For those of you unfamiliar with a pasty, it's a popular food that is a meal folded into pastry. (Many people love them though I was unable to stomach more than a few bites on my one and only attempt.) They're widely available in the UK with one particular pasty chain that seems to be at every train station across the country.
To some degree, it's sort of a home grown McDonald's in that it's cheap and quick food for people on the run. Just as the 1% in America probably doesn't often do fast food like McDonald's the British 1% (including and especially the blue blood elite government leaders) probably don't do too many visits to pasty shops.
With that in mind, fast forward to the ongoing economic problems in the UK. The Conservative government recently announced tax cuts for the rich (to spur on growth despite there being no proof of such a theory) while raising taxes on take-away food items such as pasties. The pro-austerity government once again is fine with clobbering the middle class who works for a living while catering to the richest Brits, who have prospered during the recession. Fortunately these policies are being noticed by the public, who are now turning against the current government in favor of Labour.
With a sagging economy and slow growth expected due to the unnecessary (and counter-productive) austerity, the Tories may be in for a rough ride. Their class warfare against the middle class is being exposed. NY Times:
The tax controversy, which the British press has called, inevitably, “Pasty-gate,” has come to symbolize the increasingly vitriolic debate in Britain over who should shoulder the burden of the government’s drive to cut debt and spending.How is it possible that Cambridge educated government leaders who carry the title of baronet could be viewed as elitist and out of touch? Go figure.
The tax has ignited a political firestorm, prompting even generally pro-government tabloid newspapers to attack it and leading the equally posh British prime minister, David Cameron, to claim — not all that convincingly — that he, truly, is an aficionado of the pasty (which rhymes with nasty).
The issue has also revived memories of the poll tax and other unpopular measures imposed by previous Conservative Party-led governments that left many Britons feeling that their leaders were out of touch.
