Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Tories aim tax cuts at poor:

Lord Saatchi spinning like dervish:

"Against this background, he felt confident enough to talk up his passionate belief in the unfairness of taxing the less well-off. Stressing that he was expressing his own views, Lord Saatchi said that the 'chronic injustice' has been caused by the failure of successive chancellors to raise the tax threshold in line with average earnings, a move which would take hundreds of thousands of people out of the tax bracket by raising the threshold to £10,000.

'It is a situation this government probably quite likes. It means that people pay tax first. Then, when they are sufficiently poor, they are means-tested, found to be poor and then they can go cap in hands with a form to the government asking for benefit.'"

Well, I don't know if he's run this one by the front bench, 'cos by my reckoning this would put 1 grand into the pocket of everyone earning over £10K. Multiply that by the 20 million workforce and you get £200 billion. So, this "chronic unfairness" would be best solved by spending 200 billion quid to give those earning 10 grand or less 20 quid a week extra, along with everyone else.

Now, if you targeted that money only at those who are earning less than £10K (around 17% of the workforce according to government stats) they would get about £110 quid a week extra (I think - maths was never my strong suit). The point is, here's a tory trying to dress up general tax cuts as a gift to the poor. As if they give a shit.