OT This rotten Govt.Yet more scandal.

[KerrAvon]

When you get a govt.that treats the tax paying population with contempt there will be a reaction.

Agreed, but I am more interested in the perception of how the government has treated the tax paying population with contempt.

Small businesses are being penalised through extremely high energy bills{Milliband's stupid net zero idiotic policy}

I'm happy to be corrected, but weren't the current net zero policies put in place by the May government, adopted by Johnson and Sunak and voted for the Tories who are now in Reform? They are undoubtedly going to cost money, but oil and gas are finite resources, so maybe we need to address that now rather than leave it to our kids and grandkids? And there is climate change. I get that it is comforting and can be politically expedient to simply dismiss that out of hand, but doing so has no effect on reality.

Small businesses are being penalised through ? extra taxes plus employment obstructions and are consequently going bust. These small businesses would provide employment for youngsters with their first jobs.For example hospitality openings that are no longer available because of govt.measures.The last govt,failed but this present uniparty is disastrous.

I assume that you are referring to employee NI contributions and employment rights? On the former, I get that nobody likes to pay tax and that taxation can have negative effects, but isn?t taxation merely the cost of living in a society (to paraphrase someone cleverer than me)? Amongst a myriad of other things, we all want our bins emptied, an ambulance to turn up when we need one, for potholes to be fixed, for a copper to turn up if we are burgled and for the armed forces to be able to respond to threats to the country, but that costs money.

We have a welfare bill now that excedes revenue brought in by the downtrodden tax paying workers.

This is not true. Income tax and NI bring in about ?400bn p.a. The Welfare budget comes to around ?323bn p.a. The big ticket in the Welfare is the state pension (about ?178 billion p.a.), but no political party appears to be willing to address that. Indeed, a recent Reform Party political broadcast that I had the misfortune to watch featuring the failed Tory, Robert Jenrick, focusing entirely upon their commitment to preserve the 'triple lock' notwithstanding that it cannot be not an issue in the forthcoming local elections.

It seems very unpopular to say it on here, but my understanding is that about one in eight people in empoyment in the UK is on Universal Credit. Perhaps we should be asking how that can be a fair and equitable position?

Growth was promised by this incoming govt. but there's no sign of that.

Growth has been promised by the last four governments. The last government were able to point to Covid and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine as obstacles to the same. The current government can point to Trump's tariffs and nonsensical attack upon Iran. All of them are valid, but the bigger issues are self-inflicted:

1. The 2008 crash hit the UK hard because of our over dependence upon financial services, which can be traced back to Thatcher, but with Major and Blair having some input.

2. Brexit was inflicted upon the UK by the electorate with the help of chancers like Johnson and Farage. If the 2008 crash flatlined the UK economy then the Brexit vote stopped the resuscitation attempts by killing off inward investment. Who would want to invest in the UK when we have chosen to impose economic sanctions upon ourselves?

Illegal migrants would be stopped but after a flood of gimmicks which have failed miserably,we see more coming over.Thousands are waiting in Calais to take advantage of the huge benefits they get.Bad weather is the only deterrent .Now the weather is getting better,no doubt new records will be broken coming over.The govt.have been boasting about emptying the migrant hotels but they are not telling us where they're all going.A good guess is labour/lib controlled councils will be the first to volunteer to accommodate these huge numbers.How many we have got in South Yorkshire?Sod the local population waiting to be housed.So yes Kerr this shocking govt.have made a bloody mess of people's lives !!!!!!!!!!!!

Irregular immigration has always been a thing in the UK. One of my favourite ever clients was a bloke from Mongolia who had flown from Ulan Bator to Moscow and then been stashed in lorries to Germany and then onto to the UK. That was back in 2004, or thereabouts. He then worked in factory whilst 'hot bunking', with the sole intention of being reasonably well off when he was eventually returned back to his home country. Can I be angry with him? No. I might have done the same in his position.

Entering the country in the back of a lorry was made much harder by the money invested in security at Calais and Dover so migrants now cross the channel in small boats. That visibility, coupled with the Tories slashing the budgets available to deal with the assessment of asylum claims and for the removal of failed applicants and the consequential backlogs have allowed the issue to become a political football. It's so much easier to blame people who want to come to the UK for a better life for our woes than, say, the people who promoted the lunacy of putting up trade barriers with our closest trading partners.

Why was he one of my favourite clients I don't hear you ask? Because he was one of the most scrupulously polite and honest people that I have ever met and because the Mongolian language is wonderful to listen to (we had an interpreter).

P.s. the A, E and S keys tend to wear out on my keyboards. I'm guessing that it is the exclamation mark for you?