The welfare budget is rising fast. The £296 bn of 2023-4 is forecast to hit £378 bn or 28% more by the end of the decade. Sickness benefit is estimated to increase from £48.5 bn to £75.7 bn or 60% over the same time period. There is a surge in people claiming an inability to work. There are over 900,000 young people not in training, education or work. Mental ill health has increased substantially.
The government is alarmed by this development. They say some of the right things. They want to get more people into work and are offering more support and back up. They agree with the Iain Duncan Smith reform of welfare to make it more worthwhile to go to work, and are completing the roll out of his universal Credit system. Yet without more reform and or tougher enforcement the bills keep rising.
Some of their backbenchers are pushing for a more relaxed approach to benefits. They regret the clumsy and unpopular removal of the pensioner fuel allowance, opposed by all other parties. They are concerned changes to PIP payments to the disabled could catch the wrong people, harming people with long term serious disabilities. Opposition parties want to see more the detail. Many are now pushing to remove the two child limit on the child payments under Universal Credit going to the unemployed and low income families. That change was a modest one which now saves more than £3 bn. It would be odd to add a reform to spend more when parties find it difficult to identify easy wins in cutting costs.
All can see how much better off we would all be if hundreds of thousands of people not working could get jobs. They would also be better off . Any ideas on how to do that?
May 31, 2025
There would be more jobs available if governments legislated and regulated to encourage business activity. Instead they do the opposite. They discourage it at every turn. Taxes on profits have gone up to 25%. Employers NIV have gone up. Taxes on wealth and the wealthy have gone – so much so many are voting with feet and wallets to leave the country altogether. Not so long ago you did not pay IHT on investments in AIM listed businesses. Now your estate must pay 20% tax if you had the temerity to invest in emerging and growing British businesses when you were still alive.
With the prevailing political mentality (characterized by ignorance of how the world actually works) it should be no surprise that government finances are in the irredeemable mess they are in. At some point there will be an extremely painful period of adjustment. It will be administered by the market when it decides there no more easy pickings, in the form of discounted assets to buy, and that the UK national is not worth the paper it is no longer written on.
May 31, 2025
Agreed. Less Government rule setting allows the private sector to do what it does best – create jobs and expand the economy.
Other actions: Vastly reduce immigration, which offers employers access to cheap workers who are willing to work for that amount of money. Also reduce benefits/increase minimum wage to make it more worthwhile for the unemployed to work than to claim. Finally shrink the State so that taxes can be lower and State influence reduces.
Look at Singapore – they got it right.
May 31, 2025
How can one transfer the economics of
Singapore with its 740 km^2 with 3,500 km of roads and 6m population in a tropical area
to
a country of 244,000 km^2 with 424,000 km of roads and 68m population at mid-latitudes?
Are the solutions in terms of infrastructure, energy needs, agriculture, lodging, HNW immigration, … to be the same?
I wonder …
Reply You always defend a UK socialist policy which is bound to deliver lower living standards and less growth.
May 31, 2025
@Hefner
I think you are right.
A transfer the economics of Singapore to the UK is clearly far too difficult for this Labour Government to even contemplate.
May 31, 2025
We could try applying the economic principles – which have been successful. Sir J has it right in his reply. An inefficient and expanding state sector with a massive debt is running the UK into the ground. If we don’t incentivise more of the inactive 9 million of working age to actually work the Country will be bankrupt in 20 years
May 31, 2025
It is often good to copy the best policy pathways of businesses and nations who are successful and have improving levels of growth and standards of living hefner.
Singapore is an example but not the only one.
Ruling it out because of where it is, its land size, its population size and the lengths of it’s roads seems oddly negative.
May 31, 2025
Please tell me what is socialist in pointing out that the physical and economic geography is very different between Singapore and the UK.
Reply Geography does not make socialism work in larger countries
May 31, 2025
Top down socialism does not work anywhere for many reasons. One main rather simple reason is people at the coal face spend and invest their own money far more efficiently than governments do spending other people’s money on things for other people that they know little about. The other reason being human nature!
See Milton Friedman’s four types of money!
May 31, 2025
What seems to be one important reason for the reduced growth in the UK is the low level of Foreign Direct Investment actually creating new jobs. Over the last 45 years a lot of incoming FDI was to buy up UK companies, with the trend strengthening after 2016.
– researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk 09/05/2025 ‘Foreign Direct Investment Statistics’, CBP8534, 28pp.
– ons.gov.uk 14/01/2025 ‘Foreign Direct Investment involving UK companies: 2023’.
It will be interesting to see the impact of the PotUS’s tariffs on the 2025-2029 FDI.
May 31, 2025
We transferred our economies politics, capitalism, to Singapore. If we could transfer it from a big entity like the U.K. to a city state, why not the reverse?
It’s an idea, not a piece of machinery.
You Continentals are obsessed with size. Try to grow out of it.
May 31, 2025
+ 1
Employers will not recruit and train Brits who have been unemployed for an extended period if they have the option of recruiting an immigrant (who may well work for less).
We have to cut the constant supply of cheap foreign labour.
May 31, 2025
In Singapore, individuals owning the freehold their property is pretty much non-existant. Almost all land is owned by the government in some shape or form and 99 year leases are common. There’s also no right to extend a lease (the government can just say no).
Is the effective abolition of private freehold property rights (and its replacement with a state-managed and controlled lease-based replacement) something people want to actually see implemented in the UK?
May 31, 2025
@PeteB; “Look at Singapore”
Well perhaps, it all depends on how you look when comes to comparing economies, which GDP matrix does one use, and which body, the IMF, World Bank or the UN.
