Growth
Will you remove the deeply damaging Jobs tax which has hit confidence and undermined investment?
Will you remove the tax attack on family farms and small businesses, as you need them to expand to get growth?
Why do you think the US has been growing twice as fast as the UK? Will you copy their success, based on cheap energy and lower taxes?
Public spending
Have you calculated how much it costs to provide subsidised housing, NHS service, school places and other public sector capital and services for each no income and low income migrant? How many can we afford?
Why is public sector productivity down 8.5% since 2019? When will it return to 2019 levels?
What action are you taking to boost public sector productivity? Why is there no recruitment freeze in place apart from medics, teachers and uniformed personnel?
Spending cuts
Why do you accept the need to reimburse the Bank of England for tens of billions of losses each year?
Why do you not take action to stem the losses and cost overruns at HS2, Network Rail and the Post Office?
Why do you want to cut disability payments and pensioner fuel allowance when there are so many easier and larger targets for savings?
March 25, 2025
Good morning.
These are ideologues who will not see the errors of their ways and change course. They will double down. To give an example of how bad this government is, I have watched the latest episode from, Harry’s Farm (YT) and the government have ceased all subsidies to (England only) farmers. The National Farmers Union received only half an hours warning on the cut. Scotland, Wales and Ulster have remained under the previous regime and are unaffected. Once again the English and England are shafted for the sake of a Union that is increasingly looking one sided.
No one speaks for us, no one !
March 25, 2025
@Mark B – Agreed. A rotten Parliament filled with ‘free-loaders’ all seemingly part of the ‘Me’ culture
March 25, 2025
One more question SJR. Why, Chancellor, does your party persist with Nett Zero and its costs way beyond HS2.
We await her response to your questions, but I suspect it is not in the DNA of socialism to grow the economy or reduce the burdon of the state. Anticipate more of the negativity of her first nine months.
March 25, 2025
I thought that so far as Badenoch is concerned, party policy is no longer to support net zero. Of course, there remains a significant caucus of Tory MPs who are members of the Conservative Environment Network who disagree with her. They really would be more comfortable as Lib Dems, with Ed Davey having doubled down in support of net zero while criticising Badenoch’s new stance in a recent speech.
March 25, 2025
All pertinent questions John but you know the answer as well as I do.
Liebour is only interested in their voting base, the public sector
WFA and farm IT, together with VAT on schools is ideological.
As for energy prices we really are in the realms of 6th form debating societies.
Milibrain is as dangerous as Putin, there must be some semi literate members of Parliament who can see the destruction he’s causing so why isn’t he stopped
He’s now sanctioned the purchase of solar panels from China made using coal by slave labour.
There is no words bad enough to describe this shower of excrement.
March 25, 2025
Why isn’t he sacked? Because he’s the most popular Minister amongst Labour members ….. who, in my opinion, would struggle to create a full set of functioning brain-cells between them.
March 25, 2025
Ian argues that Miliband is no danger to us. Why would he be sacked?
March 25, 2025
All sensible points but you ask?
“Why is public sector productivity down 8.5% since 2019? When will it return to 2019 levels?
Public sector productivity is measure by activity employee. How many parking tickets or bus lane fines were issued per person, how many roads were further constricted by islands, bus lanes, anti-car traffic lights, how many hotels, bikes, phone, driving and tennis lessons were provided to encourage more small boat arrivals today? … So much of what the state sector produce is totally pointless or actively damaging.
We need to measure did the state sector produce that was of positive value to voters & tax payers to measure real productivity? More pointless red tape, more fines for breaches, more net zero lunacy, more planning obstacles are usually negative productivity usually just inconveniencing the productive for no good reason. The workers right bill is hugely anti-productive as is Ed and May’s net zero lunacy and not having decent diesel generator back up at Heathrow. The aircraft each have emergency generator back up but not the airport it seems! So what drove this religious lunacy Ed or Theresa?
March 25, 2025
by activity per employee (be it positive or negative activity it is still counted as positive). So digging holes and filling them in both count!
March 25, 2025
We could try the positive with potholes. But they soon open up again (no need to dig, though utilities will help), when we really need to re-lay road courses.
March 25, 2025
Michael Goves’s ministry for levelling down has allowed councils to tax second homes and empty furnished lettings from the moment they are vacated by a tenant. It used to be untaxed until ready for re lettings, then 2 months grace but from 1st April it’s double council tax. £4300 pa in the case of a house which the tenant left needing complete redecoration, broken flooring and garden completely overgrown. Rachel must be delighted with the extra money. I see many owners of holiday or weekend homes are selling up and taking their spending with them.
