The farmers were back in Westminster yesterday, angrier than ever. The family farm tax will drive some out of business and split up farms on the death of the farmer. Just when we need more home grown food the government taxes farms to extinction, with high NI and subsidies for not growing food also doing damage. The mean IHT charge will not raise much money but will pull down some family farms. The PM made a mess of responding to worries about farmers mental health and more possible suicides.
Meanwhile predictably the higher National Insurance duly pushed unemployment up,now well up on the inherited level in the summer of 2034. Conservatives took unemployment down from 7.6% to 4.1 % over14 years, Labour put it up to 5.1% in a year and a half.
The high taxes on energy and energy use are busy closing refineries, petro chem plants, ceramics works, a fibreglass factory and many others.
Big wage awards mean public sector pay now goes up far faster than private sector. The squeezed private sector has to lay higher taxes to lay the bigger state wage bills and ballooning benefit bills. No wonder there is no growth, fewer jobs and higher unemployment.
December 18, 2025
You write about ‘ballooning benefit bills’ as if an injection of demand into the economy is not welcome. People on benefit tend to have a higher propensity to spend than those with more than one house.
Reply Taxing energy/ carbon and family farms is destroying businesses and closing factories, undermining our ability to earn a living. We cannot all live on benefits.
December 18, 2025
How can you have ‘demand’ with no money?
All that does is remove assets from the economy.
I bet you work in the Treasury. I see your ‘logic’ all over Reeves budgets and in the ferrying of a penniless aliens into the country.
Truly you are more terrifying than everything else.
December 18, 2025
I agree Lynn, a very twisted logic.
December 18, 2025
Indeed we cannot all on live on benefits or paid by the state sector or from gold plated state sector pensions. Starmer even has his own act of parliament to give him special tax advantages over other pensions for mere plebs! Pensions they have used their own earning to fun unlike Sir Two Tier!
December 18, 2025
“Teachers will be given training to spot the signs of misogyny and tackle it in the classroom as part of the government’s long-awaited strategy to halve violence against women and girls within the next decade.”
Reported by the BBC.
So will this misogyny include forcing girls as young as 10 to wear head covering at many schools?
Just how will misogyny be defined. If I say women on average tend to be shorter than men, less good a sports, less likely to study physics, computer science or further maths is it misogyny or women are more likely to study English or languages, spend more on clothes, shoes and makeup, live longer… Indeed if you measure almost anything you will fine a gender differences on average!
Will they also cover misandry such as in RAF pilot recruitment or courts absurdly equating the wages of bin men (nearly all men) with dinner ladies (nearly all ladies) as if they were comparable jobs!
December 18, 2025
Stephen – those ballooning benefit costs can only ultimately be funded by private sector activity. Grow the state sector and you bleed the private sector dry. Jacob Rees-Mogg did a good YouTube brief this week explaining the issue.
One point from JR-M that I hadn’t known: Every single Labour Government has increased unemployment during their term in office. What more evidence do you need of socialist incompetence?
December 18, 2025
You don’t think tax breaks are a form of benefit?
December 18, 2025
Destroying manufacturing and private business, including farming, in order to give unearned money to welfare claimants (including a great many foreign ones) is not going to “put more money into the economy.”
In the real world you have to earn money (ie business) before you spend it (welfare).
December 18, 2025
Perhaps you should look to countries with successful economies to learn a thing or two about real life? Can you see this idea of paying people from tax not to work and importing people going down well in the US? Switzerland? If it worked so well to boost their economies, I’m pretty sure they’d have twigged it. Instead, you’re relying on ideas tried in the USSR and east bloc.
December 18, 2025
SS
“People on Benefits tend to have a higher propensity to spend than those with more than one house”.
Yes you are probably right, that is why they are on Benefits, they have little or no savings, so your solution is what exactly, should we all get Benefits and then we could all spend more ?
But who finances the Benefits in this dream World ?
December 18, 2025
“You write about ‘ballooning benefit bills’ as if an injection of demand into the economy is not welcome”.
So where do these benefits come from but taxes on people this removing money from the economy!
It also lower the incentives to work and increases the incentives to live off benefits. Plus you also have all the costs of collection and distribution. Furthermore the incentives to leave the country.
So how exactly do you think this doom loop agenda will provide a sustainable injection of demand?
