My e-mail from the Conservatives cometh...

Mark,

We have halved inflation. Reduced our debt. And now, we are able to focus on the long-term decisions to strengthen our economy.

We will CUT TAXES for 27 million working people, helping people keep more of their money. We are doing this by cutting the main rate of National Insurance Contributions (NICs) from 12% to 10%. For the average worker earning £35,000 a year, that means a £450 tax cut.

That means we can now CUT TAX for 27 million people. Rewarding hard work. With the largest ever NI tax cut.

Yes, I got my e-mail from the Conservatives - it took about sixteen hours but it did come. Do they have a bank of people in Bangladesh or somewhere hand typing them - that would be the sort of inefficient operation that they seem to be specialising in at the moment?

But nonetheless, it came. Such a pity that it contains so many inaccuracies...

Firstly, whilst the deficit may have been reduced, there is still a significant deficit, so debt continues to increase. You might argue that it has stopped increasing as a percentage of GDP, but that's a technical argument which hardly reflects what the ordinary voter will think.

Secondly, most of the long-term decisions being taken appear to be designed solely to box in an incoming Labour administration rather than to build a stronger economy going forward.

But the sheer gall of claiming that you've cut taxes when you've frozen personal allowances for the next five years, bringing more people into income tax, more people into the 40% rate band and more into the 45% rate band, really does take some beating.

By raising tax on some of the poorest working people, rowing back on what was a Liberal Democrat policy to take the poorest out of income tax - and what is so clever about taking money from people with one hand and giving back to them with the other, anyway? - and then gaslighting them in such an obvious manner, they deserve some comeback.

And when people get their April payslips and discover that, rather than getting lots more money, they see very little difference or, more likely, a decrease, they might decide that punishing those who mislead them is a good idea.

So I won't be accepting the invitation to donate money to the Conservative Party.

I was puzzled by one thing though. The small print at the end of the e-mail states:

You're receiving this email because you signed up on taxcuts.conservatives.com. If you'd like to unsubscribe, please click here.

I'm puzzled because, whilst I agreed to receive this one-off e-mail, I specifically didn't tick the box to say that I would like to receive more e-mails going forward. So why am I being offered an opportunity to unsubscribe?

I shall be watching my inbox with interest over the coming weeks...