May 31, 2025
Not just the employment taxes, there’s the employment legislation that goes with it. As if it’s not punitive enough already to employ someone, this government wants to tilt things even more towards employee rights against the employer.
If you want easy hire, you need easy fire to go with it.
May 31, 2025
Exactly less government, lower taxes, less red tape, scrap net zero, have cheap on demand energy, scrap low skilled immigration which reduces pay rates, easy hire and fire… make work pay. So the complete reverse of the Consocialists and Starmer’s mad anti-growth agenda.
Interesting to hear people on the Talk Radio saying Junior/Resident Doctors are already well paid as they take another strike ballet . If you take into account the circa £130k of debt it costs them qualify and interest on this then look at their take home pay after tax, NI etc. less committing costs other exams they pay for, stethoscopes… Then hey actually get no pay at all unit they are about 33. 5-6 years at university and about 9 or 10 years of work. It is hard to argue than zero pay from 18 – 33 years with nothing net at all for rent, food, clothes, fun, council tax is “Well Paid”. This when lawyer, accountants and bankers are often on at least double and with far less debt.
Perhaps Wes Streeting (History Selwyn College) and Labour cannot do sums? Does he still think we should not draw attention to the clearly unsafe 15 life convictions of Lucy Letby lest we upset the “victims”. Silly man they were not her victims! Who killed the others who died when she was not on duty? Why on earth is she being denied an appeal? Our Rolls Royce justice system gets 15 life convictions wrong on no real evidence then insanely denies any appeal!
May 31, 2025
commuting costs!
May 31, 2025
Oh dear it seems King Charles is PLUCKED OFF and ‘livid’ as Sandringham is running out of pheasants to shoot and faces calling off annual Boxing Day shoot. A key member of staff at Sandringham has been axed amid the furore. From the Sun.
How low carbon is a shot pheasant I wonder. I imagine each calorie or KWH of consumed pheasant energy takes at least 1000 times this Calorie or KWH. This on land rovers, game keepers, shooters, grain, beaters, pluckers, chefs, cooking fuel… Assuming they even get eaten at all that is!
May 31, 2025
Good morning.
Only if we had cheap energy we could have a manufacturing base which would create jobs. Jobs that pay a living wage and are not constantly undercut by cheap labour from abroad.
But that would mean undoing everything that has been done to us over the last 30 years by the LibLabCON.
And we can’t be having that now, can we ? 😉
May 31, 2025
Ten points Mark B
Everything the government had done since Bliar has been aimed at increasing immigration at the expense of we Brits and the present uniparty have no intention of changing despite some warm words
2TK wants a Data Centre up north reported to need 74mw of power and emit the same CO2 as Manchester Airport
This just demonstrates what a load of bovine excrement Net Stupid really is.
Just a method of impoverishing the natives for the enrichment of the few.
May 31, 2025
Yes, a planning application for a large data centre has been submitted near where I live in the North, and it just happens to be on the route of a proposed interconnector which will destroy a huge area of beautiful green belt farmland even though a far better and cheaper route is available a few miles further north. Something very underhanded is going on.
May 31, 2025
+1 Mark B. Remove conditions that create a demand for benefits, in so far as we are able.
We’ve been impoverishing our lower paid workers for years and are heading towards third world conditions, carrying a developed world benefits system.
Each benefit is different, fraud is fraud, and the lazy will play the system (similar to tax avoiders with the tax code). But take Housing Benefit, which is predicted to reach £35bn pa by 2028. A lot of claimants here aren’t “playing” the system; they really can’t afford housing because full time work doesn’t pay enough in their area, and they can’t afford to move. It could be said that the system is playing them.
Our housing and planning policy has been a complete mess for decades. Our shrinking industry and growing services have been happy to use foreign labour to suppress wages.
Some of these issues need addressing, and it’s not a quick fix.
May 31, 2025
@Mark B; “Only if we had cheap energy we could have a manufacturing base which would create jobs.”
Not so, we could have cheap energy like China does but still be not competitive due to the hourly pay rate, even with the wage growth in China (and other developing nations such as India) the UK still can not compete.
The only way the UK could ‘compete’, and thus have a larger manufacturing base is either, do as Trump is doing (impose tariffs and thus erect import restrictions), or for the UK to undo everything that has been achieved in the last *seventy* years, a consumer society were people have the disposable incomes to buy two cars instead of one and a bicycle, or ever just the bicycle; a dishwasher rather than a washing up bowl; the ability to buy a home, not just pay the Council their (subsidised) rent each month; etc.
May 31, 2025
Cheaper energy would have helped energy hungry manufacturing businesses in sectors such as ceramics pottery aluminium smelting steel making brick making and glass making survive.
In those industries energy costs can be their highest cost.
May 31, 2025
@$am; But what if China can afford to simply *give* (subsidized) energy to their ceramics, pottery, aluminum smelting, steel making, brick making, and glass making manufactures. That’s the beauty/danger, depending on your point of view, with a command economy run by the State, it allows the State to keep otherwise uneconomic industries, either to undercut other nations [1], or to simply keep people (notionally) employed and thus have only the truly sick and old on benefit handouts – no one is unemployed, it’s just they have no work to do when at work!
[1] is that not why Trump has hit China with such heavy tariffs?
May 31, 2025
China have cheap energy because they don’t have a Net Zero policy and mainly because they generate energy by fossil fuel power.
China have other advantages of cheap land and cheap labour and low level of regulation
I noticed China coming into countries with very cheap import prices which ruin the home industries and then they are able to up their prices when that market is at their mercy.
I think your last line is totallycorrect.
President Trump is hitting back with tariffs.
And about time to.
