A tax on old age

Goodness, those Conservatives are fickle. Yesterday they unveiled a poster attacking Gordon Brown's "£20,000 death tax". But at their party conference in the autumn they were touting a similar deal, except that one had to cough up just £8,000, on retirement, to put in a pool that financed care. David Cameron's £8,000 retirement tax, I call it. There are only two differences between the brace of plans. One is that Brown's will actually cover the cost of elderly care. The other is that Cameron's manages not to look like an attack on inherited wealth. Yet, some day soon we are all going to have to decide what's more important – preserving the assets of the elderly until they die, and their children can get their hands on them, as unencumbered by tax as possible, or accepting that we all have to pay our own way in life, as much as we can afford to, even after retirement, even after death. The trouble for the Conservatives is that they want both of these things, and can't have both. The trouble for the rest of the electorate is that they appear to have decided to attack those who are willing to grit their teeth and make the choice, instead of facing the harsh reality that awaits our ageing population.