A budget to destroy growth

Today we had a budget which kicked pensioners in the teeth and business somewhere even less pleasant.

One or two of the measures, such as the increase in the minimum wage and the increase in NHS spending, may well be popular. Taken out of context they may even be beneficial.

The problem with this budget is a catastrophic lack of balance.

And what it proves about the present leadership of the Labour party is that you cannot believe a word they say.

Here are a few of more than 50 times Labour said during the election they had no plans to raise taxes They’ve just broken that promise in their Budget of Broken Promises.

If the increase in the minimum wage had been implemented on its' own as a standalone policy most businesses could probably have afforded it and it might well have done more good by rewarding those who are working hard than harm by pricing jobs out of existence.

Similarly the big increase in worker's rights could probably have been afforded on it's own.

But here's the problem - how can anyone in their right mind imagine that businesses can, at the same time, during a period of high energy costs, pay 

  • billions of pounds of wage increases, 
  • billions of pounds to fund new workers' entitlements, 
  • and also comply with a whole host of net zero regulations and costs to satisfy Ed Miliband, 
  • and now pay £25 billion in increased employers' National Insurance contributions,

without cutting something? 

They cannot find all those billions of pounds down the back of a sofa! They will have to cut investment or jobs. Independent experts are suggesting the NICs increase alone will cost at least 50,000 jobs.

Any suggestion that a party is serious about growth if it which introduces a budget like this one, piling forty billion of extra taxes on top of a tax burden which was already high and will now be the highest in history, and then adding billions of borrowing on top of that, is a sick joke.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more