May 31, 2025
@Sam; Net Zero is an irrelevance when the Chinese State is able to GIVE away electricity and gas to their manufacturing industry if needs-be. What you seem to be calling for goes way beyond scrapping Net Zero, you appear to want the UK State to own not only the energy networks (such as power stations) but also the means of supplying them, the oil and gas fields, Tony Benn would applaud you!
June 1, 2025
Interesting reply Jerry.
How clever you are guessing what I think.
Howevrr you’ve got it wrong.
June 1, 2025
@Sam; “How clever you are guessing what I think.”
Well if I’ve got it so wrong you meed to explain your thoughts better.
I’ll allow you the last word, I’ll have the last Laugh! 😛
June 1, 2025
Ridiculous post from you Jerry
You bristle with indignation whenever someone dares to reply to your many posts
Do you talk like this to people in public?
May 31, 2025
Jerry, you are overlooking quality. Selling is not all about price otherwise everyone would consume the cheapest rubbish on the market.
We can produce far superior manufacturing products than China, eg I have just come back from a rare and very hard to find gold platers in Crawley. I discussed modern metals with him and he said the quality of metals has deteriorated hugely in recent years and they dont last. So much is porous and cheap now (from China). Years ago we always used brass and high grade steel for everything. Now its zinc die cast rubbish and other such cheap alchemy and its always getting worse. It is a false economy too as that junk wont last and will need costly replacing unlike steel and brass that can last forever.
So we can produce better quality albeit at a bit higher price and those who can afford quality will always buy it. Those who cant will buy the tat from China.
Maybe the British steel and brass industries need tax breaks to incentivise a wider use of these domestic metals.
May 31, 2025
@Paul Freedman; China makes what their customers specify. From what I’ve heard, one of the biggest issues is poorly worded specifications or gaps within them, meaning China does what they wish – and what company in the world would do otherwise, profit being King?
“It is a false economy too as that junk wont last and will need costly replacing unlike steel and brass that can last forever.”
Was this gold platers by any chance a company who does work for the Military supply chain, I had a very similar conversation about 35 years ago with a Chromium plater holding similar views, but then the MOD/NATO specification logic is some what different to that of consumer grade products.
There is a point of balance, between quality/price and acceptable life expectancy from the end-user. I know a chap who used to run a very large (tungsten filament) Light Bulb manufacturing establishment, he told me once they could make a retail light bulb were the filament would never fail, but if they did their company would last about three or four years before the entire industry had gone bust!…
May 31, 2025
Indeed! Expensive intermittent energy, government vastly to big and often doing net harm, vast over taxation and vast and usually misguided over regulation too.
May 31, 2025
The government needs to take a leaf out of Margaret Thatchers book. An axe has to be taken to welfare. Just the genuine cases supported. Those who are able to work but won’t should be given 3 months notice that benefit will stop. Housing benefit needs drastically curtailing. Some in London are getting up to £23,000 pa
Most are none native and have no right one to be here 2 to live in London or any city
The indigenous population cannot access this level of benefit and has to spend thousands commuting.
There is much low hanging fruit but Westminster and the left wing blob are against any reduction in entitlement.
May 31, 2025
@ Ian “… be given 3 months notice that benefit will stop” – and then they turn to crime to survive?
May 31, 2025
@Ian; “The government needs to take a leaf out of Margaret Thatchers book. […] Those who are able to work but won’t should be given 3 months notice that benefit will stop.”
The DWP already do that! But what you and others so often miss is no one can get non existent jobs, taking people benefits away in such circumstances will only lead to either cardboard cities and/or riots, as Mrs Thatcher found out, hence why she had to reached out to Michael Heseltine, someone who was prepared to intervene ‘before Breakfast, lunch and dinner’…
“and has to spend thousands commuting”
Why do they people need to spend thousands, might it be because local employment is not available, might it be because transport for the last 60 years has been seen as a means to a operating profit, or at least not be subsidized (joke), thus salaries have had to increase, meaning employers can not afford to employ more staff?
You can not support a market economy but then complain it is not run as a planned economy!
May 31, 2025
Todays Telegraph. £1 billion a month paid out in benefits to foreigners. 8 weeks to wipe our savings from stopping WFA. We are being governed by idiots of all parties.
May 31, 2025
The increase in sickness benefits is a direct consequence of lockdowns during the pandemic, when DWP staff were instructed to make awards without any checks. Once awarded, it isn’t easy to take a benefit away from a claimant. Other countries do not have such generous benefit systems, and our bloated welfare system is unsustainable. Maybe politicians should look at why people need extra money just because they have a disability. In some cases, they do incur extra expenses, but in many cases, their cost of living is no higher than that of fit people. We have to take away the incentives that mean benefit claimants are financially better off than those who aren’t in the system. We must also put a stop to paying sickness benefits to those who don’t even live in this country. I know in Spain, people are claiming Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance from the UK Government when they pay their taxes to Spain. How can this be right?
May 31, 2025
How about scrapping the benefits system entirely? Put it all onto the charity sector. Reduce taxes so people have more disposable income to contribute. Wouldn’t everyone be happier if they could freely contribute rather than have the money demanded with menaces (tax)? I bet the charities with their finite pot would be more selective about who they give the money to.
Otherwise there’s insurance. You could insure yourself against the costs if you unfortunately became a victim of Parkinsons or MS.+63
May 31, 2025
@Christine; “The increase in sickness benefits is a direct consequence of
lockdowns duringthe pandemic”There, I’ve corrected that for you…
“Maybe politicians should look at why people need extra money just because they have a disability.”
That would be a VERY unwise move if a govt wants to reduce, rather than increase, the costs of benefits to the Exchequer!
