There are stories in the press suggesting the Chancellor will have some scope to boost spending or cut taxes in the budget. There are also suggestions that boosting spending will take priority.
It would be good first to create more room to make changes. We read work on getting more people into jobs is going well. If more people take up paid employment benefit and tax credit spending falls and tax revenues rise. The inflation rate is coming down, so they need to put a large saving on debt interest into the figures. Last year debt interest on their accounting basis soared thank to the large rise in inflation linked debt costs. There will be big savings on the energy package which should be allowed to run off this year.
There are comments that defence will get some more money. It needs to restock ammunition and weapons to replace that sent to Ukraine.It needs to get up to strength on personnel numbers.
The NHS will need help with meeting the extra pay bills. It also needs to review it current spending priorities and see where the large increases of the last three years have gone.Childcare may need expansion as part of the workforce package. There is talk of more energy subsidy than planned.
It is vital there is scope for tax cuts. Some of these will boost revenues though OBR forecasts will say otherwise. Without more growth we will struggle to afford good public services. High tax rates can induce a cycle of decline by deterring enterprise and investment.
March 12, 2023
What really matters is total government spending. This as the money for this will have to be found one way or another. Either taxes, from yet more borrowing or from money printing (currency debasement – Sunak’s area of expertise hence the current inflation he caused as Chancellor made even worse by the net zero expensive energy religion).
What also matters is how well this tax payers money is spent. In the UK, especially during the pandemic, it has been spend appallingly. Crony capitalism, pure corruption and gross incompetence is the order of the day.
Much government spending not only does no good but it does positive harm. Net zero, the lockdowns, HS2, the net harm vaccines (certainly for younger people), misguided red tape everywhere, test and trace, daft employment laws, diversity over ability in the RAF, defence, NHS, Education, Police and Civil Service, the Windsor Framework, the moronic and clearly scientifically ignorant Committee for Climate Change… as just a few of the very many examples.
March 12, 2023
From a Roger Helmer tweet:- “Hunt proposes a £20 billion bung to support carbon capture & storage, funded by “a levy on consumers”. How long will they go on treating energy consumers as a piggy-bank for their pet virtue-signalling wheezes?”
Another moronic proposal, from yet another scientifically illiterate PPE graduate. This to make the Uk even less competitive, push up energy cost further, do nothing for the climate and export jobs & industries I assume. Governed by deluded donkeys.
Met a pleasant young lass a couple of days ago now working at the BoE. A recent chemistry graduate. She was delighted with her large salary, free private dental and medical cover for her and family, an excellent gold plated early retirement pension, 7 weeks+ holidays plus you can often “work” from home anyway. Plus interest free loans and many other benefits.
The package seemed to be worth about 160% of what a Junior doctor (after 5 or 6 years of university) gets and with circa £150k of student debt and interest on it of circa £10pa. Is it any wonder the NHS can only retain 50% or so of expensively (UK) trained doctors?
A shame the BoE have proved to be so serially incompetent, this certainly since Osborne and Carney and now the dire Andrew Bailey with his 10%+ inflation.
March 12, 2023
Hopefully the FCA and BoE have ensured that Silicon Valley Bank does not cost tax payers or depositors huge losses but I rather doubt this given their general serial incompetence and Andrew Bailey’s record at both.
March 12, 2023
Net zero is having terrifying consequences. A report last night found that many businesses just won’t be able to cope with their energy bills after the financial help stops. What about the loss of jobs if they fold? We are paying stupid prices for energy from around the world when much of it is under our feet here. When is the government going to get a realistic grip on reality and stop this virtue signalling over this and other issues?
March 12, 2023
+1
And how about the latest?
Anaesthetics apparently are not deemed net zero and some at least have to be stopped!
Unbelievable.
March 12, 2023
Ridiculous but then nothing this government or what Labour are half proposing (we don’t really know what) surprise me any more. As Gabe says they are all deluded donkeys.
March 12, 2023
There’s a great article in Daily Sceptics by Andrew Montford who says that compared with the lies and obfuscation of Covid, Net Zero is much worse!
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/03/11/the-deception-over-climate-is-even-worse-than-the-deception-over-covid/
March 12, 2023
Covid was just the warm-up act.
March 12, 2023
If wind produced electricity is becoming 6 times cheaper than gas (Mission Zero P66) then why are the Chinese building coal-fired power stations at such a fast rate and the Germans are intending to build a further 30GW of gas fired power stations by 2030 (our energy policy makers new decarbonisation date annoinced by Sir Keir Starmer)?
What do they know we don’t?
It isn’t as if we have some wind technology others don’t have as the Chinese supply us with our wind turbines. Which also makes our energy very insecure as we are being supplied by a state our security services describe as “hostile”.