March 25, 2025
Here is another question.
“Ms Reeves, you are the Chancellor….Why?”
March 25, 2025
Your ‘report card’ is pretty dire. It could be suggested that you ought to be excluded from the class.
Do you have any successes?
March 25, 2025
Add “Will you reverse the tax measures that have driven the multi millionaires and billionaires, with their spending power and risk capital, from the UK to tax friendly shores?”
March 25, 2025
I am in the process of sending this letter to various places, with necessary supporting references and headed:
“THE FOLLY OF THE NET ZERO CRUSADE”
“Between 1948 and 2008 the UK economy grew at an average rate of 2.7 percent a year, but since 2008 it has been only 1.1 percent a year.
Moreover there was no significant difference in growth rate for the eight years from 2008 to 2016 and the subsequent eight years to 2024.
So anybody who seeks to attribute the present slow growth of our economy to Brexit is mistaken; they need to look further back, to 2008.
The year of the Climate Change Act, which formalised action against global warming as a new high priority mission for the government.
Since when we have sacrificed economic growth averaging 1.6 percent a year for sixteen years, a cumulative loss of 28 percent of GDP.
And what effect have the noble, but expensive, efforts of our government had on the evolution of the planetary temperature? Negligible.”
March 25, 2025
Causes of low growth in GDP per cap I put them in the order of importance in my opinion.
1. Net Zero
2. Taxes and government are about 50% to large.
3. The disasters of the Covid lock downs, the net harm dangerous Covid Vaccines and Sunak’s vast borrowing pissed down the drain on this.
4. The vast low skilled immigration levels.
5. The benefit levels mean that for many work does not pay.
6. The mad rigging of the energy, transport, housing, education, banking… markets.
7. Vast over regulation of almost everything especially employment.
8. Far too much litigatiom ant too many overpaid lawyer arguing over other people’s money and generating non. Indeed the reverse.
March 25, 2025
The WEF, IMF (and therefore The Treasury, Bank of England and OBR) say “No.”
The managed decline is deliberate and all Rachel from Accounts will do is accelerate it.
March 25, 2025
It seems you are correct.
Ottmar Edenhofer, author of 2007 IPCC report said, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the worlds wealth.”
UN chief Christina Figueres stated the true aim of the 2014 Paris climate conference was, “ to change [capitalist] economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”
It is all very much deliberate!
March 25, 2025
Apparently they could not redistribute the wealth creators.
Where is John Gault?
March 25, 2025
You could also ask:
When will you begin to “smash the gangs”
Will you reject the recent offer of a pay rise for MP’s
Will you call a General election so we can be rid of your damaging, hateful, incompetent government.
March 25, 2025
Today’s editorial in the Belfast News Latter:
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/editorial-the-uk-must-drill-frack-and-expand-its-nuclear-power-5049330
“The UK must drill, frack and expand its nuclear power”
has put me on to this report:
https://oeuk.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/2025/03/Business-Outlook-Report-2025-Offshore-Energies-UK-a9buic.pdf
which states inter alia:
“Alongside this is recognition of the continued role of oil and gas. As this report shows, over 90% of operators and developers among OEUK members say revenues from oil and gas are of critical importance in enabling projects including renewables and low carbon.
Our report highlights that in a scenario where there is economy-wide realisation of net zero by 2050, the UK is expected to use 13-15 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent over that period. Yet the UK is only on track to realise up to 4bn of those barrels from domestic production.”
March 25, 2025
I hope the Belfast News includes the rich shale in Fermanagh in its list of resources.
March 25, 2025
letters@newsletter.co.uk
March 25, 2025
Rachel claims the Spring Statement is not a ‘Budget’, because taxes are not being increased or decreased.
She is wrong yet again, as any change she makes affecting income or expenditure budgets the amount people have.
March 25, 2025
Almost all these questions were equally applicable to Sunak and Hunt when they were PM and Chancellor. The only way to stay sane is to accept that continuing decline is the future and that soon England and English life will be unrecognisable from how they were just twenty years ago.
March 25, 2025
Will be? It’s already unrecognisable.
March 25, 2025
I don’t think that Labour can reverse the jobs tax without losing huge credibility – the £25 billion has to come from somewhere and she can’t just say growth.
She can’t raise any more taxes as the tax burden is too high so she needs to save money.
Civil service payments and salaries (and pensions) are ripe for making savings. Cut the numbers, freeze the levels, with limited progression along the spine and move from defined contributions to defined benefit schemes with MUCH lower employer contributions. Cut the number of Lords and MPs and SPADS.
