Do they think we are stupid?

 Today's ONS statistics were not good news.  Unemployment has risen to 5% in March with the biggest job loss of 100,000 since 2020. On the "positive" news wage growth fell from 3.6% to 3.4%. The stats are for the period Jan-Mar this year.  However the minimum wage 8.5% increase takes effect from April so expect this to trigger around a 0.3% increase in inflation.  Hard pressed hospitality businesses have to absorb this high cost.  My personal observation from Wetherspoons is they have solved the increase by having fewer staff. There used to be about 4 people behind the bar and it's now 2 or 3 people. There appears to be a correlation between increased minimum wage and rising unemployment. As the ONS reports quarterly this effect of the minimum wage will be baked in by July (one quarter later) and it's effect will not longer be reported since they report relative percentages rather than absolute increases. In July the Ofgem energy price cap is expected to rise fr...

 Rachel is keeping quiet lately whilst the Starmer fiasco rumbles on.  I guess she's hoping no-one spots the unintended consequence of her tax policies. The Sunday Times rich list has shown that 20 of the UK's 157 billionaires are no longer on the list because they have decided to leave the UK and no longer pay tax here.  1 in 6 of the rich are no longer on the list....they are on some other country's rich list instead. Rachel decided to tax the non dom rich by making their world-wide assets subject to UK inheritance tax.  She could have said something like the annual fee is no longer £60k / year and is now £600k / year and IHT only applies to your UK assets and probably most of these 20 billionaires would have stayed. She naievely thought the rich were stupid and would therefore stay in the UK enjoying the tropical weather and other UK advantages and willingly pay potentially hundreds of millions more in tax. It is likely that these billionaires were generating UK t...

 After a completely humiliating thrashing at the local elections, Starmer has woken up. This year he's shown himself to be ruthless.  Not a ruthless focused leader - he's more of a toothless sheep. He's completely ruthless at throwing people under the bus. He's completely ruthless at saving his own arse and blaming others for his failings. The electorate have clearly sent a message they are not happy with Labour or Starmer. The sheer scale at which traditional Labour heartlands have swung over to the apparently far right Reform party is staggering.  Whatever the Left medicine is that Starmer has been prescribing is not going down well with the Left voters. So has Starmer learnt anything from this?  Well not really. He's calling the huge defection and voting for popularist parties as a protest and popularist noise. The irony is not missed on me.  When he "wins a landslide - it's a clear mandate" and is not popularist but when it's anyone wins  it is...

Britain is on track to have 42% of GDP taxation rates - higher than the 37% during the second world war. The current position is the top 1% of earners pay 28% of all tax.  The top 10% of earners pay 60% of all tax and the bottom 50% pay typically less than 10% of all tax.  However measurement drives behaviour and hence we have seen an exodus of the rich leaving for low tax countries like Italy.  This exodus is still happening. I personally suspect Sweden will become popular as a low tax country when the UK taxation rates have surpassed Sweden. When the rich leave they stop paying tax and that pushes the burden downwards onto the middle classes. The middle classes also are not willingly paying all this additional tax.  Pension contributions have increased to reduce taxation.  They are electing to work say 4 days per week rather than 5 since there is now a  marginal impact of doing so. U turn Starmer can't get spending under control. Squirmer has retreated on...

 Britain's welfare state cost has become bloated and unsustainable. There are now 3.9 Million people claiming PIP (Personal Independence Payments) compared to 1.1 Million a decade ago in 2016.   A friend of mine with Parkinson's failed the PIP assessment - she cannot work, cannot control the left side of her body, can't drive, can't dress herself, struggles with basic tasks like cooking etc but is ineligible but another friend's sister gets PIP and a mobility car because of her "bad back".  The system seems to be grossly exploited or at best unfairly allocated.  I'm half tempted to tell my friend with Parkinson's to tell the PIP assessors that she has a "bad back" due to being unable to control half her body - maybe she might get it.  Being on benefits insulates you from inflation. This week, the standard UC allowance rose by 6.2 per cent - nearly 2x last year's inflation and there's a wealth of "freebie" benefits which ...

 We are now in a new fiscal year and the new state pension for OAPs comes into effect.  Many pensioners will now suddenly find they are now paying tax on their pension. Labour has had to resort to taxing pensioners as taxing the rich hasnt worked - they have simply moved to Italy or other tax friendly countries. Last year the state pension was £230.25 per week or £11,973. From April 2026 the state pension has increased by a 4.8% to £241.30 or £12,547.60 per year. The tax free personal allowance has been frozen at £12,570 since April 2021 and Rachel has generously frozen it until April 2031.  A decade of fiscal drag where inflation will erode the earning parity. The pension has increased by 4.8% as a result of the triple lock despite CPI inflation being 3.4%. The reason it has increased so much is the aspiration to ensure our pensioners income keeps pace with wage inflation.  This large increase has been triggered by high wage growth however wage growth in the wealth ...