This week I endured, rather than enjoyed, a train journey north and subsequent return. On the way: ‘We apologise for the overcrowding, the previous service was cancelled due to driver shortages’. On the way back: ‘We apologise for the overcrowding, we seem to have lost (sic) five carriages on this service’. Then I heard Greta talking about her love of trains and train journeys. ‘Could you get to Stockholm by train?’ she was asked. ‘Yes, quite easily, from here to Brussels, then to Cologne and Hamburg, then on to Copenhagen… I do love to be on a train’ she said. Is she mad? No, she’s European, travelling on European trains which on which you do not have to employ guerrilla tactics to secure your reserved seat (staff obviously keeping a very low profile in these circumstances); and so there’s a fighting chance that the railways can compete with both air and road travel. In this country, not a hope.
“Why most won’t need to worry about IHT on pensions”
Many a government has made the point that only a minority will be affected by this or that tax change or tinker. It is, however, both perception and aspiration which are important, and they are what makes IHT the ‘most hated’ of all taxes – along with all the others, of course.