Freeze benefits. Tax thresholds are frozen so why are benefits rising.
Reduce government activity. Douglas Carswell has suggested closing departments. This is worth investigating.
Lower gas and electricity taxes. Increase domestic production. This is where the growth will come from.
It’s not difficult, it is doctrinal.
March 25, 2025
Carswell had a lot of detailed ideas that I hope others are taking note of. I don’t agree with everything he proposes, but I think a lot of it is spot on. Sitting in the US he has the advantage of seeing which of Trump’s initiatives work and don’t work directly rather than simply reading one biassed media account or another.
March 25, 2025
Trumps strategies have only just started. You think Carswell will be able to differentiate between those which will fail and those which will be successful?
March 25, 2025
There seems to have been massive growth in tire prices. Yesterday a Bridgestone for my small hybrid was £149. A few months ago a Bridgestone for my large estate car was £114. That’s some inflation!
I noted yesterday that I could join the Bridgestone club (as I bought 2 tyres). Benefits included a 20k mileage guarantee on ICE vehicles – but only 15k mileage guarantee on EVs. It seems clear that the much heavier EVs go through tyres quicker – causing some nasty pollution by all accounts and helping our crumbling roads to crumble even faster. This will cause growth in the pothole repair business and the tyre sales business.
I buy Bridgestones because the only thing between me and my car when it is doing 100 feet per second is the rubber in my tyres. I note a lot of people reporting the experience of having the sidewall of a budget tyre collapse when hitting a pothole. Hmmm. Driving up the A303 a couple of weeks ago there are several places where there are long cracks/potholes. I thank the Waze application which warns you of potholes coming up.
March 25, 2025
I’ll be sticking with my Pirellis Mike! BTW – If you live in the Wokingham/Bracknell area, I suggest you seek out a certain tyre business just past Bracknell tip – I’m sure they sell Bridgestones too!
March 25, 2025
Not so long ago such tyres cost in the region of £65-70. It seems we have no choice but to live with the idea that everything will cost more, week by week, the deeper we get into the implementation of net0.
Expect worse to come.
March 25, 2025
A better term for it would be the Spring Offensive…. Because most of us will find it offensive as it will only increase the problems we have – that is one certainty.
No of course not, don’t be silly, these have all been targeted to reduce them and their effect.
It’s an ideal way to waste more taxpayer’s money!
Will you do anything to help the huge number of people struggling to survive after your previous offensives?Another silly question – Why would labour be interested in helping the masses to survive better when the plan requires that they do not!
March 25, 2025
Afraid the only question I have for this Chancellor would be;
When are you going to resign ?
I honestly do not think she has a clue what damage she is doing to the Country, to business, and to peoples finances.
Without doubt few politicians understand what human nature reactions are caused by many of their policies.
With so many policy changes, it is almost impossible now for anyone to plan for any kind of future at all.
What is the point of working striving, saving, investing, if most of it is taken away by taxation, and then simply squandered by the State.
March 25, 2025
For now, Labour needs a ‘wicked witch’ character to put through lots more bad stuff, a year before the election bye, bye.
The media is being primed for a ‘Wealth tax’ that will start of quite high until they leave and it needs to be dropped, and dropped and frozen..2% net worth each year. even if it collects £25bn a year that’s <2% of the govt budget.
Then a triple lock removal, then a means-tested pension punishing people who did actually pay in more than they will ever take out and a pension age of 70.
She's going to have a lot more tax to spend anyway, the corporation tax 25% that Hunt put in place. The NMW is pushing up lower waged workers pay so which will bring in more tax and the massive hit on growing businesses will have a short-term hit. The extra stamp duty on house sales above just £125k pa although that market is said to be stalling she won't be happy until desperation sales fall into big companies hands to rent out.
March 25, 2025
Sir John
In some ways we have to be honest with ourselves, the ideological terrorisms by this Government and the greater majority of our Parliaments this century has endured the concept of of serving and doing what right for the Country and its People went missing sometime ago.
The Chancellor is not hearing you, me or anyone that is using logic as with 2TK its about personal ego and self-esteem. They as their predecessors refuse to work for or with the Country or its People, its the ideology of their interpretation of Socialisms that is front and centre, ‘champagne socialism’, the them and us mentality
March 25, 2025
These are all good questions, but you will get no answers. It is now clear that Rachel Reeves has no idea how to grow the UK economy but is an expert at knowing how to stop growth.