“people are claiming Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance from the UK Government when they pay their taxes to Spain. How can this be right?”
Might that be because those expats paid into the NI system before retiring, some might ever still pay UK taxes, and might not actually be ‘resident’ in Spain even though they do pay Spanish taxes (you are vague about what taxes you mean); and there is another issue, it might be cheaper to pay Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance to expats than have them return to ‘Blighty’, perhaps having been unable to sell their property and then have the right to claim social housing costs (until such time) and the entire benefits system, as anyone resident here in the UK with a UK NI number are.
“I know in Spain,”
You don’t appear to know the half of it. 😡
May 31, 2025
Attendance Allowance, DLA, PIP and Carer’s Allowance are all non-contributory benefits, so claimants don’t need to have paid anything into the system.
To pay tax in Spain, you have to be a resident living there for more than 6 months of the year.
Having worked with DWP policy for over 35 years, I know a great deal about the benefit systems and the fraud that takes place. As the quote goes – Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.
May 31, 2025
@Christine; “[they] are all non-contributory benefits”
Then your point is moot at best, they are UK citizens and thus eligible. Even if not, as I said, it might well be the cheaper option to pay UK benefits to expats living in Spain than have hoards of expats returning to Blighty, were they *will be fully entitled* to claim, and what is more claim a damned sight many more benefits besides. You may or may-not have a clue about DWP policy but you sure have little or no clue about the real lives of expats living in Spain.
This all sounds more like a Tabloid headline, a bit like when they claimed the NHS was allowing overseas patients to access the NHS for free, when the reality was the NHS back-offices were under resourced and thus were not bothering to file reciprocal repayment documentation.
May 31, 2025
Quick answer:
Become Singapore on Thames to attract more companies and jobs. Reduce corp tax and re incentivise entrepreneurs incl reliefs and IR35.
Other items
Increase personal tax allowances significantly so work pays compared to benefits. Reverse NI increases.
Freeze benefits to increase the attractiveness of jobs.
Make all benefits taxable.
Make government pensions defined contribution.
June 1, 2025
@Rhoddas; Yes, lets be a Singapore on Thames, so that’s London sorted, now what about the other 90% of the UK, could a “Singapore on Thames” support an otherwise unproductive country?
I find it strange how some commentators, not necessarily you Rhoddas, want to copy Singapore without understanding that a lot of their success comes from how Singaporean society runs, with a very high deference level to elders and their Statesmen, criticism is seen as a lack of respect that needs to be punished – not as bad as some Asian societies perhaps but few choose to buck the system!
May 31, 2025
Apart from supporting those in real need inadequately, the welfare society is the dependent society. It is bottom loading the ever shrinking productive element of society to the point where their increasing choice is to leave.
A younger member of my family has discovered that by small changes to his business plan and greater computer control he can run it from outside the UK. It lowers his personal cost of living. Superb quality beachside appartment for £20 per night. Abundent choice of healthy food at £2.50 a meal. Health insurance at £600 per annum with a state of the art hospital next door. Add to that unfettered social facilities, and he is currently assessing whether he can achieve his business goals while spending in excess of 180 days pa outside the UK, with obvious fiscal advantages.
Since Blair and his heir Cameron, plus a succesion of look alikes, this is what has been inflicted upon the productive industrial base of a once democratic UK, which is now stoney ground for the entrepreneur. 2TK has announced the end to one quango, but it is reported has created 27 new ones.
Quangorama, Supreme Courts, legacy EU rules and regulations now given a booster jab, bowing to quasi international courts, but above all low grade entry to Parliament place us where we are now. Try to comprehend the root cause of all these problems you write of individually.
May 31, 2025
Where is your young relation?
My concern is that if he can do it so can the world!
May 31, 2025
Indeed but prob. limited to no more than circa 90 nights in the UK to avoid UK taxes sometimes less in first few years.
May 31, 2025
Back in the UK. Where he discovered the ideal spot to operate from is a private matter. However if you do your homework there are many choices. The world of business in the UK is making similar decisions, where they can. The real question is how long can the UK sustain itself in the face of a grotesque malevalent government.
May 31, 2025
“The real question is how long can the UK sustain itself …” – if a future diary could address this point, that would be very pleasing.
I foresee doom but hope it is postponed for c. twenty years or so while I live out my natural lifespan without too much difficulty. Am I too optimistic?
May 31, 2025
Maybe the ‘world’ does not have the nous, the ideas, the business knowledge, the gumption, the qualifications, the will, … the money to be a ‘citizen of nowhere’, to do such a thing as moving to other countries, specially non-English speaking ones, and would prefer to stay put and write sweet nothings on Sir John’s website? I wonder.
Moneyweek.com, M. Shoffman, D.Hilton 05/2025 ‘Are the rich leaving the UK due to high taxes? Where the wealthy are going’.
May 31, 2025
My comment “Since Blair”, deserves explanation.
Since Magna Carta, what we call democracy has been an evolution. It has reached a point of government by the people electing 650 MPs tasked with representing the electorates views, give or take. The sovereign was a symbolic head of state. Parliament created the law and was the ultimate authority of legal appeal. A system exported and copied throughout the free World.
Blair and his fellow travellers decided that the electorate were not mature or responsible enough to make these decisions. Blair set up a bureaucracy in parallel, so that decision making could be sub contracted. It had the added result at the time in that those parties in opposition saw the advantages of keeping major decisions off piste.
Hence,
The Supreme Court devalues if not eliminates Parliament as the ultimate legal arbiter.
Quangos making major decisions beyond the control of Parliament.
