My Budget Response

There is one truism in Financial Politics: 

You cannot tax your way to prosperity.

It seems Rachel Reeves has forgotten that, or maybe she's never heard it, or maybe she's just ignoring it.

Not only have the OBR refused to back up the claim of the £20Bn black hole, what we got in the budget was more tax and spend. Piggy banks were raided in order for the Government to fund pet projects.

An Office for Value for Money is being created, more civil service jobs. Another Chairperson on a fat six figure salary no doubt, a few board members on lesser salaries and a team under that.

So much for saving money.

All I can see from this budget is the chancellor has minimised the affect on your pay packet and avoided raising fuel duty (which I'm sure would have caused a riot), but has done some creative raiding of savings to then redistribute to various funds and pet projects.

Unfortunately the chancellor has ignored the truism at the start of this blog. Taking money from interest on savings, or wherever and then using that money elsewhere will not grow the economy. And we need to be growing the economy, because without that pressure, it will continue to shrink. We need investment from outside the government to come in and increase cash flow. 

Right now we are at rock bottom in manufacturing capacity. Sure, we have a few specialist industries that can sell goods outside the UK, but they are not enough. The city of London is an unreliable source of revenue. Dividends can go down as well as up.

We need something inside the UK that people outside the UK will invest in and/or buy for themselves. Spinning the same money round the economy by creating an ever-increasing number of retail outlets cannot grow the economy.

The Small Nuclear Reactors in development at Rolls-Royce are the sort of thing that we need to nurture. We need to be adopting those reactors within the UK in order to develop the technology.

We need to be looking at alternative nuclear energy solutions. Thorium Reactors could be a viable solution using fission. The dream of fusion is just that: a dream, always 10 years away, as it has been for the last 4 decades.

Yet I don't see investment in anything as substantive as this in the budget. It's all pie-in-the sky stuff, nothing tangible. Of course the tax take isn't tangible. That's very real.

UK Government Declare War on Workers

 The message from the budget is clear: workers are going to pay.

They are going to pay for Furlough.

They are going to pay higher taxes for fewer services in return.

They are going to pay at some point for the energy price help.

They are going to pay for higher welfare payments to the unemployed.

They are going to pay for higher pension payments.

The people that aren't going to pay are those on benefits (and I'll bet there will be an almighty push to chuck people off benefits in the coming years), and of course the very rich, including global corporations.

The working population of this country are being squeezed for every cent, every penny, to pay for the government's careless abandonment of prudent governance.

Makes you wonder if they are trying to pitch workers against those on welfare. 

I mean, the globalist environmental agenda requires a reduced population. What better way to reduce the population and not get blamed is to pitch two other parts of society against each other? The have-nots and the just have enoughs.

The just have enoughs are being taught to resent those on welfare. Why? Well, if the government ever wanted to reduce the population as part of their mad climate cult, who do you think will be first? Yep, those on welfare.

Already in Canada, the precursor for all things extremist in Government it seems at the moment, they are just preparing to approve euthanasia for mental illness. 

Bill C-7 in Canada seeks to approve the "Medical Assistance In Dying" (MAID). Giving it such warm terms as "dignity" "Compassion".

Of course, compassionate narcissists are the sort of people that will gladly hold the pillow over your face and snuff you out for the "right" reasons. They are the worst, worse still than Sociopaths and Psychopaths because Compassionate Narcissists truly believe it's for your own good. Whether you want it or not. "Take your medicine", "You're living such a miserable life, wouldn't you like to be relieved of your burden?", "It's for the benefit of others", "It's to Save the Planet". The justifications are manyfold.

These are the people you need to be very wary of, because they sound soothing and compassionate, all the while plotting the end of your life, for your own good, the good of the planet or (like in Hot Fuzz) for "The Greater Good".

You don't matter, you are a burden to yourself and the country. Just slip off quietly and do everyone including yourself a favour.

But relieving yourself of a burden voluntarily so often becomes mandatory. 

For the Nazis it was to cleanse the population and purify it. The reasons today are different, but the outcome is the same. 

Just you watch.

I can see the trend way before it even becomes apparent.

Tories "Building the Future" but with not Enough Actual Building.....

The Tories have launched a new slogan, "Building a Britain Fit for the Future", except my understanding is there isn't going to be any actual building.

Yet another wishy-washy mish-mash of rehashed, already launched policies, packaged up into something to talk about during next week's budget. Financial incentives, planning changes, but nothing concrete (if you'll excuse the pun). You can have that one for free, shadow Chancellor.

Labour need to be prepared to counter-strike and knock down each of the Tory's proposal. That means credible and detailed homework from the left to be able to deflate every one of the pumped up policies from the Conservatives.

It would also be nice if Labour put a few shots across the bows of the Tories beforehand, signalling intent to really sink their teeth into the Tories unless there are radical, substantial, new proposals to sort out the housing crisis. Tinkering at the edges or rehashing old news will. not. do.

Hopefully with a few well-placed broadsides from Labour, the Tories can be persuaded against presenting a PR campaign as a budget and get them to produce an actual policy with real targets, a real budget and demonstrable progress against those targets.

What Labour cannot do is just trot out the same old anti-Tory plattitudes, the ones that turn voters off and do nothing to change Tory policy. They have to give detailed and credible opposition and strip the veneer from the Tory plans so the voters can see the lack of detail underneath.

But given the superficiality of politics at the moment, I doubt I'll see any of the above actually happen.

One of those times you really wish you were an MP and able to give such superficial people a slap. (before it gets banned) ;-)

Back here I outlined my thoughts on housing and how the crisis should be managed. Government managed housing stock, outside the remit of local authorities needs to be started. Local authorities we all know are corrupt, with contracts going to friends that had surprisingly well-informed tenders. keeping it central (for once) seems to be the preferred option. From the planning perspective national government involvement means it's easier to quote national interest and make the planning stage eaisier. There are plenty of laws the government can invoke to build new housing, or they can quite quickly release old MOD land for building if necessary.

Negative Inflation?

Have a look at this headline in this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8009718.stm

Quite straightforward you might think: the inflation figures have gone negative for the first time in decades. We've been taught since the late seventies that inflation is bad, so negative inflation is good isn't it?

Well, no. You see, these figures take a while to come out, so what you're seeing is a snapshot of prices a few months ago and yes, store chains were closing and prices were being slashed and petrol was at its lowest price.

But what's happened in the last month? Petrol prices have started to rise. It was at its Lowest in January, it crept up February then there was a 5 week hold During February and March. It then started to climb again. This time with a weak pound driving the price, and no recessionary pressure to hold it back.

Food prices have started to firm up again too in the past few weeks as well.

So who do you believe? Statistics and headlines stating the results of 3-month old data, biased to make you feel good ahead of the budget, or your own experience, right now?

Do you believe the BBC, who will highlight any glimmer of news indicating a return to the good old days (like the news of rising house prices the other week), or your own experience of a tough housing market, people being repossessed and food prices increasing?

Do I believe the government's jobless figures, or do I go on my own personal experience where in December there were 6 people waiting to be seen at the same time as me at the jobcentre, but now there are 3 times that?

I'm going with the empirical data.

A Tip for the Budget.

Read the small print. Not every important detail will be mentioned in the Chancellors speech.

It really will be an interesting exercise, I promise.