The Chancellor will do none of the things you suggest because that would mean admitting she was wrong, and politicians simply cannot do that. It takes humility to admit you are wrong, and the problem is most MPs, including the PM and Chancellor, lack that but have plenty of arrogance and self-belief.
It is suggested the education budget will be cut, but at my son’s school, they had a 12.5% cut in their budget at the start of this school year last September. Teaching assistants were made redundant; one teacher had to go on a four-day week, and teachers have been buying books and pencils out of their own pockets! Yet we can find billions for Net Zero and Ukraine while our children suffer a poorer education. Yet they are our future!
March 25, 2025
did they have a 12.5% budget cut or did teachers’ pension obligations take 12.5% extra funds.
I suspect the latter
March 25, 2025
One can grow the economy by increasing public spending becuase it is included in GDP. There are essentially two ways to do it: either by transferring work to the state from the private sector (eg., education, building social housing), or by public sector wages, increasing benefits and allowances.
I’m not suggesting these are good things to do. The former appears to be robbing Peter to pay Paul but it works because the state is less efficient therefore the costs increase, the amount of money needed to achieve the same output is increased so GDP is increased. But GDP per head decreases.
Both are bad policies, really, really bad policies.
It may be that if public spending is used to catalyse private sector growth that would result in GDP per cap also increasing but Starmer’s gang have no such intention because they hate private enterrise except for the large corporates that can afford and are willing to adopt socialist Woke policies as corporate policies, eg DEI and Trent Water, which also gets them social credit as part of public sector tender evaluation.
etc ed
March 25, 2025
One of my locals has just moved to a four-day week. I guess that Reeves is to blame.
The right taxation policy for pubs? Reduce their government-imposed costs until more are opening than closing. And don’t worry about paying for it. Bust businesses pay no taxes.
March 26, 2025
One of my locals which has a couple of B&B rooms upstairs, has just started offering Full English breakfasts Thurs – Sat. They are doing everything they possibly can to survive this spiteful, destructive government which seems determined to destroy the traditional English pub.
March 25, 2025
Growth: Agreed – tax on family farms should be removed – however in the interests of the larger economy there should be better oversight on what and when they should grow etc.
We can forget about the US we don’t compare and even less so now – the downside to the turmoil that the US Administration has introduced has not kicked in yet.
Introduce emergency legislation to deal with the illegal immigrants – straightaway locate them to offshore camps – they should never be allowed to settle in their location of choice.
For a public servant to become a manager he needs people to manage – just the same as in the private sector
March 25, 2025
I would trust markets to work. Farmers know their land and are much better placed to decide how to use it. If they aim to be profitable and thereby generate a surplus of a particular crop then we are better off exporting that in exchange for other supply that our farms are less suited to. There is far too much intervention in crops already particularly energy crops, where rape and maize for biofuel are subsidised alongside solar panels.
March 25, 2025
G :
The tax on family farms has nothing to do with money. It is a paltry amount. It is a Net Zero project to remove independent farmers in order to own the land and consequently make it easier to re-wiild, cut fertilser use and end animal farming etc..
March 26, 2025
Correct. Corporatism of farming is the aim.
March 25, 2025
The Scotsman reports:
https://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/north-sea-could-produce-half-of-all-uk-oil-and-gas-in-run-up-to-2050-report-5049235
“North Sea could produce half of all UK oil and gas in run up to 2050 – report”
“Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said … “Only by sprinting to clean power by 2030 can the UK take back control of its energy and protect both family and national finances from fossil fuel price spikes.””
March 25, 2025
At the Public Accounts Committee Meeting on 25/10/2021 “Achieving Net Zero : Follow Up” the Treasury said they could not provide a costing for Net Zero describing the CCC’s estimate as containing “lots of heroic assumptions in any estimate of this kind, where you are thinking about a period of 30 years and technologies that are going to change dramatically”.
The CCC’s recently issued 7th Carbon Budget quoted a net cost of £5bn/year to achieve net zero by 2050. NESO have costed their Clean Power by 2030 plans as “over £40bn annually” to 2030. This is at least £240bn for simply decarbonising our electricity supply which represents just 20% of our energy use and is by far the easiest and cheapest sector to decarbonise.
Has the Treasury now come up with a costing for achieving Net Zero by 2050?
March 25, 2025
Given that the Treasury’s job is “maintaining control over public spending, setting the direction of the UK’s economic policy and working to achieve strong and sustainable economic growth” what qualifications, if any, do the Treasury require for its employees?
I ask because The Chief Scientific Adviser to The Treasury has a degree in foreign languages and literature.