December 18, 2025
The money multiplier requires the money to be earned through production not handed out.
Helicopter money, as proved by Covid giveaways, ends in rampant inflation.
December 18, 2025
Stephen Sharp’s ingenious argument has convinced me that what Britain needs is more theft. I now see how wicked it is to just own stuff when the national interest demands that others spend it for me.
Laws against burglary and robbery must be repealed immediately, and our hard-working, disgracefully misunderstood thieves released from prison so they can get the economy motoring again.
December 18, 2025
meanwhile we have people in London living in social housing where the market price of their individual house is more than 2 million quid, these people really have won the state lottery.
December 18, 2025
Better still, they don’t have to pay any additional fees!
December 18, 2025
They can often even pass the cheap rent benefit onto resident children and with no IHT! The family next door in a similar house may be working hard to pay a large mortgage, taxes are circa 50% and often have a far lower disposable income than the people in the council house be they working or on benefits! Their taxes being used to give the neighbours a far higher standard of living than themselves and in a similar house!
December 18, 2025
except of course that social housing allocation is not random like a lottery, it would be interesting to know the backgrounds of such residents, what their relationship with councillors is, etc.
December 18, 2025
Indeed! Corruption in allocation is often rife!
December 18, 2025
Indeed and very likely never to move out as paying such low rents and even these quite likely being paid for by other tax payers, many with their own large mortgages, via benefits! As they will not own the house they will not pay the new mansion mugging taxes either!
December 18, 2025
The IHT tax grab is not just on farms but on all small businesses it is hugely harmful. The government grabs the 20% but this destroys businesses, jobs, productivity going forwards or the business folds.
A growth, growth, growth rain-dance from Reeves yet every policy she pushed is anti-growth. Plus the insanity of net zero rip off energy, the renters rights bill, the worker rights bill… total insanity.
So silly Kemi wants to ban Doctors from striking which would be hugely counterproductive. Almost everyone seems to be against the doctors currently but if you do the maths they often end up with circa £150k of debt to qualify over 5-6 years plus interest of 7% on this. The maths using junior doctors pay rates mean they actually often get no pay after tax, NI, commuting costs, exam fees, stethoscopes etc. and other deductions beyond what they need jist to repay this student debt until they get to about age 32. Literally zero pay nothing for food, rent, council tax until age 32! Yet it seems it is fine from Bankers, Lawyers, HR consultants, compliance people, insurance people to earn three times doctors pay often after only the three or four years at uni or even non!
December 18, 2025
Kemi is wrong.
Much of what the doctors say is correct. Replacing doctors with PA’s etc is a bad mistake. Big bottlenecks in training for local doctors is a bad mistake. Importing foreign docs instead of training our own is a mistake. She should have taken a pop at the crap way the NHS is organised and run, not the docs. Their pay is a small part of their grievance.
December 18, 2025
What Starmer the harmer is trying to do is the total collapse of the farming industry along with everything else the liebour party touches so we are dependent on overseas imports, then there’s the little question of the liebour parties drip drip dripping us back into the dreaded EU by the back door and ignoring the 17 million voters who voted out of the organisation of pig trough eaters , surely there’s got to be a way of getting this bunch of rabble out of power before 2029 or we are doomed and the country I’ve lived in for over 70 years is gone forever
December 18, 2025
@Mick – the plan, but you weren’t supposed to notice until its to late. Although it is now unstoppable, the tyranny of a traitorous Parliament
December 18, 2025
Sir Keir” is misleading and unworthy of the title.
A knighthood represents the highest level of honour for significant, long-term contributions to society, recognizing individuals for inspirational achievements in any field.
Starmer’s field is anti-farming. His errant ways damage the lives of farmers and the important role farmers perform in feeding the nation. He is more like a muck spreader force-growing these islands’ excessive population and dumping hardship on taxpayers who are unwilling and unable to pay for his incompetence.
December 18, 2025
Good morning.
All going to plan.
December 18, 2025
Yes, I agree. No more clear evidence of this socialist, dogma driven PM and government than Starmer’s dismissive answers to the committee challenges on possible farmer suicides; handing the EU £500 million – no problem, saving essential home farming – – no…
December 18, 2025
If you invest say £10 million in the UK and do well getting a gross return of say 10% PA (perhaps circa 5% above inflation) the combined effect of all the many UK taxes plus IHT on death is likely your take 90% of your wealth off you over 21 years or so. Without tax it would grow to about £80 million with UK taxes you will be lucky to have the £10 million still intact (plus inflation will have reduced its value to less than half in reality).