The EU being the creator of much of our law, and rules of conduct in critical fields in minute detail.
The ECHR, controlling the judiciary in the field of supposed human rights, removing Parliament from the process.
Such a system does not demand parliamentarians of any great intellect, which is exactly what we have. If we are now a sovereign state, it is only in name. The anti democratic umbilicals since Blair remain firmly in place for bureaucratic control of the U.K., irrespective of politics. We now have to wait four years before we can elect a government intent on throwing Blair and heirs to Blair into history.
May 31, 2025
Even during and before Blair.
Controversy on the subject came to the fore when Andrew Neather—a former adviser to Jack Straw, Tony Blair and David Blunkett—said that Labour ministers had a hidden agenda in allowing mass immigration into Britain. This alleged conspiracy has become known by the sobriquet Neathergate.[89]
According to Neather, who was present at closed meetings in 2000, a secret government report called for mass immigration to change Britain’s cultural make-up and that “mass immigration was the way that the government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”. Neather went on to say that “the policy was intended—even if this wasn’t its main purpose—to rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”.
etc ed
Boris and Sunak’s mad lockdowns, and net harm vaccines – did huge damage and cost a huge fortune too.
May 31, 2025
On Monday the government will present the latest SDSR. Under pressure from Trump, Starmer/Healey have already announced an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, with an aspiration to hit 3% when economic conditions allow.
As is usual with defence reviews, there has been much speculation about where the new money (diverted from overseas aid) will be spent. An increase to 2.5% of GDP will barely cover inflation. Military hardware is expensive and trained personnel even more so.
The MoD has a long and sorry history of wasting £billions and £billions on poorly managed defence projects. The politicians’ response has been to cut manpower, sell off ships etc to Brazil, scrap early tranches of Typhoon for spares while they are still serviceable etc etc. The latest disaster-in-waiting is the German RCH155 gun to be mounted on an 8×8 Boxer chassis.
The RN needs more ships. The RAF needs at least another two squadrons of Typhoon. The Army currently has no 155mm self propelled guns, except just 14 second-hand BAE Archer 6×6. The Koreans offered to build a factory here to make their well thought of K9A1 Thunder SPG. We should take them up on their offer.
May 31, 2025
I’m not so sure the RN needs ships.
War has developed since we last looked.
Drones have almost replaced the Air Force.
Hypersonic cruise missiles have almost replaced nuclear (which is a deterrent only)
Lazers are used in defence – to bring down cruise missiles and maybe sink boats entering our waters.
Money NEVER replaces ideas.
We need more IDEAS.
The MOD is not renown for ideas.
Not least is the idea that if you don’t want war you don’t provoke and attack the most powerful military country on earth.
May 31, 2025
Although I used to work in military jet design I am not very up to date on modern warfare. But government defence procurement was hugely mismanaged then and seems to be even worse now. Look at the 2 sick joke, sitting duck Aircraft Carriers a total waste of money and huge misdirection of resources!
May 31, 2025
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have moved the whole strategy on. One of the reasons the Russians have such low KIA is because of the deployment of drones as the ‘scouts’ – they are unbelievably accurate, they can put the drone into the open hatch of a tank! Drones are also now going behind the Ukraine front lines and attacking them from behind.
I wish Powell was alive this day. I would love to hear him speak on the changes to his Battle Tactics, (WWII) which are still taught at Sandhurst.
One thing is certain. This island is the bunker for all native British. It’s the ditch we must die in if need be. There is nowhere to run to.
England expects… the VERY BEST IDEAS.
May 31, 2025
Lord Tebbit once said ‘on your bike’. It was right then and it’s right now.
May 31, 2025
Manu are getting “on their bikes” and on planes and taking their money, taxes and skills with them.
May 31, 2025
Once the migrants have managed to get in here, they are entitled to Universal Credit, free NHS care, subsidised housing and free schooling for their children. They are costing us £1billion a month. The government made the pensioners pay for this by scrapping the winter fuel allowance!
HMRC knows how many pensioners are paying income tax. A fairer system would be to qualify pensioners for the winter fuel allowance if they are paying less than say, £2400 a year. in income tax. £200 a month for a pensioner on a fixed income is a lot of money.
May 31, 2025
Is a fairer system not stopping the illegal and costly immigration?
May 31, 2025
We could create a fairer system by denying migrants any access to welfare, “free” public services and social housing until they have a British passport and have paid into the system for a considerable period …. say 10 years.
May 31, 2025
Of course the welfare bill is ballooning. Succesive governments have encouraged immigration for 30 years. Many coming in, particularly those in dinghies, have nothing to offer this country, but have been taught how utterly stupid we are. How we hand out freebies to anyone arriving. Money, clothing, phones, FREE NHS, and eventually homes.
Immigration needs not to be reduced by a few thousand. It needs to stop.
May 31, 2025
Take a look at today’s Telegraph. A million a month is being paid in benefits to households with foreign nationals.
Reply A billion!
May 31, 2025
JR – a billion – and all borrowed?
We must ditch the ECHR and take power to refuse landing and to deport to the land from which the illegal immigrants already landed came. Ie France.
May 31, 2025
Yes indeed, my typo error. I was still stunned from reading it 🙂
May 31, 2025
All can see how much better off we would all be if hundreds of thousands of people not working could get jobs. They would also be better off . Any ideas on how to do that?
