Do they think we are stupid?

 The US and JD Vance have commented about the murder of Henry Nowak. Clearly the UK police are more scared of being considered racist than they are about doing their jobs. That is quite evident and therefore Vance's comments seem justified. JD Vance's comments come from a place of concern that equality and fairness - the bastians of Britishness - are being eroded.  However Starmer's response is that this is political interference.  I certainly don't consider this political interference.  If it is then Starmer is a hypocrite. On the 3 June 2020 he said that  George Floyd's  murder exposed racism in the USA and he was surprised Boris had not confronted Trump on it. Later in June 2020, Starmer and Rayner said "We are appalled by the response of President Trump and the failure of our own government to condemn his actions in the wake of George Floyd’s killing". So therefore Starmer must have been politically interfering in the USA in 2020. Certainly in 2024 Sta...

With all the talk from Andy Burham and Wes Streeting of re-joining the EU against the democratic will of the people, it's reassuring to see that some French still love the British. Marine Le Pen has stated that she would oppose Britain joining the EU without Britain holding a referendum.  Merci madam ! At least some politicians respect due process and have integrity. I suspect part of the reason is she still has a bitter taste in her mouth from Jacques Chirac.  France held a referendum in 2005 where the population voted against the EU constitution.  Rather than accept the voice of the people - he stealthy (we need a new adjective to describe the sleazy behaviour of politicians) went ahead and agreed and signed up to it anyway. 

 Although Wes Streetling has pretty close to zero chance of being Prime Minister, that hasnt stopped him opening his mouth.  Today he has proposed a "wealth tax that works" and said he estimated the reform could raise £12bn a year. Hmmm. So basically he wants to equalise capital gains tax with income tax. Currently  capital gains tax is complicated.   If you are selling property then it is 18% if you are a 20% tax payer and 24% for higher rate tax payers.  If you are selling some other asset then it's 10% for basic rate tax payers and 20% for higher rate tax payers. If you're selling a business (ie an entrepreneur then it's now 18% but was much lower). Last tax year I had some experience with the capital gains tax process.  I ended up being taxed on money I had spent/invested because I couldn't find the receipts from 20 years ago.  That's unfair.  There is no longer any inflation relief (used to be called indexation relief) so I paid tax...

 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...