vivweb01

  Once again, Rachel Reeves has a problem on her hands…a big one. We’re all starting to feel the pinch as a result of the latest economic shock – Trump’s Iran War. Even before it started, a large slice of our population, on low wages but not entitled to benefits were really not able to make ends meet without taking out additional loans. Electricity and Gas price rises imposed by the supplier ‘cartel’ and sanctioned by OFGEM have been particularly injurious, and many have been left with large debts in the form of unpaid utility bills, just by keeping themselves and their kids warm this winter. We have also allowed our water companies to fleece consumers royally despite their appalling sewage pollution record, with a particularly onerous 20% increase imposed in some areas in the last year despite this. The only ‘chink of light’ is that suppliers themselves are finally beginning to realise that all they achieve by maximising their profit margins to the extent that they have is a...

In short – it stifles incentive and enterprise, thus reducing our nation's productivity and its capacity to generate wealth..... Let me try to explain.... The Covid pandemic, Brexit, and more recently the worldwide ‘cost of living crisis’ have undoubtedly put a huge strain on many western economies since the start of the decade, and the UK is no exception.  The many billions gobbled up by pandemic costs and the UK's furlough scheme in particular were but one example of the financial challenges we faced, and the debt incurred will still have to be paid for somehow.  Raising taxes was a logical response during the first years of the pandemic in an attempt to pay down some of our mounting debt. Maintenance of ultra-low interest rates and effectively ‘printing money’ via quantitative easing was another means adopted to try and soften the immediate economic blow in the late 2010s, but unfortunately had the effect of making the economy appear far more robust than it actually was...