Even the Bank of England and Treasury saw this latest inflation surge coming. They should have as government caused most of it. They put up regulated prices of energy and water. They put up business costs with the tax on jobs. They allowed a large rise in Council tax.
Worse is to come for energy users. The EU is about to expand its emissions trading scheme to cover homes and personal transport as well as power generation and big energy using businesses currently covered. That means UK consumers of gas for central heating and of petrol for their cars will face higher bills when the carbon tax is added. Now the UK wants to merge our scheme with the EU it could well mean extra taxes for UK homeowners and drivers.
On top of this comes the tariff or carbon border tax. This is a levy on imports. The government’s twin passions of stopping us using fossil fuels and putting us under EU control are reinforcing each other.They will make us poorer, with higher inflation and less growth.
Reform and the Conservatives oppose these carbon taxes and the high energy price strategy. It will be damaging for UK business and consumers.
May 22, 2025
Indeed and on top of this the large minimum wage increases, the vast increase in shop lifting with no deterrents from the police, the workers rights bill, ever more mad red tape, increased stamp duty rates, vat on school fees, motorist muggings, rigged markets in housing, energy, schools, banking, transport…
May 22, 2025
So Boris thinks we are becoming a police state and 31 months for Lucy Connolly is rather over the top. Think what she might have been given without the manu mitigations of the sad death of her own young child recently, her pleading guilty early, her removing the tweet ofter a few hours and having a blameless previous record? A life sentence I assume? After all Lucy Letby was given 15 denied an appeal and there is no solid evidence that any crime was even commited! Our Rolls Royce justice system and wonderful NHS at work.
Boris, who absurdly locked everyone in the country down, coerced dangerous ineffective Covid vaccines into people (even young people and people who had had Covid already) and forced them to pointlessly wear face nappies is perhaps not the best person to complain about a police state though. I have not hear him comment on the vast increases in cardio vascular problems, 30% reductions in live births and heart arrhythmia and myocarditis issues.
May 22, 2025
Boris Johnson should shut up and go away.
After the damage he did he shows utter contempt for most by assuming he can win over people’s affections with his bumbling toff act (not that he had mine to begin with)
He is trying to capitalise on Starmers unpopularity. Someone should tell him, it doesn’t mean he will become more popular.
May 22, 2025
not enough prison places
perhaps we could stop sending social media users to prison.
May 22, 2025
They would rather release violent criminals (many of whom have already reoffended) than release the Lucy Connolly or indeed give Lucy Latby whose 15 life convictions are clearly unsound her appeal hearing.
May 22, 2025
Prison is needlessly expensive and ineffective in most cases.
Judges should apply tailor-made sentences to non-violent offenders, to prevent the risk they personally cause and rehabilitate them in public, enforced by jail if they fail to comply in any way.
Humiliation is effective. A thief can be sentenced to between one month and 2 years, having to wear a flashing helmet and bright yellow and black striped outfit in public, with ‘Beware Thief’ and a 4-digit ID marked on it.
Variations include: Fraud, Mugger, Drug & others. Many alternative sentence devices are available; even metal chastity belts.
Offenders would rapidly learn the need to go straight, behave respectfully and earn trust.
Prison places, at perhaps £40k per person each year can soon avoid being wasted and spent on things people need.
May 22, 2025
@NS; “perhaps we could stop sending social media users to prison”
That’s an even more slippery slope, think about the whys and wherefores of Batley and Spen 2016, Southend West 2021. No one gets put away for saying nothing, or using moderated speech. Yours, NS, would give impunity to every antisemitic, every racists, ever bigot.
May 23, 2025
It would – the antiseptic of sunlight is powerful Jerry
May 22, 2025
@LL; You were sh%t scared back in early 2020, wanting the NHS to use vacuum cleaners, wired in reverse, as ventilators! Now, with selective 20/20 hindsight you claim Covid-19 posed no great threat!
As for those stats you list, if true; how do we know what is to blame, could having being infected with the CV19 virus caused those problems, or was it the wearing of face masks, or was it Lockdowns – the latter, here in the UK, meaning simply stay-home other than for essential shopping and other such reasons, even socially distanced exercise was permitted.