March 13, 2023
+1
March 12, 2023
F U S
If jobs fold?
Very accurate post
Like the going on in Europe at the moment. Those who lose their jobs will be collateral damage, nothing must get in the way of the Globalists ambitions and dream. Like an old war movie They Were Expendable.
March 12, 2023
Its not just the cost of net-zero, but the cost of repaying covid loans, the cost of inflation, the cost of higher tax, the cost of ULEZ, the cost of cheap imports, the cost of extra bureaucracy ….all under a Tory government
March 12, 2023
And the cost of illegal immigrants
March 12, 2023
The cost of illegal immigrants?! I think you must have missed one of the programming classes. ‘All immigrants are a net benefit’. Repeat until you believe it.
March 13, 2023
Reading articles on a broad range of outlets becomes more & more sickening & seems to bring to light horrendous cases day in day out which seem to get brushed aside or never raised in political discussion. Just a one off I hear said, read & forgotten with another few lives destroyed each & every time. All under the carpet. D. Express today ( D.Ex some may scoff …. ) e.g. Woman who fostered in 2012 a young migrant of 17yrs ( who apparently has remained in touch ) who committed I won’t say what on here, was jailed, served half his sentence & deported in 2019, now back in Calais waiting to cross by dinghy again.
March 12, 2023
FUS
Agree, looking for net Zero as fast as we are is lunacy, as it is ahead of the present science and physics, and certainly is not cost effective or affordable (to users and customers) at the suggested rates.
My electricity supplier makes great claims about all of their energy comes from their own wind farms, but my energy, billed from them, comes from the grid which has a mixture of sources, so that statement that all energy they supply is green is simply not true. Likewise we are told wind farm energy is now a cheap option, so why if that is the case am I being charged the market rate per Kw/hr by my supplier, who say they are only using so called cheap energy.
I have no problem with wind being part of the mix, but we need a stable and sensible provision of power for our required and growing base load generation capacity, which is cost effective to produce, if we want to grow business in the UK and keep people warm without power rationing.
March 12, 2023
No need to go fast to net zero indeed no point in going to net zero at all. The things they suggest EV, heatpumps, wind, solar make b***** all difference to world CO2 anyway.
March 12, 2023
Does that means you would agree for some of your taxes to be given as subsidies to gas extracting companies, which for the moment are not considering it worth the efforts to get at it? And what would you think if such a gas extracting company were CNOOC, the Chinese consortium who owns 50% of the rights to the 2019 Glengorm discovery with the other 25% to an Italian (Energean Co.) and 25% to a French (Total) ones?
(offshore-technology.com, 28/04/2022, ‘Glengorm conventional gas field’).
March 12, 2023
+++
All points covered.
Agree entirely!
March 12, 2023
I do also CUIBONO!
We must defeat this sham!
March 12, 2023
+1
They are trying to beat us down so we just give up.
They are relying on that.
So yes…you are right!
March 12, 2023
+1. Well put. The government takes our money and then wastes it. We get no choice in the matter, and can merely vote for a change of backsides on the HoC benches every few years, only to get of the same ilk of MPs.
March 12, 2023
I hate the logic, but now we know why an existential risk (war) is needed every generation or so; to sort the reason from the nonsense and get us back on the path of progress.
March 12, 2023
Crime – which always soars under the Tories – costs us a modestly estimated 7% of gdp hundreds of billions.
Under New Labour it was near-halved on the other hand.
It runs at twice the pro-rata European Union average, so – without more – if the entire UK population were replace by an average one from the Mainland then its crime rate would be halved, saving 3.5% of GDP.
March 12, 2023
Which crime is doubling? Soaring, where are the crimes happening?
Does it run at twice that in France and Germany and other comparative sized countries?
Do they report exactly the same things as crime in the same way?
March 12, 2023
You forget Kneeler Starmer, a man who only whines with no positive suggestion of how he would deal with the criminals he supported.
March 12, 2023
Time for the government to massage the figures then.
It doesn’t help when our justice system lets criminals off because they is vulnerable, so they can carry on causing misery to their further victims.
March 12, 2023
Remember the more criminals running around the more money the legal profession makes. They don’t want their clients to be securely locked up!
March 12, 2023
Sorry, but the ‘crime rate’ in most of the EU27 countries is not computed as it is in the UK.
For 2021/22 the UK CR is 75.88 per 1000 inhabitants, but the two main offences are ‘Violence and Sexual Offences’, 2,149,018 cases and ‘Anti-Social Behaviour’, 1,039,579 cases.
