After two years of demanding the biggest set of tax rises in recent U.K. history the Office of Budget Responsibility this week  conceded their policies will slow the economy. Accepting this could go too far they reluctantly accepted there is a case for tax cuts to ease the squeeze!
Why has it taken them so long to see this? Why won’t they acknowledge it is their large and wide ranging tax increases  which are braking the economy along with the monetary tightening.
They go on to say tax cuts that boost investment are fine. A good  start for that would be to cancel the Chancellor’s ill judged  rise in Corporation Tax which looks like a tax rise designed to push the U.K. well down the list of good places to invest. Better still would be to cancel the wicked tax on jobs, the National Insurance rise. This cuts  living standards for employees and takes cash away from investing and employing more for companies.
Will Mr Sunak now change his  mind as the official advice moderates.?When will he see we need to switch from tackling inflation to seeing off recession? Inflation will fall next year as a result of His  big monetary and tax squeeze on top of the cost of living crisis.
The one good decision Mr Sunak took was to authorise the end of printing money. It is just a pity he had authorised yet more money creation in 2021 when the recovery was well set as it was bound to be inflationary.
July 15, 2022
This isn’t incompetence, this is dereliction of duty and deliberate destruction. The governing class have become harmful and that should concern us all
The British people are not playthings to be ordered around, moulded and experimented with ala Keynes, Gramsci, Marx, Popper, Foucault, Sartre
July 15, 2022
The OBR have now done a forecast for their pounding after 5 Sept.
They foresee that a Penny will be more Daunting for their survival.
July 15, 2022
Good morning.
I thought you was going to say, âResign and go quietly into the night.â Alas !
It would be interesting to see what his policies are and whether or not he has the strength of character to reverse the damage he has done or, will he just double down.
You know, Sir John, there is a theme going on here. If you care to look elsewhere in the Western World much the same seems to be happening. For example. Across the Channel Dutch farmers are in danger of losing their land and their business. This is being done in the name of environmentalism but, as a Dutch farmer stated, it really is being done to provide more land for housing. Now let us look here in the UK and all those failed business, empty shops and offices. As mentioned by others here quite some time ago, whilst we were in the midst of the SCAMDEMIC, it was suggested that those employ shops and office could be converted into flats.
I think there is more at work than just a poorly performing QUANGO ?
đ
July 15, 2022
For ’employ’ please read ’empty’
I’ve not had my first coffee of the morning đ
July 15, 2022
Sorry Sir John
Can you get rid of that link and instead post this one ? Cheers
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/government-relaxes-planning-rules-for-converting-unused-commercial-buildings-into-homes-70247
July 15, 2022
Mark. Great posts covering what many of us think. It feels like the whole world has gone bonkers.
July 15, 2022
not feels like – it has !
July 15, 2022
It seems a matter of national emergency that Sir John does his utmost to make sure Sunak does not reach No.10
I believe there is a ‘pack ’em and stack ’em’ approach to mass housing for mass immigration – UN Agenda according to some.
Isn’t one of the sickly snake oil salesman slogans ‘global solutions for global problems’.
I believe certain other nations are experiencing problems with their population explosions.
It looks more and more as if Western Europe is being offered up as the solution to other nations problems, and we’re expected to just suck it up.
July 15, 2022
@Mark B:
Not a very accurate description of the Dutch problem. It is not about the land to build on but the nitrogen farming produces. The Netherlands has a huge nitrogen problem, now preventing permits for building.
July 15, 2022
Hi PvL
I was only quoting that which your fellow countryman said. Of course there is more to it I am sure but it does not look good does it ?
July 15, 2022
For the record:
The Dutch problem is nothing but a land grab by the government, badly disguised as being related to the myth of climate change.
It is nothing but opportunism, a) to reduce the food supply, and b) to impoverish the people who were otherwise gainfully employed – while at the same time enriching further the friends of WEF.
July 15, 2022
If you look carefully, you may see that Sunak has already resigned. He has put himself up for election for the top job, so it is up to Conservative members to eliminate him if he gets through to the last two.
July 15, 2022
In May of this year Sri Lanka, also obeying the IMF ( in order to get a loan) raised its taxesâŠ
That went well. Maybe it explains changed taxation advice/orders?
July 15, 2022
Indeed, what next? An Office for Tax Simplification that actually simplifies taxes, a police service that actually try to catch and deter criminals, a border force that enforces borders, an NHS emergency services that does not take 20+ hours causing many to suffer or even die, GPs who can give you appointments the same day, a Conservative Party that believed in low taxes, small government, a transport department that provided amd maintains decent roads, an energy department that concentrates on delivering cheap reliable on demand energy and huge deregulation, a BBC that is not a pure propaganda outfit, schools that educate rather than indoctrinateâŠ
July 15, 2022
+many
Stop that day-dreaming and cough up your taxes!
