vivweb01blog

  Rachel Reeves has a thorny problem on her hands. She needs to decide within the next 3 weeks (i.e. before the budget on Nov 26 th ) whether to break the manifesto promise Labour made in order to get themselves elected in 2024, i.e. not to raise Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance. She knows that breaking this promise will be a highly unpopular move, not least with her back-bench colleagues, and could spell electoral suicide for the party, with the process of decline starting in May next year, after the predicted whitewash of Labour seats in the next round of local elections. She is also facing the increasingly gloomy financial outlook for the UK prophesied by the OBR, and is desperate to give herself as much financial ‘headroom’ as possible without breaking any of her self-imposed fiscal rules or ‘spooking' the markets by doing anything they perceive as financially ill-advised. To add to the pressure, she has also been under the spotlight herself recently, in being ye...

  Our prison system does appear to be in something of a crisis at present.... It has been full to bursting over at least the last 5 years. Reasons quoted for this include lack of investment by successive governments, over-enthusiastic sentencing policies., etc , etc., and no-doubt the current administration will at some stage attempt to   blame it exclusively on the now infamous ‘Tory Black Holes’ as they do for most other things that have already failed, or are currently failing, under their watch….(I wouldn't be surprised if they even blamed them for their administration's eventual demise!) The sad fact is that we really can’t afford to imprison as many people as we do – not surprising given that the current cost of maintaining a prisoner in jail for a year is now well north of £50k. Building new prison estate to modern standards, let alone replacing all our Victorian jails as we ideally should, would cost tens if not hundreds of billions. Even then, we would need to f...

  This summer, Labour back-benchers finally managed to force Starmer to backtrack on the draconian restrictions to Winter Fuel Payments (WFP) first announced by Reeves shortly after the election i n July 2024. For that we should certainly be grateful to them. They weren’t, however, able to reverse the damage caused by this ill-considered measure completely. Instead of agreeing to re-instate the benefit for everyone and acknowledge it was all a terrible mistake, Starmer and Reeves insisted on attempting to 'save face' by applying a means test based on an income threshold of £35k p.a. This didn't cut much ice with the electorate if the polls are anything to go by, but it has set the scene for yet more pain for both the leadership and the Party…. Let’s take look at the practical implications of this move to find out why.... The plan now is for DWP to reinstate the £200 (£300 for over 80s) payment for all pensioners who were claiming their entitlement in 2024 before th...