To illustrate, take France, the two main offences in defining the ‘Taux de Criminalite’ are ‘Sexual violences’, about 88,000 in 2022 and ‘Coups et blessures volontaires’, about 350,000. Problem is how many sexual offences/violences are actually reported, how many of them are subsequently entering the national statistics. As for ‘Anti-Social Behaviour’, in France demonstrations are much less likely to be cordoned off and people to be given the equivalent of an ASBO/Public Order fine, with the result that the rate of ‘comportement antisocial’ is hardly a quarter of the British one (about 220,000 cases).
I would guess the definition of what a crime is varies from country to country. A murder is a murder wherever it occurs but the actual definition of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, public order, drug possession/use, … will be different.
So I am afraid it is rather easy to be comparing apples and oranges.
March 12, 2023
It was a broad brush based on annual sentencing to prison terms.
As you say, precise comparisons are difficult.
March 13, 2023
comparisons are difficult. But ignoring all that you write ‘always soar’ ?
March 12, 2023
Your dream is well on the way to coming true. How are the crime figures in Albania? Plenty of those fellas coming in on the boats. Welcome!
March 12, 2023
£100 billion+ still being squandered on a vanity train-line which is being delayed (again) and will now NOT go to the north and NOT go to central London – so is completely pointless.
March 12, 2023
I’d love to see the look on people’s faces as they leave Old Oak Common station. The area is a dump.
March 12, 2023
No mention of all the money wasted on Covid measures, with no proper investigation into where it went, or consequences for those who incurred it.
No mention of money frittered away to mollify people rightly concerned that nothing is being done to prevent wide scale illegal entry into the country.
Spending was out of control and this situation persists. There is absolutely no accountability.
Sort that out before worrying about tax cuts versus more money to be wasted on the NHS, or more money to be wasted on Ukraine.
March 12, 2023
You say “High tax rates can induce a cycle of decline by deterring enterprise and investment.”
Of course they can and above a certain point it always does in the UK we are already way above this point. Government expenditure in 2020-22 averaged about 48% of GDP. In many ways it is actually worse than this as so much of what is counted in GDP figure is government activity that produces little of value or even causes negative value outputs. Things such Net Zero, daft equality legislation, the road blocking, the war on landlords, the open door illegal immigration policy, restrictive employment laws, over restrictive planning, the rigged markets and state virtual monopolies in healthcare, education… perhaps some of the most obvious & appalling of these moronic socialist policies.
This as high taxes (and the misguided red tape on top of it) hugely deters people from working in the UK, encourages them to leave the country, live off benefits and/or go black market – so many do and live off the backs of others.
March 12, 2023
And low tax + low government intervention leads to a cycle of expansion and wealth creation. Witness Hong Kong in the 1960s and multiple other examples.
MPs must understand the catastrophic cost of government trying to manage an economy. They believe spending to support their cronies will keep them in power. Simple as that.
March 12, 2023
PeteB
MPs must understand?
About 10% do and are capable and worthy of their position.
But the rest they don’t because they all suffer with the curse of modern political thinking in abundance.
Incompetence, ignorance and arrogance. Too many years swanning it under EU control.
March 12, 2023
Perhaps should have been clearer: MPs must BE MADE TO understand…
March 12, 2023
It might not be as simple as ‘low tax + low government intervention’. See ’ The role of government in economic development: Some observations from the experience of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan’, Lawrence J. Lau, 1998, available from researchgate.net
March 12, 2023
The current PM & Chancellor falsely claimed they needed to keep tax high as their way of grasping power following financial markets’ knee jerk reaction to the package Liz Truss announced.
Now, after a pause, they can again falsely claim that their way was right, enabling conditions for tax cuts, being the natural Conservatives that they purport to be.
March 12, 2023
Any extra payments to the NHS have got to be linked to efficiency, performance, reduction in waste and loyalty incentives for longer service.
The CEO’s have got to start earning their large salaries by cutting out the perceived areas of over, unnecessary management and introduce a working smarter not harder mentality to enable more funding for frontline staff and more importantly the retaining of them.
March 12, 2023
The suicidal corporation tax rise will go ahead according to his masters instructions.
Everything else is window dressing.
March 12, 2023
How odd.
A 2018 tweet predicting mass human extinction this year (2023) if fossil fuels were not abandoned…
Has been deleted!
I think I’m still here!
But Net Zero forges ahead and probably WILL bring the prediction true.
Won’t need to worry about taxes!
March 12, 2023
If there is any mass human extinction it will be because people died of the cold where they couldn’t afford to heat them. All the money government has thrown on helping us pay our inflated energy bills could have been spent years ago on getting fracked gas out of the ground and encouraging companies to open up more oil fields. Just what idiots do we have governing us?
March 12, 2023
Cuibono
No worries pal the next big major medical crisis could be Avian Flue as it has transmitted across to mammals and humans could be at risk. Dan Snow in the DE on Line has an article with all the top experts stating if it gets out of control could be a re-r un of the Black Death. Sounds familiar?
