Surcharge swindle

I feel that it is my duty to point out that Alfred Sant and his "new" Labour are proposing another gimmick or worse, a con! Labour are trying to insult the intelligence of the public; no wonder they are also proposing a repeater class... they think we are stupid!

One needs to apply some simple mathematics (which if you are wondering, no, I did not need to undergo a repeater year to learn).

The reasoning is as follows. If Labour are promising to cut the surcharge by half, this promise can easily be kept even if oil prices in the future rocket upwards, because Labour are only promising to cut surcharge by half and not to cap it. So what does this mean? A simple mathematical example will illustrate better: If the surcharge is currently at €100, then 50 per cent of that would be €50.

But if Labour want to keep squeezing the current €100 of surcharge out of people's pockets, all they have to do is to immediately raise the surcharge amount to €200 and then cut that amount by 50 per cent, which is equivalent to the initial surcharge of €100 being charged to the people. To exaggerate the example, Labour can raise the surcharge to €5,000 and cut that by half resulting in a surcharge of €2,500 being levied. So much for the 50 per cent surcharge cut!

Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that the 50 per cent surcharge cut is all a gimmick and swindle.