Rachel Reeves

[HKOwen]

The BOE does not want economic growth, they scuppered the Kwasi mini-budget the day before by announcing their quantitive tightening bond sell off, effectively making the govt plans redundant.

The high base rate policy will now continue until 2030 to the detriment of the domestic economy, business mortgage payers and savers.

They think that hot money and foreign ownership will keep them going and stuff anybody else.

It's a continuation of flawed neo-liberalism that has failed but the UK does not seem capable of ending.

It's sad but do people in the UK actually care about those less fortunate than themselves? Pain for a few, for a few pennies, it's nonsense economics.

The BOE has a banking chancellor and does it show, not even a mention of brexit or interest rates.

Another bad day for Britain, with no reprieve in sight.

😎

You must be gutted she didn't find some extra money to fund jew haters, hope you didn't spend it in expectation

 

[NMPalace]

I have to disagree with this as a blanket generalisation. It depends entirely on the nature of your business. If you have a business where people are a significant proportion of your costs, your margins are low, and customer demand is sensitive to price, this policy is extremely difficult to deal with. So for many retail and hospitality businesses this is a nightmare, and it isn't to do with inadequate strategy, but to do with market dynamics (unless the strategy is simply get out of physical retail and hospitality so there are no shops, restaurants and bars left). For businesses with low proportionate people costs, higher margins, and customer demand not so responsive to price changes, it's not that difficult to manage.

Retail and hospitality pay very poorly, usually the minimum wage, so they are more impacted by the minimum wage increase.

However, if i go to the pub how much of my pint cost is to cover the person pouring it - 20p? If this increases by 10% it's 22p from April.

Similarly, if i pop into Next to buy a shirt (a company that has just generated £1bn in rev BTW) for say £50 it probably 'cost' maybe 1/2 of this. Of the profit how much is to cover the cashier - maybe £1.

I work for a children's charity and our staff costs are over 80% of total costs. Things are clearly tight and the NI increase is having a big impact but we are slowly increasing prices (as happens every year) and the staff payrise has been adjusted down to reflect the extra NI costs.

Minimum wage went up over 10% in 2024 and i didn't see any of this outcry then from businesses and the media, however, it must have impacted the same companies just as much. What's changed other than the govt?

 

[NMPalace]

This echos what I posted the other day. Big talk from Labour but very little effective action.

Allister Heath
Sunday Telegraph Editor

This must have been the most disingenuous fiscal statement of all time, delivered by one of our worst ever chancellors. Rachel Reeves’s speech was an exercise in make-believe, a painful collection of cliches and distortions, a grotesque attempt at pretending that all is well as the economy careens into the abyss.

The entire premise of her Spring Statement was false. Reeves’s conceit was that the world has changed, and that she is responding by embracing dramatic cuts to welfare and the Civil Service as well as pro-growth policies.

It is fantasy. There is no plan for change. The country remains on auto-pilot. Reeves is only pretending to have shifted course: her language was radical, but her actions trivial. Spending is still rising, including on welfare, as are taxes and red tape. Her Civil Service reductions are unlikely to materialise. Britain’s drift to socialism and middle class pauperisation continues unabated.

Broken Britain is in desperate need of shock therapy, but we were offered only tinkering. Her policy changes were driven by the need to game arbitrary fiscal targets and placate the OBR, rather than any sort of intellectual realisation that her October Budget was a calamity, or that her entire ideological superstructure must be torn down. She remains a Left-wing technocrat, and reality has yet to mug her.

Her supposedly massive cuts are equivalent to a fifth of the spending splurge she originally unveiled in October. This is not even close to the austerity the British state so desperately requires, and welfare spending continues to spiral out of control. Working age health and disability related welfare expenditure is due to rise by £15.4 billion between 2024-25 and 2029-30, an increase that would ordinarily be seen as explosive. Yes, some claimants will be worse off, a point that is being highlighted by the Left, but overall spending on these kinds of benefits is still surging.

This is symptomatic of one of Britain’s most disgraceful national failings: the pathologisation of swathes of the country, the pseudo-medicalisation of many who could and should work, the disgraceful trapping of millions into benefit dependency, ruining their life chances and those of their children.

Poverty, correctly understood, can only truly be defeated by work and a strengthening of the family and civil society, not by transfers. Tories and Labour alike (with some noble exceptions) have found it too politically tough to tackle the epidemic of worklessness and anomie created by our dysfunctional welfare state: it is still easier to import hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.