March 12, 2023
+1
Yes. Very familiar.
And they’ve tried bird flu before.
I seem to remember the culling of swans.
I also remember (in much more naive times) stashing pasta in the loft when ( I think May) said there would be an avian outbreak. The pasta’s still there!
Now they make chickens stay inside hence greater production costs = eventually no animal products = Net Zero compliance.
March 12, 2023
You must look at the extinction climate predictions at extinctionclock.org
March 12, 2023
The WEF have spoken
March 12, 2023
In the real world it was discovered years ago that all the nice to have, touchy feeling ideas and departments were a drain on the bottom line as the reality of the accounts showed they added very little value if at all to the business.
Businesses can still show support for its employees but the old adage of ” you don’t get owt for nowt ” seems to have been lost with large groups of society. If it is not being taught at home then maybe it should be adopted in the education curriculum.
Older generations were very aware you left school and worked. The type of work you aspired to, was dependent in many cases of your educational achievement.
No safety net of long term benefits or the bank of mum and dad.
The parliaments of the day were made up of people who had worked, became experienced, gained common sense and could relate to their constituents lot.
March 12, 2023
There is no possibility of increasing manpower into the armed forces. People only fight for their own – read Matt Ridley’s book ‘the selfish gene’. Anyone can be British now, so nobody is and nobody will fight for this place that belongs to anybody. Russia has 180,000 volunteers when it called up 300,000 reservists recently. What does that tell you?
Why should cash strapped European taxpayers pay for the manic western elite demand to disembowl Russia? We have no quarrel with the Russians. Hence 50,000 people on the streets of Berlin this week.
We are concerned that the manic western elite are closing 3,000 Dutch farms and have the army on the streets of The Hague 3 days before the general election. We are concerned by the footage of armed French Gendarmes beating French demonstrators on the streets of Paris with batons.
Where is the outrage? Where is the demand for free-speech? Where is the defence of ‘our values’?
Instead you want to fund another British Attack force? The British Armed Services are NEVER used in Defence – rather like the French, Dutch etc.
March 13, 2023
The Selfish Gene, by Matt Ridley? Really? By Richard Dawkins surely, with a rather positive review by Matt Ridley at mattridley.co.uk > blog > the-selfish-gene 07/02/2016.
March 12, 2023
So…which will Mr H choose?
To do the bidding of the IMF or to listen to the Tory MPs and cut taxes?
Why has Lineker finally been slapped down? ( He overstepped the mark with his small boat support!)
Because our “government” is just a cardboard cut out …taking its orders from elsewhere.
And plenty of nice jobs lined up with all the global bodies for later…
Never mind “demockwacy” (bleat).
March 12, 2023
Cuibono
What has happened when regarding the work place, to the old sayings
” He who pays the piper calls the tune. Nobody is holding is holding a gun to your head to work here”?
Not very nice in this day and woke age maybe, but still relevant. You sign the contract on the bottom line and you accept their rulings or don’t join.
March 12, 2023
The Budget will be a big disappointment as always. I don’t imagine it followed by personnel changes as recently happened. Personal taxation will have crumbs thrown out, but the detail will prove to be taking the pennies back. I fear Corporation Tax hike will herald a down spiral many predict. Spending or rather handouts, will continue with no justification. A pause in the £billions to HS2 will be said to bankroll the new waste of spending, probably in Tory seats.
March 12, 2023
Profits will drop anyway from April with the wage inflation forced on smes. Investment and risky new business promotion will slow down. They don’t care, this government will look after the large CBI type foreign owned employers and everyone else can struggle. Then if you do well, the Labour Party are on the sidelines waiting to take it all off you anyway. Drop inheritance tax to 1.25m so you can’t pass it on pretty soon people like Doctors will just decide why bother.
March 12, 2023
Sorry…Business people, like the doctors did, will just decide why bother.
March 12, 2023
Talking of balance. Here’s a suggestion.
We tell the UN that the Human Rights treaty needs to be amended so that countries must take people back who are falsely claiming refugee status.
March 12, 2023
Gets my vote
March 12, 2023
Javelin
Brilliant, so simple like all good solutions.
March 12, 2023
Agree
We are no longer talking about refugees, we are talking population movement by choice, which is entirely different, and needs different rules and laws.
March 12, 2023
Nice one Javelin.
March 12, 2023
We neither need, nor are able to, tell the UN (or any other country) what to do. We just need to do what WE want to do, HERE in the UK. So we simply say that anyone travelling through a safe country without applying for asylum there will automatically be deemed to be fraudulent. I really don’t understand why such a statement would be controversial (though obviously I realise it would be). And we then conclude that anyone who is thus deemed fraudulent will automatically be returned to their country of origin, as the ‘non-refoulement’ rules no longer apply. Oh, and there is NO right of appeal, of any kind whatsoever, and the deportation will take place the very evening of the day they arrive.