Investment in the UK or bringing money to the UK does not look very attractive! Nor very often does working in the UK.
December 18, 2025
Working hard in the UK after tax, NI, rent or mort., council tax, living costs, commuting… often leaves you nothing at all left for savings or fun or even for children!
December 18, 2025
@Lifelogic – common sense doesn’t aid the desire to become a basket case beholden to the unelected unaccountable technocrats that still wield the power while remaining isolated and unscathed of the outcome
December 18, 2025
The war criminal Putin is desperately discombobulated by the support of NATO countries for Ukraine and their resolute rejection of territorial and other usual maximalist demands encapsulated in Wittkopf’s 28 point “Peace Plan” He spent yesterday making his usual angry, impotent threats.
Putin is enraged by Ukraine’s refusal to capitulate and recent statements by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte:-
“NATO’s increased defence spending commitments respond to long-standing US concerns about burden sharing. New members Sweden and Finland have already increased their defence spending to 5%. Putin has, strategically, already lost the war”
Yesterday the US Senate overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan fiscal 2026 National Defence Authorization Act, which among other measures (including an $8bn increase in military spending) allocated $800m over two years for military support to Ukraine. It also authorizes the Baltic Security Initiative. which will provide $175 million to support Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia’s defence. Apparently, Trump has said he will sign it.
Putin is KGB and a professional liar. The Russian summer offensive has failed, with horrific WW1 casualty levels. When the ground freezes, it will be Ukraine’s turn.
December 18, 2025
Much guff in the right wing press this week, blaming the closure of the UK’s last ammonia production company (in Billingham) CF Fertilisers UK Ltd, on net zero.
CF Fertilisers UK made the proposal to shut their ammonia plant due to a forecast in 2023 that producing ammonia at Billingham will not be cost-competitive for the long-term compared to importing cheaper American ammonia. Primarily due to projected high “natural” gas prices in the UK relative to other regions and the impact of carbon costs.
Additionally, shutdowns in recent years of CF’s industrial customers’ UK operations – which had consumed significant ammonia volumes – have created a supply-demand imbalance for ammonia production at the Billingham Complex.
The company believes that ample global availability of ammonia for import, including from CF Industries’ North American production network, will enable more cost-competitive and efficient production. Sales of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitric acid for its U.K. agriculture and chemicals customers will be supplied from it’s American plant moving forward.
So just like Cadbury’s chocolate, they have closed the British factory to concentrate production in America. Nothing to do with net zero whatsoever. Just the high price of “natural” gas here
Reply That is everything to do with NZ. See our carbon price and emissions trading, oil and gas taxes and new drilling bans compared to US exploitation of home gas.
December 18, 2025
This level of economic damage can only be achieved in such a short time if it is deliberate.
Two-Tier and the Blair/Brown Establishment are deliberately crashing the economy.
December 18, 2025
Without a doubt, the People’s Bank of China is the leading single entity that is driving up the gold price to record highs.
In the third quarter of 2025, the PBoC’s gold purchases (reported and unreported) accounted for 118 tonnes, up 39% MoM and 55% YoY. Chinese monetary gold reserves stand at ~5,400 tonnes in Q3
As other central banks aggressively load up on gold and help move the price to new all-time highs, global gold reserves are rising to the detriment of the dollar. Total central banks’ monetary gold reserves now account for 40,225 tonnes, 50% of which is owned by countries outside the West
As the developed nations continue to print fiat to pay the interest on their humungous national debts, gold (and now silver) will continue to be bought by countries on the other side of the trade. The de-dollarisation of the world economy continues apace.
Reeves & the BoE have failed to buy a single ounce of gold this year. Again.
December 18, 2025
Well done Labour voters, and in the 2024 election second place went to the party that left office with nothing working except the cross-channel taxi service.
If they hadn’t voted Labour, would they have voted Lib-Dem instead, giving us a government that wanted to sell the country out even more to the EU?
When will the people of the UK wake up and vote for men and women with a credible plan for good government and prosperity?