May 22, 2025
Total drivel. It was clear very early on that young people were at very low risk. The medical experts were saying we need more ventilators to treat the condition it seems they were largely wrong on that as cheap & existing drugs were rather more effective. Giving dangerous, multiple and largely ineffective Covid vaccines to the young and those who had had Covid already. Regulated by the Big Pharma funded and compromised MRNA unforgivable too. I was fully behind the Barrington Declaration.
Let us hope that in the US under the excellent Jay Bhattacharya we will get to the truth. The damage from the stats we are getting look appalling. Birth reduced by as much as 30% and cardio vascular issue up hugely it seems? Meanwhile in the UK the figures are clearly being hidden which suggests they are equally dire if not why hide them.
May 22, 2025
@LL; All you do is prove you now nothing about virology. At least you have not deigned wanting to get Dyson to make ventilators from his vacuum cleaners…
Many children, many adolescents, and their parents, live with or have care responsibilities for (grand)parents. Children, especially the young, might not be at high risk from SARS type viruses, but that doesn’t mean they do not catch them, and as they often show little or no symptoms they become first class transmitters.
Strange how, given your supposed scientific background LL, all your information appears to come via right-wing conspiracy websites, do you actually understand peer-review?
May 23, 2025
Jerry, the lockdown delayed natural vaccination of people (at best it might have delayed a few elderly deaths by a week or two and even that is questionable) the negatives far outweigh any positives. I think you will find that the Barrington Declaration signatories had plenty of relevant skills. Nearly one million of them.
https://gbdeclaration.org/
May 23, 2025
Jerry you say:-
“Many children, many adolescents, and their parents, live with or have care responsibilities for (grand)parents. Children, especially the young, might not be at high risk from SARS type viruses, but that doesn’t mean they do not catch them.
But there was no evidence that the Covid Vaccines reduced transmission making your argument rather redundant!
May 23, 2025
@LL; It is your arguments that are irrelevant, and dangerous. Of course the natural spread of any virus will lead to natural vaccination vie anti-bodies, but as you say that means some deaths, and not just of the elderly, many middle aged (even some young) people died of Covid19 or a comorbidity (previously known or *unknown*). Tell me, what in your opinion is an acceptable level of *unnecessary* death in such a scenario?
As for vaccinations, it is not about stopping the spread, that is not how vaccines work, it is about mitigating the effects of any infection. Once again all you do @LL is show just how shallow your alleged scientific understanding actually is.
May 23, 2025
@LL; Your citation proves nothing, just 43 verified signatories, there are more top-table seats reserved for Virologists at the WHO!
Not only that but the ‘Declaration’ appears to have been written by just three people, with no other medical or scientific insight, then co-signed by 40 friends, with any additional signatories being unverified. Did you not bother reading the ‘About’ page?…
May 22, 2025
Seems we now have an injunction taken out to prevent the signing of the Chagos evem worse than give away. Another Ted Heath sell out deal done without even asking the authority of the voters.
May 22, 2025
Lucy was surely, in effect, blackmailed into pleading guilty by refusing her bail and with surely duff legal advice. I cannot think that any jury would have found her guilty of anything likely to give her a jail sentence. She is Starmer’s pawn in the suppression of free speech yet he “claims” not to know much about the case and to like free speech. Does anyone believe him.
May 22, 2025
I’m not interested in anything Johnson says about anything.
I guess it must be a bit “distressing” for him to know that he personally is responsible for the complete and possibly permanent destruction of the Not-a-Conservative-Party. Matt Goodwin says he briefed Johnson personally on the re-alignment of politics in the UK when the Red Wall voted Conservative in 2019 to “Get Brexit Done.” Johnson ignored him and put in place policies to import 4 million mostly unemployed or low-wage immigrants in just 3 years …. now known as the Boris-wave.
And that’s before we get onto the Covid Tyranny ….
May 22, 2025
Yes, the British Heart Foundation says “Number of UK people with heart rhythm (arterial fibrillation) condition rises by 50% in a decade. The number of people diagnosed with a heart rhythm condition that puts them at increased risk of a stroke has now passed 1.5m for the first time, according to our new figures.19 May 2023” Plus another half a million they suspect have it but haven’t been diagnosed, it doesn’t show up on a normal heart monitor.
May 22, 2025
Government borrowing is out of control. The remedy the clueless politicians propose, more taxation of the wealth producers, will only accelerated the descent to national bankruptcy. Matt’s cartoon today, highlighting the latest u-turn, illustrates the clueless incompetence of those supposed to be in charge.