Easy do better assessments of the so called sickness benefit system were there is clear evidence of people swinging the lead to not work but have the easy life of sponging off the backs of the millions who get up daily to do a days work, also if your not British or born in this once great country you get sod all again why should the workers pay for foreigners to have a lifestyle in GB , then there’s the ones who have no intention of getting up in the morning to do a honest days work, easy again if your offered a job or intentionally try to get dismissed from work then no benefits for one year it’s not rocket science what’s needed is MPs in parliament to have the balls to carry out these simple tasks
May 31, 2025
There seems to have been since Blair, a culture of having people believe everything is an illness that needs State mollycoddling.
This has led to a benefit being paid to them, and I am thinking of some that I have known of in receipt of such benefits, for things others just take as part and parcel of life. Oddly, the other side of that is some people who do need help cannot get it.
I also know of some people that initially had a legitimate claim but over a number of years they have never had any reassessment.
As a consequence some are going about their day doing all sorts of things that show they could actually take up a job, if the jobs were available.
If we want to get more people into work then there needs to be not just jobs available, but jobs other than cafes and leisure industry in general, such as in industry/manufacturing.
Jobs with a wage that can help raise a family without needing state benefit top ups. How can that happen if we have no industry because of government policies?
Without breaking any confidentiality, I see a fair few via a voluntary charity role I do, that are state reliant because of drugs/excess alcohol. There seems to be little urgency to tackle this, and I think it’s a ticking time bomb not just financially but socially.
I’ve come across those claiming benefits who are told there are no courses available for them, an example being to gain the qualification to work as security guards. Yet nearly every shop in my town has foreign security guards, most with exceptionally poor English. Am I to believe they’ve paid for a private course??
What a kick in the teeth that is to those who want to work and will take anything to tide them over, but they are at the back of the queue for training while we dutifully help others, creating poster boys for mass immigration at the expense of our own, who then have to be state subsidised.
May 31, 2025
A very large percentage of the “can’t work / won’t work / mental ill health” brigade are found in the depressed former industrial heartlands in the north of England, Wales and Scotland.
Realistically, no-one will be able to parachute high-wage, large-scale DECENT employment opportunities into these areas. And even if they could, it is highly unlikely that the local potential workforce of the unemployed will be capable of taking advantage of the opportunities without significant retraining.
So … to get new jobs created which these individuals stand a chance of being able to do without massive expenditure in advance providing training which may never be appropriate, I have one simple suggestion:
Give Employers a 2-year National Insurance Break for every Small Business (say under 50 employees) and Sole Trader who recruits an individual who is currently unemployed – to be paid in full if they dispense with the individual after the 2-year period is up UNLESS the dismissal is for gross misconduct or similar.
Incentives for the individual to work and disincentives to remain on welfare will then need to be put in place. A campaign to highlight the benefits of work for the individual, particularly focusing on mental health will need to be created to counter the “cruel, heartless, evil conservative” mantra the lefties will launch.
May 31, 2025
No one wants to employ the “can’t work, won’t work, /mental ill health” brigade. They are certain to be loafers and always seeing if they can exploit the compensation claim industry against their employer.
June 1, 2025
So what do you suggest…. euthanasia?
May 31, 2025
Welfare is ruining our society. It makes us more selfish and less likely to care for our family members and neighbours. It is trying to turn the State into our guardian. The State is a very proor parent!
We must get rid of nearly all of it, saving welfare only for those who are destitute and those with a debilitating physically disability.
May 31, 2025
Nonsense. Things worked OK until about 1975. Then various interests began dismantling a system that had provided a reasonable life for most people.
I’ve been looking at the prices of a few items and I’m surprised how much they’ve worsened, from the viewpoint of the average voter.
In 1955, a three-bed. Edwardian house could be bought for about £1,000 (£40,000 today). Why do today’s houses cost nearer £300,000?
In the early 1960s, a new car cost the equivalent of about £5,000 today. Why do they actually cost nearer £20,000? The mechanic who keeps my car going says the average car today needs about double the repairs it did in 1990, the year I first started using him. There has been no reduction in recurrent costs, in exchange for the higher capital cost.
In 1975, in an expensive area (Cambridge) a pint of ordinary real ale cost 12 to 14 pence (around £1 today). Why in 2025 does it cost at least four to five times more than £1?
Either the Bank of England’s inflation calculator is wrong. Or things have happened which have pushed prices up faster than ‘inflation’.
Could it be that people’s clear dissatisfaction is linked to being ‘screwed’ by a system which denies them what they perceive as ‘the basics of life and at a reasonable cost’? ‘Welfare’ here is already less generous than in say the Nordic countries so I don’t think that offers much hope for improving the situation.
May 31, 2025
Of course, the closer we are to 100% employment the better, but first there needs to be;
a/. suitable jobs.
b/. jobs in the places unemployed people are actually living.
We hear a lot of politicos telling us there are x number of unfilled vacancies but it is meaningless waffle if the vacancies are in the North East and the unemployed are in the South West. I’m not suggesting we return to the days when govts told, for example, Roots Motor group to build their new factory in Linwood, when everything else the group did was in and around Coventry, but there does need to be a little more joined up thinking. ‘Neddy’ wasn’t all bad…
Work not only needs to pay but it needs to be de-stressed, it is not the fault of the hourly paid employee if the CEO fails in his/her job, or a CEO expects others to do what they themselves have either never done or could not do were they to try. The best owners and managers are those who have got to were they are from the ‘shop-floor’, something no under or Post graduate Degree qualification can ever teach!
May 31, 2025
Once a government shows what is possible, through its own neglect in allowing unwanted outcomes, as with dinghy arrivals and knife crime, the possible will flourish where enough people pursue it. This is the case with the ”over 900,000 young people not in training, education or work”. And whatever explains that ”Mental ill health has increased substantially” it is the case that access to benefits and justifications for not working are facilitated by claiming mental health issues.
