By George Tory budget won’t help those in need
Last week the UK Government delivered their spring budget and all I can say is I’m not surprised it wholeheartedly misses the mark once again and fails to actually help real people who are struggling under a Tory-driven costof-living crisis.
Despite having the power to mitigate the impact of soaring energy prices and high inflation, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, failed to use his position for good and instead has plunged ahead with the Tory agenda of making life easier for the richest in society while millions of families will continue to struggle to make ends meet.
And despite a number of individual measures such as the extension of the energy price guarantee being a positive step, the impact this will have as energy bills are set to rise again by almost a third in April is questionable while substantive actions such as restoring the Universal Credit uplift remain notably absent.
I for one am sick to the back teeth of those in power down in Westminster talking the talk but then never actually walking the walk and making real changes for the benefit of the masses.
The Universal Credit system has long been described as demoralising and subjective so to hear Mr Hunt only plans to make it easier to sanction those in receipt of the benefit is appalling.
Meanwhile the richest in society are set to receive a nice boost to their pension pot as the tax free limit is set to rise.
I don’t know about you but if that is not a clear indication of where the Tories’ priorities lie, I don’t know what is.
Equally, it is thoroughly disappointing that the UK Government has ignored promises to set aside funding for the Acorn Project or provide clarity on a timeline for the deployment of the Scottish cluster – an initiative which unites our communities, industries and businesses to deliver carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and other low carbon technologies, supporting Scotland, the UK and Europe to meet net zero goals.
Scotland has long been regarded as a leader across the world in tackling climate change yet, while shackled to a system that is more concerned with giving tax cuts to the rich over helping us ensure our planet is sustainable and healthy, there is only so much we can do with one hand constantly tied behind our back.
Our town deserves much better than this – Scotland deserves better than this – and the only way to bring about the positive, fair and equal changes I know we’d all like to see is to choose a different path and reject the outdated ideals of a UK Government who definitely do not have our best interests at heart.