The Government announced this week it is increasing NI to raise £11.5bn for the NHS and social care. This gives Boris Johnson the record for the highest levels of tax and spend of any post war Conservative PM. He is currently spending more on public services that Corbyn promised in 2019, and nearly as much … Read more
Barely a week goes by without someone telling me about another imminent threat from the Tories to privatise the NHS, and introduce American style healthcare. As you might have spotted after 30 years of these stories I am pretty sceptical. The NHS is still as it ever was. I do understand people’s anxieties. Hospitals that … Read more
The UK food and drink industry is recovering slowly from 18 months of crisis. Covid closed down lots of producers roots to market as shops shut. Brexit took away export customers. The apparently endless supply of low paid workers who kept everything running has dried up. This week we signed a post Brexit free trade … Read more
The Greensill scandal isn’t going away with further revelations about lobbying and inquiries. There are still some big questions that stick in my mind; What was Greensill’s actual business? How did they plan to make money? Warning: Contains full frontal accountancy Greensill liked to describe themselves as a fin-tech company, but their business model was … Read more
This weeks Daily Mirror covers the evolving mess that is Kickstart – the Government’s £2bn flagship scheme to help young people who are out of work. Of course you read it all here first: We are still not allowed to join Kickstart, and I believe that thousands of other small businesses are in the same … Read more
At the start of this year I and many others wrote that Boris’s deal would results in empty shelves in super markets: The story of empty shelves only partly came true. Some supermarkets have had empty shelves at different times, while specialist on line retailers have much bigger problems – one I use has roughly … Read more
Last summer my son was the victim of a racist incident. Not an attack or anything violent. But racist behaviour by a public official. Britain has come a long way on race, and we are noticeably less racist than we were a generation ago, but over the last few years things have started going … Read more
It’s been a funny old year Despite all of the doom and gloom about the state of the environment I have always been positive that we can find a solution, and prevent disaster. The steps we need to take are straight forward, and many are already working. Resource consumption per head of population in the … Read more
We did OK for food before we joined the EU, we’ll be fine when we leave I have heard this statement a lot over the last few months as we get closer to the end of transition, and a period of disruption. Frankly I don’t believe it. The UK is highly dependent on food imports … Read more
Just when we thought Kickstart couldn’t get any worse, we have been told that we are not allowed to take part in Kickstart at all, 6 months after it was announced. This apparently is the case for most small businesses. For those who haven’t been following the story Kickstart is an employment subsidy for under … Read more