The 2007 Budget therefore redistributed the tax burden against those on lowest pay with the 10p losers largely financing the gains of all standard rate taxpayers. Taxpayers earning between £5,200 and £18,500 saw their tax burden increased.
B. Parliamentary pressure
In June 2007 Labour MPs, who were supported by the Liberal Democrats and the Nationalists, put down an amendment that the tax changes for the following year should not be enacted until the Government brought forward compensation measures for the poorest who would see their tax burden increased. The amendment was voted down.
In March 2008 Alistair Darling presented a Budget which made no change in the personal tax measures announced by Gordon Brown.
In April 2008, at the end of the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, Greg Pope and I put down a motion signed in all by 46 Labour MPs blocking enactment of the abolition of the 10p rate.
On May 6 2008 Greg and I went to see the Chancellor and proposed that the Government increase personal allowances across the board, so that no low paid worker lost out from the tax changes, and that the whole of the increase in the allowances should be clawed back through the national insurance system from workers gaining from the 2p tax cut bonus.
On May 13 2008 Alistair announced a £600 increase in the personal allowance, with no claw back from standard rate taxpayers. Cost £2.7bn
In November 2008 the Government announced a further £130 increase in the personal allowances, from April 2009.
There have been no specific changes to compensate 10p tax losers. All changes have benefited all standard rate payers who gained from the tax reduction. The tax burden therefore remains skewed against the lowest paid as a result of abolishing the 10 starting rate.
C. The number of poor losers
IFS estimated that the number of losing households was probably in the region of 5.3 million. By using household data the Treasury sought to minimise the number of losers. Households with one worker gaining more from the 2p tax reduction than a second worker lost by doubling the starting rate of tax are counted as winners.
The IFS estimated on May 20 2008 that the numbers of individual tax losers was still around six million even after the £600 increase in personal allowances.
In June 2008 Peter Kilfoyle MP asked the Treasury how the remaining losers would be compensated. The Government responded in September stating that further measures would be announced in the Pre Budget Report of 2008. In this report in November the Government increased personal allowances by £130 a year for the tax year 2009-2010, but again this was not a specific measure to compensate the low paid whose tax burden had been increased relatively to all other groups of taxpayers.
Even so this increase in personal allowances will still leave, in the financial year 2011-12, half a million households and 1.3 million taxpayers worse off by more that £1 per week than they were in 2007. An even larger number are still losing by less that £1 per week.
Then I would guess that voting for the amendment that blocks the current Finance Bill would be an excellent way to concentrate minds and get this messup sorted out? As said on Radio 4 this morning this is the last chance before the election to rectify this mistake.
Posted by: Tony | July 07, 2009 at 08:48 AM
The 10p tax debacle is one of the most horrifying things my party has done: it announced to the world that appeasing Daily Mail readers is more important than caring for the poor: a betrayal of Labour's former core values.
Posted by: Aidan Byrne | July 07, 2009 at 12:15 PM