This would solve the problem overnight. Nobody would go to all the trouble and expense of coming all the way here if they knew for certain that they would immediately be sent right back to square one!
March 12, 2023
Sir John’s series entitled Economics for Dummies ….. lesson 5.
Unfortunately the Dummies either aren’t reading; aren’t listening and don’t want to know.
I wonder if they’ll be stupid enough to go ahead with the planned 12p a litre rise in fuel duty plus therefore extra VAT on top). That, together with Khan’s ULEZ/Road Pricing plans, will further damage Greater London’s economy.
March 12, 2023
@Donna – there are no grown ups in this Conservative Government comes to mind
March 12, 2023
Quietly, the defence of the Falkland Islands has once again come to the fore.
An agreement has been signed by the Argentine Minister of Defence Jorge Taiana and the Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires Axel Kicillof, for the construction of a multipurpose landing ship, a polar ship, and a floating dock. As well as the modernisation of a MEKO 140 corvette for the Argentine Navy, at the TANDANOR and Río Santiago shipyards.
The RAF maintains 1435 flight in the Falklands, operating FGR4 Typhoons, which are Tranche 2. There are four of them and we have only a few hundred troops there. With the focus currently on the Ukraine, we must not forget that the Falklands Islands are British
March 12, 2023
Good post Sakara. We’ve lost enough men out there already, my brother being one and weren’t well equipped enough. I hope our military leaders are better prepared this time before the Argentinians get ahead of us. Last minute preparations just aren’t good enough. Perhaps we’ll have to go cap in hand for equipment to Zelensky.
March 12, 2023
Soon this government will sell, lease or give the Falkland Islands to Argentine, I’ve absolutely no doubt, followed by Gibraltar to Spain and NI to Eire
March 12, 2023
@Sakara Gold – sorry but you cannot surely believe that this Conservative Government will pay more than lip service. Like every other responsibility and duty they have, it will be ignored and they will refuse to do anything that is right, they will get shot of the ‘Falklands’ at the drop of a hat.
March 12, 2023
Yes Sir, we Commandos celebrated Falklands 40 last year. A reminder that the treacherous Argies have not given up is on time!
March 12, 2023
Maybe Boaty McBoatface is our secret defence weapon in readiness.
March 12, 2023
Your government does both to excess.
The result is that you have on one hand created a population of dependency and on the other a population with talent looking to sell their service where they are better appreciated and better rewarded. It is not in the latter case more take home pay, it is quality of life, and from experience you do not have to travel far to find it.
You are enjoying the rewards of consocialism, from which there is more of the same or a total political reset.
March 12, 2023
The reality is spending in many areas needs to be cut. In absolute terms not just real terms. OK let’s increase the defence budget, but what scrutiny will there be to stop the MoD wasting all the money on white elephant ships, tanks that don’t work, pilot training programmes that prioritise woke identity criteria rather than aptitude in selection? Meanwhile every day we see examples of the damage state-paid quangos and bureaucrats are doing – education officials ordering the indoctrination of children with abusive woke nonsense about genders, museums and cultural bodies pursuing a demented trashing of western history and values, civil servants (vastly increased in numbers) sitting at home often now simply refusing to do the bidding of the elected government. The solution to this is cuts, close quangos and make all the staff redundant, cut the civil service numbers, hold the incompetent MoD officials to account.
Spending as a % of GDP is too high now for prosperity. Yes we need tax cuts, but we also need free market politicians to call not just for cutting waste and incompetence but to recognise that we would all be better off if we simply had fewer people ordering our lives at the public expense.
March 12, 2023
WHY is it so hard for the Chancellor to understand the simplicity of what our host is saying here?
Is it because he’d rather follow socialist ideology and bankrupt us all? God knows there have been enough examples on this planet of socialism killing off economies and making people poor beyond measure.
When will parliament challenge the Chancellor on the illogical approach he has taken, for he will no doubt carry on until we are truly reduced to a 3rd world country, while he claims in a mist of insanity that he was right all along.
March 12, 2023
+1
They got a ticking off/warning from IMF regarding tax cuts.
Took it uber seriously.
“Aye aye Sir!”
March 12, 2023
Spot on
March 12, 2023
@Bryan Harris – Its not hard to understand if that was the agenda, but to get us back under the control of the unelected, unaccountable masters he so admires he first has to destroy the UK’s capabilities to create its own resilient ‘economy’. There can be no other rational explination.
Parliament will not challenge him, they want back under their Masters control. The easy quite life, instead of making decisions you have them handed down to you.