It follows a cultural shift is required in government thinking for there to be any substantial change. That is improbable as the courage, imagination and determination needed will be lacking so there is no solution.
Amelioration will be possible if enough bribes are paid, for example the NEETs could be tempted to undertake training courses. Whether that would do any good for anyone is unclear but the government could boast about its own activity.
May 31, 2025
@f57; “it is the case that access to benefits and justifications for not working are facilitated by claiming mental health issues. ”
Poor Youth mental health in the workplace (and even training-place) might be a genuine problem, of our own making, many a youth might truly not be able to cope with workplace life! Trade Unions have less ability for to challenge unscrupulous employers/practices these days, but perhaps to many youths have a poorly learnt competitive behaviors [1], given how those pushing the Woke agenda have had schools reduce so many otherwise competitive activities to that of a “everyone is a winner” status, were Alpha Males and Alpha Females are seen as bad, even punished. I have no time for bullies, but that is different from learning how to be assertive in a harsh and competitive environment.
[1] and no playing video games in their bedrooms, even with their mates, does not help
May 31, 2025
Some people blame it on the covid lockdown but the signs were there long time before. I remember I was working overseas with this chap back thirty years ago and I asked him what he was going to do on his leave when he got home – he said he had four children with four different women and he had to go visit them all so his time would be full – well from my point I thought it all very strange but said nothing as he was a really nice guy but for long time afterwards I was thinking of the wider ramifications which must be on society – the family unit as we knew it is not there the same anymore and dysfunction has crept in with all of its downsides.
May 31, 2025
@James4; A valid point about teaching teenagers about contraception perhaps, but your tale teaches us little else. Who said those four mothers were claiming benefits, the children’s grandparents might have been the unpaid daycare of working mothers, whilst your workmate might have been sending cheques to each of the four. Heck he might have been simply seeking visitation rights to his own children, whose mothers had go one to marry, and yes some men are quite happy to take on other men’s children.
May 31, 2025
“Mental ill health has increased substantially.”
Has it ? That seems very improbable. You surely mean claims and payments for mental ill health have increased substantially which is quite different. There are plenty of “how to” guides online if anyone fancies giving it a go.
May 31, 2025
The definition of what is a mental health condition has now been deliberately and maliciously changed so now for example anxiety or worry is a mental condition, this is of course total and utter bollox. the professional left wing class are parasitic in their behaviour who benefit from expanding the depth and breadth of state activity. the medical profession is an example of this grifting. if they can medicalise thought itself they would to earn a dollar.
May 31, 2025
There are many suggestions that could work in a limited way but I feel that its too difficult to turn the ship. We need a social earthquake to achieve any real and lasting change – not convinced that Westminster has the metal to implement changes despite often talking of making the difficult decisions having sub contracted, for most of the last forty years, decisions to the EU. Moreover I sense that the population have come to expect too much from the state. However given the state of the country’s finances perhaps a “good shaking” is not that far off.
May 31, 2025
Successive governments, going back to the Wilson era, have failed to do anything about the benefits bill but to increase it.
Just like with energy and too many cars per road mile, the subject of benefits has seen a head in the sand approach to excuse inaction. Let’s face it, no government has had the will or the ‘bright ideas’ to modernise our infrastructure or economic systems.
Why is benefits a problem?
– we have far too may people that live off the state including far too many immigrants;
– we have a failed NHS that adds more sick people to the benefits list than it cures;
– sickness / illness has become a profitable industry.
Resolution:
1 – the way that the NHS handles physical problems and illness needs to be upgraded – How come France and Germany can do it so much better?
2 – stop making benefits so enticing, certainly for illegal immigrants.
3 – kill off net0 and deindustrialisation so that there are more jobs for those with problems to get back to work.
4 – put civil service jobs out to tender.
May 31, 2025
The rise is being linked to high levels of net migration and an increase in asylum seekers being granted refugee status, making them eligible for state support.
The figures, obtained under freedom of information laws, show the cost jumped by nearly 30% in a year, from £726 million to £941 million.
May 31, 2025
I keep hearing Kevin Hollinrake MP and Matt Vickers MP shadow ministers on the radio defending Kemi’s Sunak continued agenda . They are both very unimpressive, is this the best Kemi can find?
Watch the recent Dr John Campbell video on YouTube on the circa 10%+ excess deaths still continuing in most heavily Covid Vaccinated countries. Perhaps Sunak can watch it too and look at the appalling figures. Death lower in places like Russia where very few had MRNA vaccinations. As you expect would after an epidemic has take many old people out already. Then he might correct his “unequivocally safe” statement to the house! Deaths 10%+ up for several years is rather a lot of deaths. Decreasing life expectancy too so will state pension ages be reduces by a year or two? I suspect not!
May 31, 2025
“state pension qualification ages” I meant!
May 31, 2025
“All can see how much better off we would all be if hundreds of thousands of people not working could get jobs. They would also be better off . Any ideas on how to do that?”
I’m afraid that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind – some tough love is required but it wouldn’t be popular…
May 31, 2025
”The UK Unemployment Claimant Count for April 2025 increased on the month and the year, to 1.726 million” ONS monthly report
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/may2025
Don’t worry, taxes, EU reset and net-zero will save the day
May 31, 2025
It would take a conviction politician who is not afraid to be unpopular to sort out the welfare and tax systems.
Every PM/government since Mrs Thatcher has ducked the hard choices. Our MPs seem to be fast asleep and will always go for the easy decision. Not one of them is angry about the government running a deficit budget for over 20 years! They are economically ignorant and seem to feel the UK can drift along in ever-increasing debt without a day of reckoning. But that day is coming when the government will have no choice but to take tough decisions, which will hurt people. The longer they delay, the tougher the correction will have to be.
