The Chancellor at the CBI when asked why she had not found some other way in the budget than burdening business with big taxes on employing people and taking money off pensioners said she was not hearing alternatives for righting the national accounts. Let us try again. Controlling spending is a better answer than the tax rises. I have pointed out 4 big targets. Bank of England losses. Productivity falls in public sector. Large numbers of people not working. Too many low pay and no pay migrants needing subsidised homes and public services.
Here are some questions about other wasteful or less crucial public spending.
Why spend on sending 450 people to COP 29?
Why offer trebling of U.K. grants to emerging economies for net zero?
Why increase the hotels for illegal migrants?
Why do nothing to get back £20 bn of lost public sector productivity?
Why give away the Chagos islands then pay to lease back?
Why propose £19 bn of carbon capture
How much more will the government devote to HS2?
What will be the additional rail losses from higher wages?
Will investments in National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy cover all the interest charges on the extra borrowing?
November 26, 2024
Good morning.
Interesting questions. It is almost if the Tory’s have never left.
And the above is an is a relevent point. This is because, as the Official Opposition to this government, they have nothing to say on any of these questions. And that is a worry.
November 27, 2024
Answers to the ‘why’ questions are because the government has a large majority and can do as it pleases.
The government can and will ignore the petition for another general election for exactly the same reason.
Answers supplied yesterday, before the subject was withdrawn, were not saved.
November 26, 2024
Why give soft “loan” to people to go to university when circa 75% of these degrees are worthless?
Why spend billions on Net Zero in the UK when it does nothing positive for climate, destroys the economy and does not even save any world CO2 (not that CO2 is an issue)? It just exports it and many jobs with it.
Why block the roads with islands, bus and bike lanes and anti-car traffic lights etc?
Why over regulate everything?
Why make taxes so complex? Tax complexity is a further tax on top of tax.
Why force people to buy EV cars or hear-pumps when they rarely make any sense financially, environmentally or practically?
Why waste police time on non crime hate incidents?
Why increase crimes and illegal immigration by having no real deterrents indeed incentives?
November 26, 2024
The answer to all these questions is because it’s not our money and we’re going to bankrupt Britain during the next 4 years knowing the uniparty will not change anything.
Reform is our only salvation.
November 27, 2024
So the latest victim of net zero is the loss of a thousand jobs at Vauxhall in Luton and 3000 indirectly from the supply chain.
Maybe a couple of hundred will be gained at Ellesmere Port bit nothing like what’s lost.
We are now seeing the direct consequences of the lunacy. Good skilled, well paid jobs lost for no gain.
Uk car manufacturers buying credits of of Chinese companies to offset lack of sales in Britain.
This is a topsy turvey world we live in.
The idiots are certainly incharge of the asylum.
November 27, 2024
They’re not idiots; they’re delivering the same project the Not-a-Conservative-Party was. The objectives are the same; the individual policies were slightly tweaked to pretend difference.
It is analogous to a war, but with economic weapons of destruction rather than bullets. In any war, there are casualties for (as those prosecuting it believe) the greater good. Look at the WEF website. They don’t bother hiding it.
November 27, 2024
The idiots have been in charge since John ERM Major. Even Thatcher who made him Chancellor fell for Climate Alarmism but Zealot Milibrain is completely mad.
EV do not even save CO2!
November 27, 2024
Quite; But don’t expect the Labour party to acknowledge the fact. Nor indeed their mouthpiece the BBC.
November 27, 2024
Agree completely Ian.
The Uk is committing self harm with all of these Net Zero type policies.
If a product needs a subsidy to sell, then it’s the wrong product or the wrong time.
If a product is taxed to death to stop it being purchased, then it is those who tax it who are past their sell by date, not the product.
November 27, 2024
Well Reform policies are good but Reform are unlikely to get a majority and real power given first past the post voting and even if they did would or could they actually deliver given the Blob, the rule of lawyers, Davos, WHO, ECHR…?
As Matt Ridley put it in the Spectator.
Whoever you vote for, the Blob wins.
The blob are/were wrong on almost everything – net zero, climate alarmism, the net harm Covid vaccines, net harm lockdowns, the absurdly large government, tax levels, immigration, transport, cars, heating, energy, the economy, healthcare…
An excellent podcast from Neil Oliver with Edward Dowd on his recent book, “Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 & 2023 –
November 26, 2024
So much waste that could so easily be cut.