March 12, 2023
@Ian B – Cuibono +1
Agreed – it’s all about following the plan laid down
March 12, 2023
Sky reporting that Lord Philip Hammond is supportive and agrees with Sunaks & Hunts corporation tax increase ….enough said
March 12, 2023
Hammond sounded off with the socialist phrase: “borrowing to fund tax cuts” to describe the Kwarteng growth statement. Osborne did the same. They were talking about a statement in which the greatest part by far was accounted for by the energy package. That, which they didn’t mention, was to prevent the economy from being damaged by small business going bust. The tax cuts were either cost neutral or beneficial. They both know it is more a case now of borrowing to fund tax rises, because tax rises inhibit growth, diminish the economy, diminish revenue, and put up borrowing.
March 12, 2023
Hammond was May’s Chancellor – That’s all we need to know
March 12, 2023
Sir John
To counter your concerns.
If the MsM is to be believed the arch remainer Jeremy Hunt is to surrender the UK Government and it Parliament to have a say on UK Tax
“A group of prominent Conservative MPs, led by former prime minister Liz Truss and ex-Cabinet minister Priti Patel, have warned the Chancellor not to “rush ahead and surrender sovereign tax rights”.
March 12, 2023
The policy of unilateral Net Zero will make whatever is implemented in the coming budget look simply like the re-arranging of deck chairs on the Titanic
Our prosperity, and consequently civilisation, is based upon our access to cheap, abundant and reliable fossil fuel and nuclear energy and the purpose of Net Zero is to destroy this access and replace with expensive and intermittent supplies of electrical energy supplied by renewables.
The empirical evidence (the weather) shows there is no climate emergency and increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 will have a negligible warming effect because of IR saturation as shown by the work of Happer and Wijngaarden. In fact increasing CO2 greens the planet and increases food production.
The purpose of unilateral Net Zero is to enable the control of our lives through the rationing of expensive and intermittent supplies energy together with the implementation of impractical electrical replacements, such as heat pumps and bevs, all capable of individual control by smart meters and credit (ID) cards.
March 12, 2023
Just been reading a high profile political blog from 2022.
Author believed Boris to be a huge threat to 2024 election! Priority to defenestrate!
Oh my! How could the tories have got it all so wrong?
And how could ANYONE believe that Labour will be better?
March 12, 2023
How can anyone believe that another Tory government will be any better? They have form.
March 12, 2023
‘Around 1,350 migrants have arrived on the island of Lampedusa by boats from North Africa within 24 hours, Italian news agency ANSA reports.’
I just wonder where they’re all headed
March 12, 2023
Meanwhile in this country it is reported that a number of Conservatives are set to rebel over the prospect of the detention of ‘children’ and families in the Immigration Bill. Just keep telling yourself that the only problem is activist judges and lawyers, the ECHR, and the Civil Service.
March 12, 2023
aljazeera.com reporting another 5,000 this week alone, all going northwest
I don’t blame the judges and lawyers, I blame parliament and our MPs
March 12, 2023
I can think of a hefty few names already. They’ve all got form in voting against the interests of their country.
March 12, 2023
In other words, we are no longer a safe country, according to the highest officials.
March 12, 2023
Tax is but a minor detail for today’s UK. This Conservative Government will spend, spend and spend and the economy can get lost it is not needed. Thats the new balance.
We have the Government backing/watering down on stopping the criminal boat people because our remain Parliament might object.
We have a Chancellor wanting to hand our Tax control to the EU, the way back in.
We have the PM signing pacts with Macron, on giving him money and committing what’s left of the UK Defences forces to work with the French
Then you get the PM’s statements
Rishi Sunak praises Emmanuel Macron: ‘I feel very fortunate to be serving alongside you’
In perspective the French Government own the majority of UK energy Supplies. They also own vast amounts of UK Defence tech, the UK Navy its ships and submarines can’t function without French owned tech. The much trumpeted AUKUS deal profits France more than the UK – the tech installed is the expensive bit.
I am not criticising the French Government, they seem to be doing a brilliant job for their Country and People, I am highlighting how weak this Conservative Government is.
The conclusion on absorbing the media in the last few days is that returning to FULL EU (not today’s partial) control, is being deliberately engineered by this Conservative Government. They have refused(I do mean refused) to do anything that is in the interest of people of the UK
March 12, 2023
Establishing priorities is something Hunt seems to get wrong . He has made it clear that controlling inflation is his main focus believing that the overall public will first benefit from this . He is wrong . The public are first at the tail end of industry and commerce and if these sectors are not stimulated what goes into people’s pockets will immediately suffer . Inflation is internationally sensitive – something we do suffer from but have little control over ; Hunt must review his approach .
March 12, 2023
As stated eleswhere
“The burden of Government is what it spends. Taxation is merely the mechanism to transfer resources from the private sector to the state sector to facilitate it. If you want to reduce the burden of the state, then you have to cut Govt expenditure.”
