In his Budget speech the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, claimed that Britain’s creative industries are world leaders. There is, for once, some truth in that, and certainly Hunt’s speech was a bravura example.
To listen to him you’re think that God was in His heaven, all was right with the world and the UK was a spanking modern country in which inflation, which had reached 11% for reasons entirely out of our control but was, as a result of Conservative policy, poised to reach its target “soon” and those of us who deserve it by doing the right thing in hard working families can enjoy a life-changing £450 a year rise.
No mention of the fact that after 14 years of these wonder-working Conservative policies, approximately 3.8 million of our people live in destitution, and that includes nearly a million children, over a quarter of whom are babies or under five; local councils with caring responsibilities are becoming insolvent; our health services are inadequate with waiting lists for treatment at an all-time high; our care systems for the elderly are totally unable to cope with the increasing demands on them; our roads are pothole-pitted and overcrowded; railways are unreliable; house prices are beyond the reach of young people; renters endure a precarious existence through the whims of inadequately regulated landlords; our schools are crumbling; doctors and teachers are leaving their professions in droves; our courts are faced with unacceptable backlogs; our prisons are grossly over-full and their inmates incarcerated in disgusting insanitary conditions; and the BBC, which plays a significant role in the creative industries, is cowed from speaking truth to power.
If all this “condition of the people” strikes you as a woke-ish namby-pambyism, our armed forces have barely half the personnel they need, and desperately short of up-to-date equipment; neither of our two aircraft-carriers was fit to take part in in a recent NATO exercise; and two smaller ships collided in the Gulf because one of them was "wrongly wired" and went backwards into the other when the “full ahead” lever was pulled.
I know it has long been a fiction that National Insurance Contributions (NICs) are there to finance the social security system - they don’t, they are just another form of taxation – but it is ironic that this tax, which was created to fund among other things the NHS, is the main tax the government has cut.
Yet the inadequacies of the NHS are allegedly top of voters’ concerns. Along with this and the other issues itemised above (and I’m sure there are many more) more government spending is needed. Our public realm will not be “fixed” by productivity improvements alone, nor by a mythical “trickle-down effect.
Much is made of the “fact” that the UK’s tax "take" (not a "burden") is the highest it has been for 70 years (though Will Hutton of the Observer claims it is 40 years). The Tories like us to think that means we are over-taxed. This total we pay to the government as our subscription to live in a civilised society is still only around the average of both the G7 and the OECD, and that average is pulled down by the low level in the US (where it does not include health care). For years the UK has been well below the average for similar developed countries, not least France and Germany, and there is a lot to make up.
Our need is more tax, not less, but by a fairer system in which the broadest shoulders pay their proper share.
I watched only
Hunt’s presentation: the Opposition’s reply was unexpectedly delayed by a vote
apparently forced by the SNP. However
the atmosphere of the debate I saw bore no relationship to the seriousness
of the subject. It was played out as some sort of joke, with ribaldry, jeers, taunts
and laughter, which seemed to come from all sides.
No wonder an increasing section of the population, sadly those who most need parliament to take them seriously, have given up hope, and either treat politicians with contempt of are indifferent to the system which, used properly, should help them live decent lives.
The proper response of the Opposition parties to this jolly “Punch and Judy” pantomime approach by the Government should be stony silence. This is people’s lives you are dealing with, you and we may be OK but too many of the people we are elected to serve are suffering lives unworthy of one of the richest countries in the world. Be aware of your responsibilities.
This description,
taken from an article in today’s Guardian by former banker Gary Stevenson, has a greater ring of truth than Hunt's Oscar-winning performance:
“The budget is a piece of theatre meant for your consumption. It is a cute moment – a photogenic moment where a multimillionaire can hold up a red box and bribe you with a bit of your money, while they and all the other multimillionaires bankrupt the government with monetary and fiscal stimulus packages that seem somehow to always end up in their own pockets. They then use that money to buy assets such as all the houses that your children will need but never be able to afford to own."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/05/banker-budget-mega-rich-traders-jeremy-hunt
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