OhâŠactuallyâŠwe have paid (with menaces) for all those things for bloody years..soâŠ
July 15, 2022
I can imagine many in mainstream politics, certainly in media and academia circles seeing such proposals as the stuff of their worst nightmares.
You are bordering on heresy. Take care as what you say may not be illegal but it could be seen as harmful to some!!
July 15, 2022
Lifelogic: thank you for giving what SHOULD be the brief but coherent manifesto of the next Conservative Leader.
That it WILL be – is another matter.
July 15, 2022
Youâre living in cloud cuckoo land. This is a big state that exists for the benefit of the public sector.
July 15, 2022
Nothing works. I have always been a supporter of the NHS (except the Lansley cock up) but this week have been on the rough end of it. My sister came out of hospital last week after hip surgery and her operated leg came up like a balloon. She phoned the hospital Monday, again Tuesday after being promised someone would be in touch. So far up to today (Friday) no call. Yesterday I insisted she call 111 for advice. After waiting 1.5 hours on the phone she spoke to someone who said she needed to talk to a clinician within 2 hours as it could be DVT and at 3.30 this morning, 8 hours later, they rang to say they couldn’t help and suggested she call her hospital again when they opened in 5 hours time.
She is trying to contact her surgeon again, but being Friday what are the chances of getting any help? It’s a complete shambles. Clinically everything good, but anything else, total crap. An expensive operation put in jeopardy for the sake of a phone call. Not allowed to say it of course, but we just have too many people in this country for it to function.
July 15, 2022
Graham
Sadly this is normal for aftercare.
Personal knowledge of too many cases to outline.
July 15, 2022
Matt Ridley today in the Telegraph is spot on.
Eco-extremism has brought Sri Lanka to its knees
An obsession with organic farming âin sync with natureâ triggered an unsustainable but predictable economic crisis.
What happened? There is a simple explanation, one that the BBC seems determined to downplay. In April 2021, president Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced that Sri Lanka was banning most pesticides and all synthetic fertiliser to go fully organic. Within months, the volume of tea exports had halved, cutting foreign exchange earnings. Rice yields plummeted leading to an unprecedented requirement to import rice. With the government unable to service its debt, the currency collapsed.
July 15, 2022
The Heir to the Throne has gone suspiciously quiet on the subject of Sri Lanka. He’s an enthusiast for organic farming and Eco Lunacy and normally can’t wait to tell the Government, and us, his opinions.
I doubt he has much self-awareness, but just possibly he’s embarrassed that a Member of the Commonwealth has been driven back into 1950s levels of poverty by Green Lunacy.
July 15, 2022
WEF encouraged Sri Lanka to âgo organicâ and to relentlessly pursue Net Zero.
What great advice that was and our govt. is similarly fooled.
July 15, 2022
The greencr*p presents an excellent way for ( say ) a giant manufacturing country to sell masses more stuff âŠall fossil fuel produced because there ainât really such a thing as solar and wind powerâŠit donât work!! We will be totally deprived of our fossil fuel products and production.
The destruction of agriculture by greencr*p also presents an opportunity regarding food supplyâŠoh the power and control that presents.
Brought to their knees by plandemic restrictions which eerily concentrated on destroying businesses ( eg meat production) there isnât a lot the sheeple can do and they will obey and eat their bugs in the dark.
While the ones who have sold us down the river dine on beefsteaks. Shades of The Old Bailey on Hanging Days.
July 15, 2022
+1. Prince Charles and indeed Prince William of all people should keep their mouths shut and well out of politics for the sake of the monachy. This as 1. Their views are totally wrong headed and idiotic anyway and 2. On this issue they are grade one, do what I say not what I do, totally pathetic hypocrites. Rather like Sunak with his many flights, four houses, his serial manifesto ratting, green card, I want low taxes but deliver vast increases, an his special personal family (non-dom tax avoidance arrangements) that are not available to many othersâŠ
July 15, 2022
Look also at whatâs happening in the Netherlands. V little bbc coverage if this and none on the reasons for it.
July 16, 2022
Richard 1: GB News has covered this – The latest can be found on Youtube/GB News ‘ featured earlier this week. ‘Dutch farmers protest over country’s net zero policy’ Interview with a farmer / protester. The message appears to be like it or lump it, adapt or disappear. Fits in nicely with the global call for collaborative responses at national & global level, our governments’ movers & shakers being the ones to control, shape & build our common future. A one size fits all perhaps…..
July 15, 2022
Lifelogic:
Around the 1950s, an early edition of Alfred E Neuman’s ‘Mad’ magazine depicted a cartoon strip with a Jolly Green Giant destroying the countryside and the world.
