Cameron vs. Clegg: UK's top leaders clash over welfare

There are many things I don't understand about UK politics.  So how anyone beyond these septic shores fathoms the goings on in the House of Commons, I know not.

But my ears do become alert when I hear 'welfare budget.'  As if any of the cabinet have ever been near a dole queue, other than for PR purposes.

Moreover, I wonder how much more of the welfare budget the Tories are trying to divert to feather their own nests.

Cameron, imo, looking rather like Tim Nice-But-Dim

Point in question: Vince Cable has stirred the shite about Mansion Tax ahead of next month's Autumn Statement. Erm, in December? Anyway, both the PM and the Chancellor, of course, are objectionate.

Now we know politicians spend as little time as possible in the UK for tax purposes (or at least their money does), but not knowing in which season December falls begs the question: What the feck?

The one thing they've not figured a way of smuggling out of the country, however, is their luxurious mansion and/or idyllic country estate, or at least those that they're claiming expenses for.  Wherever their secretaries live and work from in this world of remote and cloud computing is becoming more difficult to substantiate by the day.

Cameron keen to rule out mansion tax; Osborne eyes welfare budget to tune of £10bn

Anyhow, to the topic in point.  Last month at the Government's Tory party conference in Birmingham, David Cameron categorically ruled out 'clobbering' his rich associates with a huge tax bill if their properties were worth more than £2M.

The PM obviously has the Chancellor on side, who's already looking to axe £10bn from the welfare budget, putting the UK's 8% unemployed and its disabled populace even more in jeopardy.

But hold on - here come the cavalry!  Nick Clegg has finally grown a pair and made it known that he'll not tolerate any more reduction in the welfare budget unless the country's privileged few start to contribute more.  Go, Cleggy!

Reinforcing the Deputy Prime Minister's standpoint, fellow Lib Dem member Vince Cable revealed that, although stamp duty and council tax banding were being considered as a way of raising public finance, he believed it only right and proper that taxation should be imposed on 'wealth and property' in the first instance.

Exactly where have these politicians been hiding since the coalition was formed?  More of the same, please!

It has been a longstanding practice for the UK's top earners to extract the money that their UK interest, therefore our economy, pays them and deposit this income in tax havens across Europe and beyond.  But they're hardly likely to send their mansions brick by brick to Switzerland or Monaco, are they?

Running a country is like running a business. If those at the top of the tree continue to take from the economy without replenishing the stock then the structure is simply going to fold, crumble and eventually collapse. Sound familiar?

Watch this space as a conclusion to this developing tag-team match is expected in just a few weeks' time.  Cameron/Osborne vs Clegg/Cable - who's your money on?