Election

You've got to watch how you type that title, took me a couple of swipes to correct my misplaced 'r'. But then again, looking at the coverage that the election gets in the press, there would appear to be more than a few people who get aroused by policy documents and manifestos.

I suppose I should read the manifesto promises of the main parties - after all I am a small (not physically) businessman and there are no doubt lots of carrots being dangled in my direction. Tax cuts, tax breaks, National insurance, Corporation tax.... It's not that I'm not concerned about the ins and out of the various pre-election sweeteners, it's just that I don't actually believe that any of them ever come to anything.

I honestly can't remember what mandate any of the main parties stood on during the last election, I can't remember the promises so I can't say whether they were broken... Therefore I am starting to think that it doesn't matter who I vote for. The world appears to keep turning regardless of what flag is flying over Downing Street.

What I would like to see is a political party promise something tangible; tax cuts are easily swallowed by households, rises are quickly absorbed - what I would like is a couple of good promises which would be measurable. Improved levels of childhood obesity perhaps, Increased literacy levels maybe, an improvement in public spaces.

I am probably being naive in believing that small changes can have large results but I can't help thinking that improving peoples immediate everyday experiences will have a far greater knock on effect than giving them a couple of quid in their pockets.

Roll on 6th May so we can all start to get on with our lives

Potholes

The roads in Aberdeen are now so bad that I don't really want to go out in the car anywhere.

The junction at Mannofield is like a third world road, the type of thing you see on natural history programmed where the crew struggle through some swept away track to catch a glimpse of a butterfly.

Why are the council so slow at repairing the roads? Why are they considering spending money on filling in parks when they could be filling in roads?


Room Architects

VAT

With the change back to 17.5% VAT now upon us, I will be interested to see just what impact it will have on the construction sector in Scotland.

Apart from ensuring some big tellys and blueray players were bought, it feels as though the reduction has had very little impact. The larger projects stalled by the downturn would have been zero rated or exempt for the most part and the actual saving for small domestic projects was nice but not exactly a dealbreaker.

What I find annoying was that the change was implemented so quickly which did not give clients or design teams the time needed to best take advantage. Had they announced the reduction and waited six months before implementing it might have kick started a few projects.

My main irritation with the governments VAT strategy is that it penalises refurbishment and extension while rewarding new construction. Surely this flies in the face of common sense and the 'reduce, reuse, recycle' mantra.

The government was quite happy to plow money into the car industry via the scrappage scheme, surely it would make sense to do the same sort of thing for the construction sector; providing economic benefits for the vast number of people employed in construction and supporting industries.

It will be interesting, in the run up the general election, to see if any of the main parties are far sighted enough to redress the VAT disparity.