Do they think we are stupid?

 Showman Barnam is barely 24 hours into his new job as Prime Minister and it's looking like pressure on GBP is headed our way.  Barnam will of course blame the black holes on the previous administration - the Labour administration that is not the conservatives although he does seem to be blaming Thatcher.... I don't envy him as he has inherited an economy which raises £868 Billion / year from taxation and spends £1.2 Trillion / year so there's not really any room to manoeuvre. The ONS statistics released today show that wages are growing at 2.9% with the public sector growing at 5.5% - yet more money we don't have. He has promised to remove VAT on electricity bills from 1st Oct costing £840 Million per year stating this could be funded from scrapping Digital ID which it turns out was not funded anyway. It looks pretty certain that Barnum will have to either raise taxes or borrow yet more money.  I doubt he would do the right thing and stop spending. Increased taxation w...

 Farage has clearly grabbed the headlines by forcing a by-election. So up pops StarmerBot saying Farage represents SLEAZE.  If he really thinks that, then why is he not fielding a candidate to oust Farage in Clacton?  Instead he's creating a farcical contest between Farage and Count Binface. Having said that - Count Binface's manifesto certainly looks more realistic and deliverable than Labour's wish list.  I think the British public can really get behind 99p flakes actually costing 99p ! I can still picture Starmer taking the sanctimonious high ground that Labour were morally better than the conservatives because he didn't eat cake and Boris did. He waved the sleaze furiously at the time. Strangely Sue Grays investigation into Starmer's own little parties was that he did not break any rules. The benefit of hindsight explains her decision.... So let's examine Labour's sleaze scoreboard. Freebie Starmer doesnt have that reputation for nothing.  Lots of undisc...

 We all know that the current crop of Labour MPs are not blessed with intelligence or basic maths skills but the now Housing Secretary "City" Steve Reed seems to be setting new depths at basic maths. In his speech at the Lloyd's Banking Group Social Housing Forum on the 6th July he said  "Taxpayers pay tens of billions in benefits to subsidise private landlords to rent out homes that taxpayers also paid to build." Either he is stupid or he is a liar.   Firstly I would say 99% of private landlords did not buy former council houses from the government.  They paid market rate + additional stamp duty to buy an asset that the government were stupid enough to sell at a 70% discount on market rate to the former renter.  Surely City Steve should get that providing massive discounts on this scale is ludicrous. In a recent blog post I analysed the current house building programme  and the social housing rents do not even cover the cost of finance. It would take ...

 NHS consultants have voted to go on strike over pay. If it's not Junior Doctors striking it's someone else in the NHS.  It seems the poor little darlings are struggling on a base salary of £152,000 per year + 23.7% employer pension contribution of £36,024 per year.  They can also get extra money for additional clinical sessions, on-call and Clinical Excellence Awards.  That also ignores the private work they can also do.  So it's quite a tidy little package. So by any stretch of the imagination the 63k consultants in England, 5k in Scotland, 2.5k in Wales and 1.5k in Northern Ireland are hardly poorly paid.  They are in the top 1% of highest paid people in the UK. Or to put it another pay - NHS Consultants make up 20% of all of the top 1% highest paid people in the UK. Of course the NHS is paid for out of taxes so these are public sector workers and therefore have to paid for out of taxation. NHS Consultants recently had an inflation busting 28% pay rise ...

 Labour tax adviser Dan Needle has suggested to Burnham that means testing the state pension could save £1 Billion to fund more freebies for those on benefits. I have a serious problem with this.  Firstly Labour consider a pensioner couple with  a combined gross income of £51,376 to be rich. However the retirements Standards states that for comfortable retirement a couple needs a gross income of £60,600 per year -  which is greater than the threshold Labour consider pensioners to be rich. If you engage with any adviser for retirement planning they factor in the state pension into the mix. The current state pension is £241.30 per week per person so assuming the couple have contributed enough then each will receive £12,547 per year which combined is £25,095 per year. That's 41% of the £60,600 joint income to be considered to be comfortable and 48.8% of Labour's rich pensioner threshold. So means testing eligibility for the state pension could actually leave those who h...

 The King of the North seems to want to put his devolved No 10 in Manchester - presumably for an easy commute.  Why Manchester and not Rotherham or Leeds? Manchester does have a high productivty rating - because of the Busy Bee population of Manchester - but the top performing town/city is Slough. Why not put No 10 there? Leeds is a vibrant fast growing city.  Excellent transport links which would allow access from around the country being more central than London. Rotherham is the fastest growing town in the UK in the last decade. Why not put No 10 there? I guess the commute for Andy is less convenient....