Word: barbering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week the Tory government carried its quiet revolution-or counter-revolution-a long step further. In the House of Commons, Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony Barber unlocked the customary faded red leather case embossed with Queen Victoria's monogram, "VR," and produced the new budget. It is an economic program designed to get Britain out of what Barber describes as "the ruts we have been following": an economic growth rate of only 2%, an inflation rate of 8% and rising unemployment that currently has 750,000 Britons out of work. In a two-hour speech that brought Tory...
...Relief. In an effort to raise the growth rate to at least 3%, corporation taxes were lowered to 40% (under Labor, the high was 45%). Inheritance tax exemptions were liberalized. As a first step toward a reform of Britain's "confiscatory" income tax system, as he called it, Barber put a 75.4% ceiling on tax rates for those in the $50,000-and-above range (v. the 91.25% rate that applied under Labor). There were lesser cuts for those in the middle-income brackets. Additionally, the elderly had their pensions boosted by 20% and exemptions for minor children were...
...cheap welfare milk to expectant mothers and preschool children. Increases in school meal prices, prescription fees in the National Health Service, dental charges, fares on the nationalized railways and rents on subsidized housing have all been put in motion since the Tories came to power. Even the cost of Barber's higher pensions for the aged will come from higher payroll contributions from workers...
...needed. Politically, it might prove a bad gamble. Labor was quick to alert Britons to the implications of the cutbacks. "It is a budget for strengthening inequality," said ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins. Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson touched an even more sensitive nerve. He charged that Barber had created a "two-nations" budget, recalling Disraeli's famous label for the Britain of haves and havenots...
...have to be dropped or cut because of distracting street noises. The repertory varies with the location. "The people by Doubleday's dig Beethoven more than the people in front of Macy's," says Violinist Robert Dubow. "Bach is too intellectual for the street," reports Bassoonist Greg Barber. "Besides, his line is long and threadlike. It can easily be lost when a truck roars by." Adds another street musician: "Everyone understands Mozart." Of the all-string works, Haydn's "London" trios get the biggest audiences and make the most money...