How bad will the Budget be?

Can you explain using easy to understand logic how year on year pay freezes and below inflation pay rises can be anything other than a real terms pay cut? Anyone working in the public sector or who knows anyone working in the public sector knows you are speaking out of your arse.

Here are some actual facts...


www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/civil-service-pay-governments-ability-deliver

Labour is indeed fortunate in who their opponents are. Because only the appalling Tories can make Labour look like an improvement - at least to those of us having to earn a living as opposed to those whingeing from the comfort of their armchairs all day.

Typical of right wingers today. The dark imaginings of their gullible brains is considered more factual than actual facts, which explains why the right far more readily buys into obvious bollocks conspiracy theories than the left. Too many of you are not grounded in reality.

Whilst I have qualms about inheritance taxes on family farms above a certain value - they are functioning businesses often with low margins - and are only worth so much because of the land they occupy - I confidently predict that we will never have a single state owned farm, nor will we be queuing for potatoes unless as a result of some kind of global potato blight.

It depends on who you are and what your situation is. If you need to travel a lot as part of your business operation or need to commute by car to and from work, the fact that the expected hefty fuel duty increase did not happen is a major plus.

If you are on low pay, especially if you are under 21, the big rises in minimum wages looks pretty hopeful to you as it does to me.

Continuing to freeze thresholds though for another four years and claiming this as a virtue because they are not doing it for even longer, hits us all rather hard.

There is hope that the extra money for infrastructure investment and for the NHS might start helping in due course, and that the planned overhaul of planning laws will kick start more housebuilding.

And big reductions in the discount for right to buy are a positive because they were forcing social landlords to sell at a massive loss which made new social housing construction economically unfeasible. This had to change and offers hope to all those languishing on housing waiting lists.

If you work in the public sector as some of my friends do, there is hope that your pay will not continue to be cut in real terms year on year and that the recruitment and retention crisis will begin to ease.

So there is genuine hope for some, though probably not so much for you. As a minimum wage employer, the big minimum wage increase is going to be a concern for you especially when added to the large increases in employers' NI contributions. I have qualms about the wisdom of the latter for sure. Many employers will simply pass these costs on to their employees as lower pay rises or to their customers as higher prices. But minimum wage employers do not have lower pay rises as an option and risk losing too many customers if they raise prices.

It would have been difficult to raise so much money in other ways, but at least some of it could have been raised by modest extra taxes on wealth, particularly immoveable assets like land or property. After all, whilst the average billionaire could easily move himself and his money out of the country, he would struggle to get his London penthouse or country mansion on a ship or a plane to transport elsewhere.

How long before you start addressing the current reality.