This Conservative Government does the complete opposite of its duties and responsibilities. It would appear in its refusal to manage the parts of the UK it has 100% control over, it is setting out to contrive a different path for the UK
March 12, 2023
The usual ‘misapprehension’ (not to say anything cruder): in £billions
225 income taxes
161 NIC
143 VAT
68 Corporation tax
41 Capital gain tax
40 Council tax
26 Fuel duty
23 Tobacco & Alcohol taxes
22 Business rates
Plus other (miscellaneous) receipts 91, and taxes (74).
So ‘transferring resources from the private sector to the state sector’: Well, I think the picture is slightly more complicated than what you have been fed for years.
For what I can see from the above, the direct taxation from private to public sector is £68 bn of Corporation Tax, £41 bn of CGT (and it can discussed that it affects only ‘entrepreneurs’) and £22 bn of business rates, ie, £131 bn out of £915 bn of tax receipts (commonlibrary.parliament.uk, 16/01/2023, ‘Tax statistics: an overview’).
March 13, 2023
You are suggesting that this Conservative Government from its own direct activities have contributed £784 billion of the required direct tax intake. Yet at the same time you itemise tax collected from basically the Private sector of £984billion, which is it to be?
You also imply £225billion of income taxes has nothing to do with the private sector or its income, not generated from individuals but donated by this Conservative Government so why is Sir John and others asking for it to be reduced?
“you have to cut Govt expenditure.” – is saying the Government has the opportunity to trim its expenditure rather than keep on growing it, Do they need all their mates working in Quango’s or extra diversity managers, or do they need a private sector earning for the UK
March 12, 2023
“Childcare may need expansion as part of the workforce package.”
What’s the point when you are hounding mothers out of their jobs with your ridiculous net zero policies? It’s hard enough trying to work when you have children but the cost of running a car, which is essential for most working mothers, makes it financially unviable for many. Net zero policies have profound consequences for countless parents. It’s OK for the likes of Khan who gets chauffeured around, try getting children to nursery and school then your place of employment and you will experience how hard life is.
March 12, 2023
“There are also suggestions that boosting spending will take priority.”
Boosting waste you mean.
March 12, 2023
Christine,
Yes you could boost spending by reducing the personal tax burden, time to buy that new UK made washing machine.
Boosting public spending, further destroys our productivity. Might as well put money in the shredder, apart from replenishing our arsenal.
March 12, 2023
I am not convinced of the need for extra public spending on top of the £38,000 per household per year already being spent, just more efficient public spending (if that is achievable – if not there is no sense in spending yet more on what is grossly inefficient). Tax cuts should be the priority. Yet the plans are for tax increases, and in particular an increase in Corporation Tax that will prevent growth in the economy.
John Redwood and others argue that in accordance with the Laffer Curve there would then be less Corporation Tax receipts but the Treasury believe there will be more. For the sake of argument let’s split the difference and posit the 30% tax rise results in 15% more Corporation Tax receipts due to some business activity going elsewhere while others put up with it. This is a simplification because the loss of business activity may take longer than a year before its impact is serious. However in due course the cost of the loss of business from Britain that will cause the 15% shortfall in extra Corporation Tax will also cause shortfalls of probably around ten times that amount in Income Tax and National Insurance combined and to a lesser extent in other taxes such as V.A.T., let alone paying for the otherwise unnecessary unemployment support thereby occasioned here. So even if putting up Corporation Tax increases the Corporation Tax take that is much more than offset by much bigger falls in the collection of other taxes. For it to make any overall profit the numbers put off being in Britain to pay Corporation Tax must be truly negligible amounting to less than 3%, probably only 2%. That is massively unlikely. Therefore increasing Corporation Tax, even if it increases the Corporation tax take will damage overall tax collection and damage our economy.
March 12, 2023
It is pointless to speculate on the forthcoming budget proposals.
I trust in the event it is damaging to our private industry and thus to our future prosperity, it will be voted down by our MPs?
Furthermore, the country cannot afford to borrow again unless for genuine investment. Not for the white elephants like HS2 nor the OTT Overseas Aid funding programme that has been providing £Millions to BIG China!
The country should be managed like a Mega corporation and not as a pastime ’til a rich retirement, as appears to be the case.
Why is there no MPs committee to review the continual monetary waste (and losses) this country seems to accept and then put a stop to all of it?
Not merely a ‘talking shop’, to appease us dissenters but one with the real clout the CHANGE to situation.