Here are some very good way to save government money. Rather than putting VAT on school fees (which will raise nothing net) give tax breaks and vouchers towards private school fees say 50% of the cost of state school costs so as more use them and the government saves half their education costs. Do the same for the NHS, stop the mad counter productive war on Non Doms which will raise a negative sum and do huge economic damage to the tax base.
November 27, 2024
Why should greedy incredibly wealthy people utilise tax loopholes to live and gain even more money in the UK, than what other wealthy people accept they should pay? A point of principle they and Governments don’t have.
November 26, 2024
Why sell bonds at a loss?
Why send aid ( borrowed money on which we, the taxpayer is paying interest) to contries like China, India and Pakistan ? In fact why send any aid at all?
Why do we continue with Barnett for Scotland, Wales and NI when even Joel Barnett says it has outlived its usefulness and is no longer fit for purpose?
Why are hospitals not MADE to charge foriegners for treatment that are not entitled to free service ?
November 27, 2024
Indeed it is being reported that Scotland will get another £300,000,000 to pay for the increase in national insurance contributions.?
So what was the point of the increase.
November 27, 2024
Who is asking these questions in Parliament? As Mark B points out, it’s not the Official Opposition, who get a reasonable crack at asking questions.
It will be interesting to see if Reform, which has less opportunity there, uses outside means (alternative media, etc to keep up the pressure).
November 27, 2024
Why indeed. There is plenty of money to be saved for a Government which wanted to save it.
They don’t want to save it.
They’re implementing a project which requires them to dismantle our existing economy, society and way of life so that a different “vision” can be imposed on a population which they know will resist the changes.
The destruction phase is being turbo-charged by Keir-Ching! and his Student Union Marxists because those controlling the process know that public awareness of the project is growing and so is the resistance, as both the Farmers Protest (here and on the continent) and the General Election petition (2.74 million and rising) demonstrate.
November 27, 2024
If Sir John will permit, the following article from TCW – Defending Freedom spells out the decision-making process and reaches the same conclusion. “With unusual honesty, Sir Keir Starmer has told us that he considers Westminster to be nothing but a ‘tribal shouting place’, vastly inferior to the global scheming place that is Davos. In which case, no wonder he always prefers option (a).”
Hint: Option (b) is the option which would be in the interests of the UK and British citizens.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/my-country-wrong-or-wrong/
November 27, 2024
The population certainly want to resist the changes, but that is what dictatorships do!
November 27, 2024
This Labour government is even thicker than the last one. At least Stellantis has delivered a delivered a dose of economic reality by closing its Luton van plant. This might even get the government’s attention. Just how useless the Cabinet is was revealed by Dominic Cummings in a Spectator sponsored q and a discussion on AI held at New College, Oxford. He revealed that all Cabinet meetings are scripted, including the conclusions. A member of the audience confirmed this was still the case and that he had written some himself. He added that sometimes the script was even pre-agreed with the ministers who had the speak the words in front of them. Clearly the blob is fully in charge. If you have the time, 1.5 hours, it was a revealing session about some recent applications of AI.
November 27, 2024
Labour’s only ideas to cut spending involve increasing spending – so their idea to cut the hotel bill for illegal migrants is to spend extra millions on lawyers to fast-track approval of their asylum claims. (Thus increasing the pull factor for migrants). Their idea to reduce the unemployment benefit cost is to spend millions on rebranding job centres. I’m not sure that they’ve reduced any spending at all in any department ? Defence maybe.
November 27, 2024
Sir JR, I wouldn’t hang around too long for any answers from Herr Starmer and the gang.
November 27, 2024
And, of course, there are no consequences for wasting money in the public sector. I think it was on this site recently there was a link to the Home Office buying a building to house asylum seekers. They paid £15 million for it. The seller had paid £6 million for it just one year before. The building contains asbestos and is effectively worthless. Anyone getting sacked for uselessness? Of course not. They’ll probably get promoted out of harm’s way.
November 27, 2024
Professor Ian Plimer talks so much sense, his new book is Climate Change: The Facts 2025. Do view him on YT. Hopefully NZ is starting on the path of its own destruction. The impoverishment awaiting many people might trigger a lot of unrest….let’s get back to sanity before that happens.
November 27, 2024
Excellent post today SJR!
The Labour Party is in dictatorship mode, high and mighty and cannot stand being put under scrutiny as their shallow thinking, smokescreen s would see them naked ,devoid of logic and practical thinking.
They are just about to hit a brick wall of their own stupidity on all fronts.