March 25, 2025
Any rational Parliament would reject the CCC Carbon Budgets as works of fiction unfit to inform national policy. They are acts of malfeasance in public office.
March 25, 2025
I see an auction of 20 year gilts yielded 5.232% this morning. Not a good omen. Obviously pre budget nerves, so could fall if it’s not quite as bad as feared, but the probability the tye BoE will be forced to raise rates soon is increasing. There are a lot of inflationary price increases in the pipeline in the next 3 months. Costs of employment taxes and indexation of energy subsidies are at the forefront.
March 25, 2025
Rachel Reeves has no empathy with the ordinary people like most of the cabinet. They appear on TV in hiviz dazzling yellow and orange vests as if to highlight they are important and actively doing something.
“Danger men and women at work” is probably more appropriate masquerading as helpful but really just a diversion from the sheer scale of destruction and incompetence of obstacles to growing the economy, especially Net Zero and Jobs tax. April fools came early.
March 25, 2025
“Rewarding enterprise and hard work”.
When did we last actually experience that?
For me it was when Mrs Thatcher became Prime In and SJR was guiding her.
March 25, 2025
Prime Minister!
March 25, 2025
https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi?SID=b3duZXI9NTA3MDAwMCZwYWdlY2xhc3M9Sm9icyZqb2JsaXN0X3ZpZXdfdmFjPTE5NDU2MDAmc2VhcmNoc29ydD1zY29yZSZ1c2Vyc2VhcmNoY29udGV4dD0xMjQ5NzgxMzYmcGFnZWFjdGlvbj12aWV3dmFjYnlqb2JsaXN0Jm93bmVydHlwZT1mYWlyJnNlYXJjaHBhZ2U9MSZyZXFzaWc9MTc0MjgwNjI1Mi1iZDM1YWJhOWJjMWYwNzQ0MmUyNTFhMTBhZWExNmRlNThmMzgzZjM2
The civil service doesn’t seem to be taking much notice of the need to cut spending.
£70,470 for a DEI HR officer doing LGBTQWERTY work for the Ministry of Defence plus £20,400 contribution to a gold plated pension.
March 25, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
Tomorrow you will hear answers from the Chancellor to all your questions and more:
Inherited a £22 billion black hole. 14 years of chaos under the Tories. Crashed the economy. Fix the foundations. Fully costed and fully funded. Plan for Change. Kickstart economic growth. World events, Ukraine. Trump. Er, did I mention the £22 billion black hole?
In defence of Labour, the Prime Minister has been very true to his word. He did say things would get worse before they get better!
March 25, 2025
What on earth makes him think things will get better?
he’s hopeless! Even the MOD had to tell him they are happy to take more money but there is no hope of them fighting their way out of a paper bag, never mind the Russians and Chinese.
Starmer lives in a dream world. He would get a real shock if he had a peep at reality.
etc ed
March 25, 2025
when does the ‘better’ part arrive?
March 25, 2025
Tomorrow’s will be Wrecker Reeves’ last spring statement if Starmer has any eye towards his own preservation and success.
I doubt she could answer your questions without the words “black hole”, “Tory austerity”, “Ukraine War” “Trump tarrifs”.
March 25, 2025
The world is changing. The era of continuous economic growth, built on abundant fossil fuel energy and expanding consumer markets, is closing.
In its place, a new reality is emerging – one shaped not by government policies or corporate strategies but by the fundamental constraints of energy, environment, and human needs. This is the transition to localism.
Localism is not a political ideology or a policy prescription; it is the natural evolution of economies and societies in response to declining energy availability and rising costs.
If this is the reality of what is happening, maybe the Chancellor should move towards abandoning her preoccupation with growth.
If she were to cut ALL spending on growth, she would realise that there is another way forward.
This will appeal to the workers.
Reply There is plenty of energy as the US shows
March 25, 2025
73 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …why aren’t they arrested upon arrival
March 25, 2025
Because those in control want them here.
March 25, 2025
You know she is not going to relent on any of this as she is taking orders from others. She seems to have no brain of her own unless it is to take freebies like Cherie Blair did. She is making hay while the sun shines as she seems to have done at all her other jobs before being politely asked to be on her way to other pastures. What a disgrace she is to womankind. I am ashamed to say I am of the same gender.
March 25, 2025
Oh her gender is irrelevant. She is just a very limited person and not exactly wedded to the truth.
March 25, 2025
Has the Chancellor estimated the proportion (or how many) of new build homes are needed to house low or no income immigrants, legal or illegal?
Has the Chancellor estimated how many immigrants are needed to meet Labour’s house building target?