The key image of the green monster was headlined in scary lettering: Nothing can stop it! Not even Weedkiller!
Those Mad creators were way ahead of their time, but even they didn’t predict the OBR.
July 15, 2022
With luck Mr. Sunak’s views will not count for much in future, certainly no more than they do now.
The OBR makes a sound case for its own abolition.
July 15, 2022
At the age of 42 years young Mr Sunak has not acquired enough previous experience running an economy the size of the UK’s. He’s been captured by other forces and learning on the job at our expense and making a big costly mess of things.
Radar
July 15, 2022
The next PM also need to stop this war on Landlords which helps no one Landlords or Tenants
War on landlords to cost almost 50,000 rentals this year.
BRITAIN will lose almost 50,000 rental properties this year as a result of the Governmentâs war on landlords. Hamptons estate agents reveals that landlords are selling up at twice the rate that they are buying as rental supply plummets.
But many people need to rent and are not able or ready to buy, perhaps they have only a short term job, or want to buy a house but only need a one bet flat currently. With huge stamp duty rates no point in buying short term anyway. Rentals are needed for job flexibility. The policy is insane rather like most government policies such as energy, healthcare, law and order, border force, transportâŠ
July 15, 2022
+1
Who is doing the buying though?
I have heard of two huge firms that buy up whole streets at a time. All nicely done up houses kept warm and ready by small landlords over the past 20 years ( maintaining the housing stock).
The next step is huge (global?) housing associations mopping up more and more of the impoverished as highly-controlled tenants.
No more private ownership.
July 15, 2022
Indeed and on Any Questions last night from Cornwall the Landlord baiting wasn’t mentioned as a cardinal reason for second owners taking houses off the rental market. Landlords are either going to airbnb or selling up to others who wouldn’t rent their properties out because they might not get them back. So next the government will go after airbnb and holiday lets, at which point tourists abandon the county and even fewer people there can buy or rent. Sunak-like stupidity.
July 15, 2022
This is absolutely battering me. I have a couple of propertiesâŠboth worth less than I paid for them in 2004! So I canât afford to sell them. The rent I receive for them just covers the mortgage and yet Iâm taxed on the full rent that is paid. Taxed on profit I donât makeâŠ.itâs nuts.
July 15, 2022
The OBR doesn’t govern; it offers advice.
If Sunak hasn’t got either the brains or the cojones to tell them they are wrong, then he isn’t Prime Ministerial material.(Just like Johnson, who either didn’t have the brains or the cojones to stand up to SAGE and the Public Health Alarmists).
But then I suspect the OBR, Treasury and Sunak didn’t have the economy or “hard-working taxpayers” at the forefront of their mind when they created a policy which would obviously crash the economy. He’s been planning his PM campaign for quite a long time!
July 15, 2022
Agree. First attribute of a politician. Sloping shoulders. I suspect Sunak is getting the One Nation groupâs support. Biggest at about 100 members. Soft Right social democrat leaning EU loving.
Contest shows the vacuity, self interest of many MPs. Mordaunt has done nothing of note, indeed we read itâs worse than that, yet she looks strong. Amber Rudd, goodness she was poor, likes her, says it all.
Kemi far more impressive but too tough and too much of a Tory to get support from the centre. Much of this contest a re run of the leave/stay vote although the Remainers wonât admit as much.
Sunak more malleable. His problem will be the Tory members so the Right need to get a tough credible alternative in the last 2.
That is unless they change the rules at the last minute. I wonder?
July 15, 2022
@Donna
The OBR (and HM Treasury) seemed to have convinced themselves that a reduction of tax rates would lead to a reduction in the overall tax take. Despite what the BBC may say, this is not necessarily the case. The maths is not straight forward but these people are highly qualified, highly paid experts.
Maybe the public sector experts and its quangos are wary of potential spending cuts and their desire for self preservation has influenced their tax advice, recommendations and decisions ?
July 15, 2022
Agreed.
July 15, 2022
As to the printing of moneyâŠthe IMF suddenly woke up to the fact that the inorganic printing of money has consequences..unpleasant onesâŠ( they didnât realise!) so the order went out to ditch the green eyeshades and turn off the machines.
It seems to me that we arenât autonomous as a country and can look beyond our elected leaders when apportioning policy blame. I am horrified at the true extent of this. Who allowed it to happen?
July 15, 2022
Indeed – but if I were permitted to print my own money I might be rather tempted to do so!
July 15, 2022
I think there are a lot of Blofeld and Rasputin type characters pulling the strings of organisations. No-one seems to question and query things nowadays, until things go badly wrong; as they are now!