March 12, 2023
I think it is long overdue that in the UK we have a debate on what sort of society we wish to live in. The alternation between socialism and conservatism since WW2 has not served us at all well. We have reached a point where there is little discernable difference between either title. Whatever this gruel of ideas is trying to achieve is serving us badly and the sufferers are the UK people. UK government is a shambles and always has been in my memory. A debate and decisions on the sort of society we require is essential. Like any commercial concern it should look forward 25 years. We should recognise that in a volatile world, flexibility is essential. However, a point the Chancellor needs to get his head round is that, whatever philosophy is persued, in extremis both communism and extreme right wing capitalism demand a very successful economy. I would personally add that said economy must be enjoyed by all or we drift back to the same familiar pattern of today. Think about it.
March 12, 2023
I would rather pay less tax but have to pay for public services. Then I have a choice which ones to use and those that are not needed will cease to exist.
March 12, 2023
If recent history is anything to go by, there will be no tax cuts, but more fiddling around the edges to make anything like long term planning even more complicated.
Goal posts constantly being moved from one budget to another, laws, regulation and taxes constantly being changed, you never know if its football, rugby, cricket, or hockey you are supposed to be playing.
March 12, 2023
There is mindset of arrogance in the leadership of the UK. A mindset of moral superiority. A mindset of bragging in government that we don’t need to make anything big or in volume, and especially oily here – how disgusting and old-fashioned that is. But keep hospitality open.
Under no circumstances should we get any energy out of the ground. Everything we do need can be obtained overseas, from the simple and inferior people of the world who don’t see things as we do.
We don’t need to make anything, how dirty making things is they say. We can close our manufacturing or sell it to foreigners, and show how to save the planet. We will be honoured and respected by everyone they say.
But the ordinary people will suffer, often now imported people having been given advantages, and not themselves in leadership. The working indiginous people, will have no work, and of course that is good.
March 12, 2023
So what you are indicating, Sir John, is that we have a high tax and spend chancellor. That does not surprise me in the slightest!
I would personally prefer a tax cutting budget, as suggested here: https://britishpatriot.substack.com/p/a-patriotic-budget-part-3
What do you think? Don’t you agree that raising the personal allowance to £20,000, thus taking all those on the minimum wage out of the tax system, would be fair and reasonable? And don’t you agree that changing the VAT system to zero-rate goods below £10 would cut inflation and also help those suffering the most from the cost of living squeeze? Wouldn’t these ideas be both good economics and also good politics?
March 12, 2023
Agreed. The only (?) good that came out of the Libs joining Tories in Government was the pressure to raise Personal allowances. In the past Sir John’s articles I’ve wanted a big jump, perhaps straight to £20k is a step too far.
Why not raise the allowance from April 5 by £2k, then another £2k the following year and the year after? The 20% rate band ceiling could be increased by a small amount, say another £6k. The 40% rate could start £2k higher each year matching the change in allowances.
Fewer people paying small tax, incentives to earn more, a reduction in those topping up income with benefits…..
What’s not to like?
March 12, 2023
Oil giant Saudi Aramco records historic $161bn profit in 2022
Couldn’t our government be making billions from fracking shale gas and north sea oil …couldn’t that extra money pay the covid bill, for new nuclear power stations and to off-set tax
March 12, 2023
Chancellor set to increase fuel duty with an effective petrol pump prise rise of 23% ……can’t wait for a Tory government
March 12, 2023
Think of a large hotel close to where you live, now imagine its full, its full of young men between 18-30, its all found, its completely free to the occupants as the taxpayer is picking up the bill, the occupants will also get free medical and dental care
All the 51 occupants arrived on a small boat yesterday without visa from France
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats-last-7-days
March 12, 2023
Thirty years ago, it was pretty simple to take on childminding if you wanted to take a few years out with your own children before they started school, to supplement your income looking after a friends children who went back to their jobs full time.
Then New Labour wanted to kill that off and just have sure start, state controlled regulated childcare. Teens that would go to work in these nurseries at sixteen training on the job now have to stay in school, and now Rishi thinks it is more important for them to do an extra two years of maths. Some of these countries that offer low cost childcare do it by vocationally training people to work with specialist trainers so more children can be looked after than the ratios we have in the UK which is making it so expensive and the NLW, NMW is going up 10% next month so its going to get more expensive again.
March 13, 2023
An article in the Monday edition of the Telegraph talks about rural caravan park owners struggling to install enough charging points because the infrastucture cannot provide enough power. Another example of why buyers are turning away from pure electric vehicles.
The article only refers to Park Home sites. That is because no manufacturer produces a car capable of towing a touring caravan more than about 100 miles, and if they did, the battery would have to be so large the car would be impossibly expensive and far too heavy. The same applies for those wishing to tow boat trailers and horse boxes.
None of this has been thought through at all. As in city centres, the charging infrastructure will be impossibly expensive to improve sufficiently to cater for the Government’s pipedream of banning IC engined car sales by 2035.