May 22, 2025
Labour claims that many pensioner fuel allowances go to the wealthy, but means testing is wasteful too.
If the tax system and thresholds worked, instead of being so clumsy and creaking, the wealthy would gain less from it.
May 22, 2025
Higher-than-expected government borrowing figures have increased the prospect of Chancellor Rachel Reeves raising taxes in the autumn, experts say. Borrowing – the difference between spending and tax income – was £20.2bn in April, up £1bn from the same month last year, official figures showed.
It is the fourth highest April figure since monthly records began in 1993 and analysts said it could mean Reeves will struggle to meet her self-imposed rules on spending and borrowing.
Ruth Gregory, Capital Economics deputy chief UK economist, said the “poor start” to the financial year meant tax rises were “starting to feel inevitable”.
May 22, 2025
He even wants to force heat pumps on new house, EV charging and for them to be covered in solar cells (even up north and in cloudy Wales) that should add circa £50k to their building cost (and increase their running, depreciation and maint. costs too) as electricity costs 3+ times what gas does. This despite the circs 2x COP factor.
May 22, 2025
But the tories don’t opposed thes taxes and net stupid mandates
You had 14 years to scrap the whole shooting match but treacherous May doubled down on the idiocy. Sunak maintained the quotas on ice vehicles and like with immigration no one believes a word they say.
The party is infested with One Nation lump dumbs and won’t changed until their are purged from the party.
May 22, 2025
@Lifelogic – the real Black-hole created by Government and Parliament to stroke personal ego’s and self esteem.
The give-away of our fish in our territorial waters has cost, the closing down our industries and buying from our competitors has double the cost. The giving away UK sovereign territory at a cost of £50billion plus over the period. Inherited ‘Black-hole’ or sleight of hand to fund donors
UPDATE – A High Court judge has temporarily blocked Sir Keir Starmer from handing the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
May 22, 2025
David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, defended the deal when it was struck in October, claiming a legally-binding judgment against the UK was “inevitable”.
Mr Lammy also touted it as proof that the UK was committed to upholding international law.
Mr Lammy as the UK’s Foreign Secretory should there is NO such thing as international law as such there could be no legally-binding judgement. ‘International law It is no more than a mutely benefit agreements between interested parties, if one side disagrees it goes away. However Lammy and Starmer seem to be invested in tearing up the UK for personal(very personal) self-esteem that rewards only them as individuals yet collectively sets out to punish a great cost the Nation and its People
May 22, 2025
I’d rather Mr Lammy touted it as proof that the UK was committed to ignoring idiotic international law.
May 22, 2025
‘ They will make us poorer, with higher inflation and less growth.’
Yes. They do not listen and they renege on promises made before the election. They are on a mission. One term to do as much (as they really wanted to do) as possible.
There is no sign of imminent defenestration, though Starmer may face challenges from inside the Labour party.
No sign yet of significant social unrest or violent protest either.
May 22, 2025
BoE just reduced interest rates knowing inflation was rising . They’re not so good at achieving their 2% target ,another wrong move by the BoE and others for calling for interest rate reductions.
May 22, 2025
@SR; The problem is the now set in stone 2% target calculation made by an (IMF?) economist, all-but on the back of a fag packet, during a live TV interview [1] when asked what is an acceptable level of inflation. People need to stop blaming the central banks, the fault lies with ill-advised politicos, accepting technocrat opinion as gospel.
The other problem, here in the UK, is the constantly overheated housing market, forcing unaffordable mortgages on property buyers, the the BoE is always under pressure to cut their rates so to encourage a drop in the mortgage rate.
[1] either in Australia or New Zealand during the 1990s IIRC
May 22, 2025
Good morning.
Prepare for a nasty recession.
May 22, 2025
@Mark B; Indeed, and Déjà vu. A kill or cure, as we were told by economists many years ago, and opinion is still divided on that.
May 22, 2025
as soon as Reeves from Complaints started we could all guess recession on its way! Worse still, Starmer blinks and stares into the distance like a rabbit caught in headlights.
May 22, 2025
Energy prices may be increasing but when electricity bills are reduced by the £300 Mr. Miliband promised before the election we will be all the more grateful.
