vivweb01blog

As a postscript to this rather 'off the wall' suggestion, it's obvious that this government is no further forward than the last at solving the small-boats problem, having ditched their Rwanda plan immediately on assuming office and not really putting anything more effective in its place.  The belated returns agreement with the French, trumpeted so enthusiastically earlier this year, has so far only managed to deport a handful of illegals, at least two of which have already tried their luck again via the same route (and those are just the ones Border Force have actually detected).  All the more reason to let the 'marine experts' have a go - I'm sure they'd find a way to disable an outboard motor just as easily as a fishing boat's rudder ! I doubt whether many others would risk the trip in a dinghy after that.... ---------------------------------- I last published in April on the whys and wherefores of our ‘broken’ immigration system .  By that stage the g...

  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.  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 the Tories for their own administration's eventual demise at the hands of Reform!) 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 one 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....

  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...

  Editor's note: Please see the recent update at the end of this text for analysis of the Winter Fuel reversal announcement in June 2025, and its implications for the future of universal pensioner benefits.....You may also be interested in a more recent update on the recent rumours that Reeves may introduce means testing for the State Pension itself, and other real or imaginary prospective horrors, in this November's budget....  ----------------------------- Now that the dust has well and truly settled after Reeves’ so-called ‘Halloween Nightmare’ budget in October 2024, and its consequences have fully fitered through to the economy at large, let’s take a look at what actually happened to pensioner benefits…and what we might expect to happen in future. We all know about the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment for the majority of pensioners last summer – you would have had to have been living on Mars for the last year not to. Although Starmer obviously thinks it's 'done...

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 more robust than it actually was.......