Sadly, even Nigel Farage seems to have joined the airy-fairy consocialist party, with his stupidity in endorsing lifting the two-child benefit cap.
May 31, 2025
I have been maintaining and improving 5 or more properties over the past 30 years and have been able to do most of the work myself, having learned how to work on the houses that my father built when I was a teenager. I have also had the opportunity of meeting various young British and foreign tenants. My observation is that the number of British people who are capable of working in practical jobs has declined to almost zero. The last tenants left their house in an unlettable state which has taken 4 months of my work to put right. One worked doing graphics for an advertising agency and the other worked for pop music staging company that HMRC drove out of business, leaving my tenant unpaid. He apparently had a nervous breakdown after being pursued by HMRC and debt collectors. At the same time we have found that we cannot find British tradesmen to decorate the properties for less than double the price of European workers. The daily rates worked out at over £600 per man day. It seems that our education system have produced a generation of people who only want to work in non -manual jobs and are genuinely unemployable.
May 31, 2025
I suggest retaining all available jobs for British people unless it can be proven that none can do it. That would make jobs available to our own people. We can then reduce benefits incrementally so they feel increasing pain and are encouraged to relieve it rather than simply stopping them altogether – a potential death blow.
The jobs must pay of course, and we cannot increase the pay available, so we MUST reduce the deductions.
We all know how to achieve this – even Farage knows 😂🤣
I listened to an interview with Tommy Robinson, a good man from Luton.
Westminster is always the last to know what is going on. Maybe because MPs (like Farage) don’t visit their constituencies!
May 31, 2025
Not many jobs that Brits cannot do but you have to pay sufficient for them to live on. In many places to room in a modest shared flat can be 15k PA, share of council tax £1k, commuting £3k, utilities £2k, student loan perhaps £3k, clothing, food and fun say 12k pension cont. £5k so you need about £39k take home min. unless you want to starve or claim benefits. But benefits do not allow for student loan interest! So about £50k gross is needed for a single person. For a couple sharing the room can be a bit better – if no kids!
May 31, 2025
All these costs are high because of the competition from illegal aliens who have their hand in the pocket of the Government. When they go costs will drop.
When costs drop the tax required to pay will drop too so that take home pay will be better without demanding the impossible from companies employers.
May 31, 2025
The welfare bill will continue to rise until immigration is completely halted and U.K. employers including the state itself are forced to train and sufficiently reward U.K. citizens for working rather than living a life on benefits. For this to happen we need a labour shortage just as we had during the Black Death in the Middle Ages which ended the feudal system and caused wages to rise. The state’s never ending wish for mass immigration is deliberate to cause low wages and the ballooning welfare costs for socialism depends upon making and keeping the population poor. It would help to provide cheap energy but the CAGW fraud has been devised to ensure that its “solution”, the Net Zero Strategy, will make energy expensive and intermittent and consequently make the people poorer. There wouldn’t even be a discussion about winter fuel payments for pensioners if we were using our own coal and gas and ditched Net Zero. Water vapour, the biggest of the greenhouse gases, is not considered to be a pollutant and neither is CO2.
May 31, 2025
500+ more illegal immigrants about to collect UK benefits today
May 31, 2025
revised up over 1000 today
May 31, 2025
Richard, I think the only effective way for citizens to be ‘rewarded for working rather than living a life on benefits’
is the traditional method of not rewarding them at all for not working.
May 31, 2025
I must admit that when I saw the title ‘Welfare balloons’, I thought this must be another attempt by the Labour government to win votes by offering all the workless who are in receipt of benefits free balloon-rides with champagne over the Chilterns.
On reading on, I was disappointed.
June 1, 2025
1) Ridiculously high house prices are limiting labour mobility. How can someone move to a moderate income job into London from outside London ?
2) Amongst the highest energy prices in the world.
3) Immigration suppressing wages
4) An NHS that is not responding to the needs of the population despite ever-growing budget.
5) Global corporations sucking money out the country.
June 1, 2025
@KB
Well said, but will any Conservative listen? Ask R Jenrick, he’s to busy promoting himself!
All they care about is saving themselves money, by reducing Taxes, their Taxes, and sod the Plebs!
We need a plan to take use towards an Enterprise Cultural first, and then reduce benefits, as suggested back in the 90’s, but Cameron and Co refused to listen! Then 2008/9 crash, Brexit, Covid19, and now Labour! Who on earth is going to bother, why on earth bother? What’s the point!
BR
RDM
June 4, 2025
Those 900,000 young neets are perhaps the first candidates to be put into national service, and we’d have a year to figure out how all could be active for the State, from manning phones, cooking, cleaning, washing, to more complicated training to use drones and machinery. They’d soon start finding jobs if that was the plan.
June 5, 2025
John, You say ” All can see how much better off we would all be if hundreds of thousands of people not working could get jobs. They would also be better off . Any ideas on how to do that?” For a comprehensive answer read my book The Real Questions. But for a short answer : 50% of GDP is generated by SME and the self employed. Lower than the EU or US. Economies thrive on empowering people. Everything the current capitalist and socialist models do supresses wages in favour of those controlling wealth creation. Half hearted attempts are made to limit monopolies but the most dangerous monopoly is not even recognised. Access to land is denied to all but the few. The solution is to collect the rent on all land. And then re-distribute it on a per capita basis.
When rent is small wages are high (boosted by the per capita amount). When wages are high we can all pay for the things we need. When we pay for housing, education, healthcare, etc, the role of welfare to support those who cannot work is minute. And when the state is small taxes are low.