May 22, 2025
57 we’ll all be dead by then
Perhaps that’s the plan.
May 22, 2025
In that Energy is consumed in virtually everything that is produced, its cost hits everyone in proportion to what they do.
Taxing energy at a high level appears well-reasoned. Why not start by eliminating ALL taxation, and charge it only on energy consumption?
Government taxes people who work, yet work is a good thing. Taxes exist only to generate income for Govt to spend and moderate unwanted behaviour, such as producing excessive waste or leaving second homes unoccupied. Making it so complicated just adds to its expensive waste.
May 22, 2025
i simply do not understand the thinking of politicians and their policies any more.
They want to tax almost out of existence those who try to provide for themselves and their families.
They destroying anyone who has ambition or who strives for success.
They complain about lack of housing, but allow/encourage hundreds of thousands of people into the Country every year.
The list of failure and incompetence is almost endless.
Most if not all Government run Departments appear to be failing, despite ever more money being pumped into them.
Then they complain about having no money to do anything, when most of it has been poorly spent.
May 22, 2025
We are ruled by International Socialists. They believe Socialism has only failed everywhere it has been imposed because it wasn’t implemented everywhere.
They are trying to implement it everywhere.
May 22, 2025
@BA; You forgot to mention the lack of new homes actually being built…
But yes it is very hard to understand the thinking of *some* politicians.
Whilst it is very easy to understand why Labour carries out such polices, they are Socialist after all, as was the GDR, a country were everyone had a home, everyone had employment reflecting their abilities, but few had savings. What is more difficult to understand is why the Conservatives during the last 45 years also chose to tax us excessively, and by that I mean the average person, why they made housing all but unaffordable, both of which does so much to destroys those who who have ambition or who strives for success.
May 23, 2025
Quite right Jerry
If only we were more like the GDR
Well I suppose we are slowly heading in that direction…
May 23, 2025
@MiB; What ever rocks YOUR boat Martin, so to speak. I was actually being critical of the GDR, not sure you are though, nothing would surprise me, given how the Eastern (ex GDR) areas in Germany are the power base of the AfD, were it is said many hanker after the old days, and with the rise of Reform here in the UK perhaps “we are slowly heading in that direction”…
May 23, 2025
Nice try at far right slurring there.
Ridiculous nonsense Jerry
May 24, 2025
@MiB; Not a slur, just the hard-facts.
In any case, unless one already knows the polices of the AfD, what I said about them would lead most people to assume I was accusing the AfD of being to the hard left, as was the old GDR. My comment was reference to autocratic governments, nothing more.
May 22, 2025
@Berkshire Alan, – they have deluded themselves they know their action and direction is at a massive cost, real monetary cost, but in the UK its Governments, its Parliament have a warped idea that taking tax and more tax is them running and economy. They never ask themselves is how are earnings generated to just exist for them to tax. Tax to them on its own is their wealth creation
May 22, 2025
The official inflation figure bears no resemblance to the increasing cost of living for me, or I guess for the median lifestyle, median earner.
My main annual costs are (in descending order, with approx/estmated increases over the year) Council Tax (£2400, +5%), energy (£1680, +20%), Food (£1350, + 10%), holiday in the Med (£900, +20%), car repair (1 old small car, +15% on parts, £800), household insurance (£700, +15% yet I never claim) and petrol (£500, roughly stable cost?) in that order.
That’s hardly close to the official rate of inflation!
p.s. my wage increase over the year has been 0% (I’m an hourly rate worker).
May 22, 2025
Insurance is almost invariably a waste of money over the long term. Unless you are dishonest that is, or know you are a high risk but can get normal rates. This as most of the cash goes in IPT tax 12%, admin costs, over heads, fraudulent claims, insurance comp. profits say 50% … if you get 50% of your premium back you are doing v. well. Plus if you do claim they rob you for even more the next year!
May 22, 2025
Well, people will be able to use E-Gates soon, so all is well. Starmer said the staff at Lidl (where he was being interviewed down the cheese aisle, well it wouldn’t be the fish counter) were over the moon about it.
Whether or not they’ll be able to afford the chance to use them is another matter.
I’m sure most pro-EU champagne socialist types will always scrape up enough from behind the sofa.
People in France will get fresher fish, and probably get the Calais problem solved for them too I shouldn’t wonder.
