Darling and the stamp duty fiasco

As predicted Darling and Brown are creating another fiasco over proposed changes to stamp duty.

1) Another totally unfunded tax promise that uses the people's money to bail out the housing industry.

2) It has been widely reported as a stamp duty holiday where stamp duty is not paid on purchases within a certain timescale. This will have the effect of stalling the market even more as potential buyers now wait and see what changes are to take effect.

3) The proposal is actually a deferral of payment of stamp duty. So the stamp duty is paid at a later date, again stalling the market and just another amount of money that needs to be repaid.

Why this government cannot just make an announcement with immediate effect I do not know. Almost everything they do has the opposite effect and makes financial markets more certain that we are totally leaderless and rudderless at the moment.