GOVERNMENT ALL OUT OF IDEAS ON COST OF LIVING
THE economic outlook is worsening rapidly. The economy is predicted to shrink in 2023, leading to a recession.
That will probably put paid to the current boom in recruitment, though most of the jobs being offered are low-paid and insecure anyway.
Inflation, which was already predicted to be the highest in the G7 group of nations in 2023, isn’t waiting for next year to arrive and is heading for 10% at this moment, the highest, well, since the Conservatives were in power in the 1980s, while pay (except for the alreadyrich folk in the City of London) is failing to keep pace, leading to the biggest fall in living standards for a century.
Increases in interest rates will hit people with mortgages yet with most savings accounts paying only around 1-2% the 0.25% increase in the bank rate will still leave savers losing 8-9% of the real value of their savings over the next 12 months.
Those folk on private pensions will find that they are only protected from inflation up to (typically) 5%, not the actual inflation rate of 10%. The Times newspaper estimated this week that this will cumulatively cost the average person with a private pension £7000 over their lifetime.
So what is the plan of our Prime Minister, who redecorated Downing Street with £800 rolls of wallpaper, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer who benefitted from the millions of pounds of tax saved by his wife claiming to be resident in India, while he himself retained a Green Card allowing him to return to his career as a hedge fund manager in America if things didn’t work out for him running the economy on this side of the Atlantic?
Well their plan is opposing proposals to help people with their energy bills by cutting VAT for 12 months or taxing the £7 billion made by Shell and the £5 billion made by BP in just three months.
Anything else? Well, there is the £200 off energy bills, which has to be repaid over five years starting next April. That should help. But it’s hard to think of anything else.
Phil Tate