If bad information is given in a convincing way – itâs almost believable – so bad form to question? Sir Humphrey type conversation⊠now go and do it.
July 15, 2022
In a way the electorate share much of the blame.
If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard Joe public bemoan the state of the nation and those running it, yet trot back out and vote for the establishment responsible for the decline.
Even now people can only talk in terms of if the Conservatives flunk then we must have Labour,(or to a lesser extent the Liberals) while recognising that it’s one and the same.
All excuses are used, numbers etc but it’s just a mask for laziness and slavish belief in ‘their party’ or the brainwashing that it won’t do any good voting for smaller parties. In other words they can’t be bothered and voting is just a going through the motions to look ‘engaged with politics’
It would only take one or two in Parliament from outside the establishment to stir up a hornets nest but people are too afraid to vote outside their party, even while realising they are not representative of them.
Sheer lunacy.
July 15, 2022
I welcome the fact that Suella Braverman and the ERG are giving their support to Liz Truss. Ms Truss wants, among other things, to shrink the size of the State. I suspect that she shares Mr Rees Moggâs view that the 20% increase in Civil Servants during the pandemic can now eliminated by natural wastage. Perhaps the OBR can be done away with also. If the Cabinet, Treasury and BoE cannot, between them, workout a sensible forecast it is a pretty poor show.
July 15, 2022
Yet there is a rhetoric amongst the socialists that high corporation tax is welcome, as it punishes all those fat cat executives who exploit their employees and pocket all the profits for themselves.
Can they understand that corporation tax rises don’t impact all those fat cat executives of multi-national companies, that avoid the tax altogether with creative accounting?
Do they also not understand that the majority of British companies operate with good relationships between owners and employees, and the owners take great care of their employees, as they know they can easily walk if not treated well? All the corporation tax rise does is reduce their ability to invest, favouring imports from companies outside the reach of UK taxes, plus making the UK companies less competitive in global markets.
The next thing is that we will be blamed for not investing. How can we, when the means to do so is being taxed away?
July 15, 2022
Dave
They neither know or care. To them it is all about spin and PR and envy. Take from those who earn it and give it to those who don’t.
Fun fact. Back in the 1980’s during the miners strike Labour were very pro-coal and coal miners. Know days they can’t stand the stuff and would work hard to prevent a single coal mine from reopening. Why do you think that is ?
July 15, 2022
Surely the Treasury with its vast resources, brains computers etc can do any modelling it needs and surely does so either the Chancellor doesnât trust his Department or the OBR is there to give him political cover implying fiscal responsibility.
Itâs the latter as we see with Sir JR blaming them. No different from an âindependentâ Bank of England.
July 15, 2022
Garbage in, garbage out !
July 15, 2022
Clearly few in government have ever sailed a boat, otherwise they would know that a light touch of the tiller to catch the wind, and control/steer the boat the best and most economic form of control.
It also makes sense to constantly view the tell tails, the waves and the tide/current to make sure you keep on track whilst also checking the sat nav, just to confirm you are on the correct course.
Running a business or an economy is very similar, occasionally you need to weather a storm and shelter in a port, but route planning and steady progress is the aim, not wild changes of direction.
The important thing is to make sure the boat is seaworthy, and the plan sensible, before you set off.
July 15, 2022
The idea that tax grabbing Chancellor Sunak as PM will cut taxes, is laughable.
July 15, 2022
Never mind the increase of corporation tax on “declared” profits having just run payroll for July I was dismayed to confirm that the increase in NI threshold awarded to individuals this month has not been added to Employers National Insurance thresholds. So the tax on jobs remains the same and includes the 1.25 increase while the headlines go to PAYE serfs getting a tax cut.
1more smoke and mirrors.
July 15, 2022
O/T
How can the party ever regain its respectability label when it seems that high ranking figures have taken it upon themselves to give demolition reviews on some of the leader hopefuls in favour or Ms Truss, when their wife works within her department? It is being banded about online, and either way it’s not exactly the best of scenarios for both the party and the people involved. What price credibility?
Is it not a case of having words in people’s ears and reminding them least said soonest mended.
July 15, 2022
I think âkeep upâ is a fair observation this morning. Sunak is no longer the chancellor. Why not have word with Zahawi?
July 15, 2022
I understand that Eton College is about to make ÂŁ300m tax-free profits from the construction of over 3,000 homes on land next to the South Downs National Park. I believe Eton is a charity and so avoids a tax liability and therefore doesn’t need a tax cut.
July 15, 2022
The OBR has again proven itself to be just another QUANGO. AKA a job for the boys. Let’s dump all of the useless Quangos and replace them with Private Industry. It was the Private Sector that made the vaccination programme the success it was so why did PM Johnson not continue with that idea in other areas?