Britain’s welfare state continues to live beyond its means. Reeves’s restored fiscal head room is a statistical illusion that will not survive contact with reality. Hideous tax rises will almost certainly be necessary, either as early as this winter or next year. The worst is yet to come.

This guy is ultra right and strongly supported Brexit (which was known to have a GDP impact of -4% on our economy) and also strongly backed Kwasi's budget a couple of years ago.

He is clearly a flawed economist.

He makes a few fair points - Britain is broken, yes, but how did that happen? Maybe Brexit and Kwasi's budget were factors. Who has been in power the last 14 years etc.

He essentially wants to rip up the welfare state to 'solve' poverty.

Ultimately with an ageing population, massive debt costs (only partly due to covid) and the need to significantly increase defence spending i do think taxes may need to rise. However, i suspect this would need to happen regardless of who was in power.

Increasing capital gains for higher rate tax payers (which less than 1% of the population ever pay) would be my starter but maybe reversing the last 2% NI reduction is required - back to 10%, as this was clearly a pre election give away that the country couldn't afford.

 

[steeleye20]

Unless Labour actually wants these people to physically die, then the NHS and Councils will have to pick up the pieces of this cruel policy.

Austerity doesn't actually save anything it just stores up trouble.

😎

 

[beak]

Also heard that HBOS wanted rid of because she was spending to much time doing Labour Party stuff and not enough doing her job.

Unsubstantiated hearsay, not worth contemplation.Certainly inadmissible in any court, I think this might be better place on mumsnet chat. As the great bard would have said "much ado about nothing".Personally I will stick to the truth and proven irrefutable FACT, in order to make a refreshing change from dreamt up hogwash.

 

[Badger11]

Unsubstantiated hearsay, not worth contemplation.Certainly inadmissible in any court, I think this might be better place on mumsnet chat. As the great bard would have said "much ado about nothing".Personally I will stick to the truth and proven irrefutable FACT, in order to make a refreshing change from dreamt up hogwash.

Thank you Rumpole of the Baily.

No one is saying she should face court so I don't know where you got that from.

The reason for her leaving is unclear. However I spent my career working for a major bank and it was common practice to ask people to resign rather than sack them and take them to court in all but the most extreme cases.

She faced an internal enquiry into her expenses she wouldn't be the first person who was asked to leave for that reason. Like I said they also were not happy with her growing involvement with the Labour Party so my guess is both she and the bank thought it time to part ways.

I'm not sure why you are bringing this up now this story is old news and unlikely to have legs. You will think what you will and I reserve the right to think likewise.

 

[beak]

Thank you Rumpole of the Baily.

No one is saying she should face court so I don't know where you got that from.

The reason for her leaving is unclear. However I spent my career working for a major bank and it was common practice to ask people to resign rather than sack them and take them to court in all but the most extreme cases.

She faced an internal enquiry into her expenses she wouldn't be the first person who was asked to leave for that reason. Like I said they also were not happy with her growing involvement with the Labour Party so my guess is both she and the bank thought it time to part ways.

I'm not sure why you are bringing this up now this story is old news and unlikely to have legs. You will think what you will and I reserve the right to think likewise.

Hearsay I was trying to explain is an unworthy pastime usually carried out by two women with nothing to do. Any formal proceedings would not be bothered by gossip. I have seen NO hard evidence that HBos enquired or question her time of service I might be a bit old fashioned but I do like proof. At the end of the day the chancellor should be left to do her job without unfounded,idle tittle tattle.

 

[Spiderman]

Hearsay I was trying to explain is an unworthy pastime usually carried out by two women with nothing to do. Any formal proceedings would not be bothered by gossip. I have seen NO hard evidence that HBos enquired or question her time of service I might be a bit old fashioned but I do like proof. At the end of the day the chancellor should be left to do her job without unfounded,idle tittle tattle.

Perhaps she should spend more time doing her job than going on freebies to concerts, just a thought 😉

 

[beak]

Perhaps she should spend more time doing her job than going on freebies to concerts, just a thought 😉

Do I detect a little jealousy?

 

[Teddy Eagle]

Do I detect a little jealousy?

Going out on a limb I would suggest Spider isn't a massive Sabrina Carpenter fan so I'm going to say no.