Nothing would surprise me on that score.
May 23, 2025
on the subject of cheese, there is no reason to import any…UK makes it all and often better!
May 22, 2025
So far everything that Labour has done in government has increased the cost of government. They have also enacted many policies which add taxes onto the end consumer.
At what point will this socialist government run out of other people’s money? The Japan bond auction on Monday should make them very scared.
May 23, 2025
Indeed taxes and regulatory costs and rip off intermittent energy costs and extra employment costs – good for lawyers, regulators… and bad for all productive workers, industry, the self employed growth and taxes!
May 22, 2025
Labour and Starmer and his team ensuring there is no future for the UK. It is all malicious punishment of the people. A giveaway Government and Parliament still wreaking the revenge on the Country for expecting them to take charge and govern and be the legitimate legislators they promise.
There is very little they can now give away, territory gone, industry gone, law making gone. If anyone was inclined to fend and provide for themselves and theirs families, WEF Socialist Britain doesn’t want you, you have to be beholden to the State to have value as to the UK’s MP’s that is Control. Imagined? – just look around folks!
May 22, 2025
In the first inerview after the election, Reeves said that public workers were the most valuable. That’s where their priorities lie, and with immigrants.
This has long been Labour policy, so no surpise here.
May 22, 2025
+1,000,000
May 22, 2025
To be fair it was completely clear that if we got a Labour govt we would get a surreptitious move back into the EU but without a debate or vote and more expensive energy due to net zero. People really needed to vote in such a way as to stop Labour, but didn’t. Let’s hope the lesson is learnt for 2028/29, if that isnt too late.
May 22, 2025
They are implementing the UN / WEF plans, spelled out in Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030. These are to redistribute the west’s wealth to the “deserving nations.” We are being deliberately levelled down.
They are doing it by ramping up the cost of energy and exporting entire manufacturing industries to regions which are not required to implement the ridiculous “Net Zero” SCAM. Deliberately increasing the cost of energy will steadily reduce “the peasants” standard of living in the UK and will restrict them from travelling both here and abroad. That’s the intention.
The EU’s carbon trading scheme has the twin aims of driving up costs to deliver the Net Zero SCAM and to ensure that German manufacturing is supported by all the other member nations, including the UK.
May 22, 2025
Even without the additional costs of the net zero mission tax rates would have to rise because the economy, and therefore the tax base, has not expanded as was generally projected when the government took on many of its existing financial commitments.
For six decades up to 2008 the trend growth rate was 2.7% a year, and in December 2006 Gordon Brown had predicted accelerating growth:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/dec/06/prebudgetreport2006.politics3
“He was able to see off his critics in the City and at Westminster who had doubted his upbeat forecasts of 2.5% growth in 2006, telling MPs that following GDP increases of 0.7% in each of the first three quarters, the economy would grow by 2.75% this year.
In addition, strong flows of migrant labour into the UK have allowed the Treasury to raise its assessment of how fast the economy can grow over the medium term without leading to higher inflation.
Mr Brown had been expecting a decline in the number of female workers – caused by the retirement of the “baby-boomer generation” – to cause a reduction in the trend growth rate from 2.75% to 2.5% between now and 2010. But higher immigration means the estimate is unchanged.
Following growth of 3% next year, the chancellor said the two years leading up to 2009 – the likeliest date for the next general election – would also be strong years for the economy with expansion of 2.75% in both 2008 and 2009.”
In the event in 2008 here was a global financial crisis and a collapse of tax revenues and an increase in welfare payments, and with the government having to borrow a quarter of all the money it was spending Alistair Darling had to get the Bank of England to rig the gilts market, and since then the trend growth rate has been only 1.1% a year. So the UK economy is now 22% smaller than Brown expected when he strayed from prudence to profligacy.
This reduction in the trend growth rate is widely recognised and as it is “since the global financial crisis” the usually unspoken assumption is that we are still living with some unspecified long term effects of that crisis, but of course other things happened in 2008 including the passage of the Climate Change Act. Which has a special mention in this google search:
https://tinyurl.com/2sc278hs
after a summary of the EU level events. Maybe that is why in the middle of an ongoing global financial crisis our Parliament committed us to this risky and expensive mission to try to save the planet from overheating.
May 23, 2025
Missed for moderation.