December 18, 2025
OT Doesn’t the Erasmus scheme remind you of Chagos? The UK hands over some of the best universities in the world to EU students and pays the EU for doing so!
December 18, 2025
Labour government’s are like Ashes tours. Full of hope at the start followed by the rapid realisation that the approach is all wrong and the participants are not up to the job.
Doomed ultimately to fail over a flawed philosophy which becomes more and more discredited by experience and events.
December 18, 2025
As we all know it has been parliaments and its governments policy for some time now that we should be an import only country, particularly imports from the EU who have been the main beneficiaries to these policies.
The only regret that the UK Parliament has that it didn’t completely stop the move from the people for it to be democratic and take responsibility for what happens within the UK. The UK’s parliament still remains the EU’s parish council and nothing more, an order taker from what only they see as a higher authority.
December 18, 2025
I got up feeling cheerful this morning. I then read your comments Sir John and fully agreed with them. Howevrr, the prospect of another (nearly) four years of these people (and the accumulating damage they are doing) has quite taken the shine off my morning.
Note to self. Go down the shed, forget about them, do something useful and look forward to seeing the Grandchildren next week.
December 18, 2025
The move against hard working family farmers, forcing agricultural land sales to be used for solar and wind generation is in accwith the UN Agenda 30 and WEF policies. The aim is to remove property rights to the corporate ‘stakeholders’ which carry out this ‘Reset’. The present king gave lectures at the WEF supporting this. The PM has said that he prefers Woking with his friends at Davos.
The Dutch PM, before he was moved to Nato, tried to close Dutch farms and build new cities, as UN Agenda, but was thwarted.
The Renters Rights act has forced many small landlords to sell up and corporations are buying at a discount. This investment was not to be for the small investor. The same goes for small businesses such as pubs and restaurants.
December 18, 2025
accordance with
working – not Woking.
Phone changes after typing.
December 18, 2025
From the media – “Britain’s £8bn bill to rejoin student exchange scheme. Starmer accused of paying ‘whatever the EU wants’ to be part of Erasmus ”
And what will Parliament do to stop this wreaking of the Country? Nothing, they are so desperate to hand responsibility and the thought of democracy away they will also get on bended knee
December 18, 2025
Lord Frost, the UK’s former Brexit negotiator, told The Telegraph: “The Government has done what it always does – make a concession up front and sort out the consequences later.
“They pay an inflated amount to get back into Erasmus for one year, they won’t then want to leave again, so they will end up paying whatever the EU wants for the next seven years. The truth is, of course, they just want to be liked by the EU and don’t care what price they have to pay.”
UK Fish , UK Farming, UK Defence, UK Industry, the means to earn and pay, all gone. A UK Parliament in all its glory
December 18, 2025
All of which shows how right Thatcherite polices were/are and how destructive socialist policies are.
OK, so we’ve known for a long time that ‘LABOUR ISN’T WORKING / HAS NEVER WORKED’ – and that’s just their normal day to day inept thinking, but link that with WEF demands and the impact of NET-0 and the crumbling economy becomes a disaster zone.
That’s where we are, just on the precipice.
This government has no intention of making anything better, despite their alleged concerns about economic growth. They have deliberately and willingly set us on a course of national suicide.
December 18, 2025
the whole way the UK is setup is anti business, anti people who want to look after themselves.
we have destroyed the UK IT sector by allowing massed import of (overseas workers? ed) to undercut the locals, driven the quality down, and so we can only sell services at commodity prices. the UK should have stayed with premium pricing and higher quality local workers. same is true of other sectors too. commodity pricing is a bad place to be when your power costs, tax costs, etc are the worst in the world.
manufacturing has been decimated by the most expensive anti pollution rules on the planet, and the same driving the most expensive power. so we import from China & India instead, where they pollute more than we ever did, and pushed up net world pollution but destroyed jobs here.
I have a current account with one of the big UK banks. My transfer limit is 20,000 a day. 20,000 a day may as well be toy town money when you are trying to juggle hundreds of thousands. Despite my pleas the bank is not interested in revising this. And yet I am supposed to stay here and pay the massive tax bill for the worst services in the developed world.
And my family get robbed and threatened regularly. The country is overrun with people who hate us.
The whole country is a joke.