May 22, 2025
I have often said that if the UK government takes some puzzling action, something that seems inexplicable and even stupid, then there is a good chance that it has come from the EU. So:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/climate-change/
“An EU-wide climate goal was agreed in 2008 … ”
and that EU involvement is repeatedly referenced in the Explanatory Notes for the UK Climate Change Act:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/27/notes
and now Starmer will have us back bound to an EU policy which has hobbled our economy.
May 22, 2025
Is that a first for them – surely they are not getting more effective, it must have been pretty obvious though.
With all the pressures this government has thrown our way in the form of everything being more expensive can we expect to see inflation increase to 12% and beyond?
Certainly the EU reset will impose more costs on us, and It would be so easy for the BoE to fail to keep inflation under control – given their history on this.
The solution is for HMG to do what they’ve done before when inflation was biting – Adjust the basket of inflation causing items so that inflation goes down.
There is only one thing that is keeping the economy afloat – with the media believing and repeating the hype and hot air from Starmer who knows how to double-speak like an expert, he is talking up the alleged treaty wins he has had to make things look better than they are — Let’s see what happens when that bubble bursts.
May 22, 2025
@Ian B
Like others I keep making the mistake of solely blaming the Government of the day for the woes imposed on us. Even in the actual Government all ideas and proposals are made by a team with collective responsibility for their action. These proposals are then ratified/approved by a majority in Parliament. So, to just blame this nonsense on Government is misplaced it is on all those that approved it in Parliament our MPs – that are there to represent our wishes and to serve us to the best of their abilities.
That takes us to what is the NetZero crusade, at least 325 MPs would have asked the cost of the project(surely ?), they would also have asked were is the money coming from to pay for it over and above what is generally required to keep the country going safe and secure. Surely as is their duty they would have known what they were doing on behalf of their electorate, the people that empowered and pay them.
At least 325 MPs have chosen malicious punishment, banning and ultra-high costs to be imposed on their constituents, before seemingly defining ways to create the wealth the earning and the alternatives, a future!
It says a lot about Parliament
May 22, 2025
I see no future for the country unless this government is removed. We all know what is going wrong, and why. I do not believe it is incompetence; many of the things being done to us are vicious and destructive, probably the worst I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. This government cares nothing for the population, especially if you are a native Brit. It is time to battle for another GE, we cannot survive until 2029 with this squad in office.
May 22, 2025
No policy should bind another government, and no tax/benefit should be fixed in stone
If it was labours policy & principal to remove the ‘winter fuel payment’ so be it …but they’ve caved in to the media
This government should instead be removing all the ridicules net-zero associated taxes on fuels & energy to reduce the overall domestic bills
May 23, 2025
Drive the cost of winter energy down and you wouldn’t need to piss-off 90% of pensioners by stopping the pathetic allowance!
May 22, 2025
We have a destructive Labour government intent on harming small people.
Hope the Chagos island woman who is contesting them in the High Court
wins David versus Goliath.
May 22, 2025
Indeed, so. The delusion that you can tax your way to prosperity is at the root of the EU’s as well as the UK’s present situation.
May 23, 2025
That and having far too large a state sector and far too much daft regulation plus the total insanity of net zero.
May 22, 2025
We have a
We have a government and a PM whose ignorance is breathtaking. We are told Rayner wants more tax rises, while Starmer shackles us to the EU, and we will no doubt be paying billions for the privilege. The Chancellor has no idea how to get the economy growing, and Lucy Conelly’s failed appeal shows we have a two-tier justice system.
Inflation hits pensioners very hard because they cannot increase their incomes, but the PM does not care. His rethink on the winter fuel payment/immigration is only a response to the Reform’s recent success.
We cannot go on like this for four years! How do we demand another general election now and elect a government that puts the UK and its people first? Why do Labour hate the UK so much, and why are they so sour?
May 22, 2025
From Guido
Office for National Statistics this morning show government borrowing yet again above forecasts. April’s figure is the fourth-highest on record…
Government borrowing rose to £20.2 billion last month – £1 billion higher than in April last year. Analysts predicted £17.6 billion this time round.
Central government departmental spending jumped by £4.2 billion on last year thanks primarily to pay increases and inflation of costs.
Who is managing the economy and why does Parliament allow it when it is the people they represent having to find the money? Oh I get it, they cant be bothered they were given an unprecedented 5 year term to free-load funded by others
May 22, 2025
Off Topic.
Immigration.
The ONS says 948,000 moved to the UK in the year to December 2024 (remember – net migration is the difference in the number of people arriving and leaving).
81% were from outside the EU (766,000)
13% were from the EU, plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (122,000)
6% were British nationals (60,000) .
Today’s figures show 517,000 people emigrated from the UK in 2024 (net migration is the difference in the number of people arriving and leaving).
43% were from outside the EU (222,000)
42% were from the EU plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (218,000)
15% were British nationals (77,000) ..
May 22, 2025
What should the BofE do with the rate ?
May 22, 2025
I cannot believe that among the 300+ Labour back-benchers that none will be shamed by the actions of this disastrous Labour government, which is having a debilitating effect on the whole country. If just half of them would join an Opposition motion for a no-confidence vote, our country would stand a chance of recovering from the dire state of our nation that Starmer and his band of underqualified Ministers have created and enforced in just ten months. The economic health of GB is at stake! As well as the future aspirations of the young.
May 22, 2025
Starmer has just given away the Chagos islands and hooked the UK up to massive ongoing rent back agreement.
Starmer has just signed the WTO policy on pandemic control making the UK a rule taker from people not concerned about the UK.
Starmer signed the UK up to EU control of Energy Fishing and trade rues this week he does not care the UK will have zero input to the rules the EU foist upon us.
It is indicative of his urgent need to make as much damaging change as he can in the four years he has available to him that hi is handing ever more control of our affairs over to unelected European bureaucrats.
It is more than likely he will become an EU official after his upcoming defeat when the general election is held. I have no doubt he would fit seamlessly into a role withing the ECJ. That would give him ongoing control of the UK in perpetuity.
May 22, 2025
Announced to day, a Government and Parliament is to serve its people and country . It can be done!
“New Zealand has abandoned its pursuit of net zero by revoking a ban on drilling for oil and gas.
Country plans to expand offshore gas fields following ‘disaster’ ban on oil drilling
We are focused on growing the New Zealand economy, creating jobs and increasing prosperity and resilience. Natural gas will continue to be critical in delivering secure and affordable energy for New Zealanders for at least the next 20 years.”
May 22, 2025
….and even the car manufacturers have realised the folly of making EVs …except china
May 23, 2025
They would once they figured the West was on an energy suicide mission! Build coal power stations like crazy, provide the short-term ability to sell the world EVs…..whats not to like?
May 23, 2025
@glen cullen – all EV’s are connected devices they all run and do what is commanded back at HQ. A few years back during the hurricane season in Florida the residence were forced to flee the state – EV’s for some didn’t have the range to get out. But, back at EV HQ the manufacturer over the air increased the range to whatever was needed to leave the State.
The manufacturer has complete control, this control is now creeping into mainstream vehicles and it now has more sinister abilities than would/should be expected
May 22, 2025
If only one political party promised to restore the personal tax free and basic rate allowances (in real terms) to their 2021 values that would go a long way to compensating for surging inflation. But then perhaps with the way inflation is going Reform’s pledge to set the personal tax free allowance at £20000 will simply do just that by the time of the next General Election.
May 23, 2025
@Robert – Jeremy Hunt (Conservative) extended this agreed policy of the Conservative Government of the day from 2026 to 2028. Check out those that sat in the collective responsibility cabinet when this was agreed. They all knew what they were doing, they surely knew the consequences. So now we have a more zealous crew of the same party in charge there does not seem to be any change coming.
Reforms £20K may sound like a good headline grabber, bribe if you like. But the real problem in the UK is that the whole tax system is over wieldy and contrived – no one gets to contribute equally. Every bye is someone else’s enforced extra tax. It is a tool for blackmail, there are kickbacks, allowance then allowances on allowances and so on we finish up with less than 30% of the country contributing, with the highest 10% paying 60% of all tax. Tax should be paid by ‘all’ as everyone wants to use the facilities and structures it provides and we need someone at the top that understands the economy and budgets, then we would all pay less.
We should never forget when some one says Government should, or the Government says it will be paying that is a lie – governments don’t have money just access to your wallet and bank account.
The point being surging inflation is the result of surging tax increases. No amount of juggling will get passed the refusal at the top to manage the economy.