Three weeks clear of the summer holidays and it’s definitely coats, boots and big cardi season, although maybe not time to stick the heating on yet – if you are one of the lucky ones able to afford such privileges that is.
Bafflingly, another two weeks have disappeared since I last wrote a new blog post. I would say I’ve been just too busy, but to be honest I feel like there’s barely any point in writing about current events these days, as no sooner have things been announced, there’s been a u-turn, so unless you happen to read the posts within the first ten minutes of publication they’re are no longer current.
It’s exhausting isn’t it?
The mighty Liz Truss is now into week three of her new job (which of course includes ten days off to mourn the Queen) and man is she nailing it.
Last week, together with her evil sidekick Kwasi and her cabinet made up of literally every Tory MP left that didn’t say mean things about her, a new new ‘mini budget’ was announced. Although I try and actively avoid such things, I was in the gym, watching it live while on the treadmill. I did a very slow but VERY angry 5k.
The budget is largely based on the widely debunked myth of Trickle Down Economics whereby you give very rich people lots of money and then stupidly hope they don’t send it abroad or save it all, rather than give it to the people who actually need to spend it to stay alive.
It has left a lot of very sensible people asking what the fuck, and made the pound plummet to levels I’ve certainly not seen before.
I have a few clients I work with who pay me in dollars (I’ll take anything me; pounds, Euros, wine…) and what used to bring in roughly £60 is now cashing out at just over £80. That’s nice, and I don’t mean to be ungrateful for the extra twenty quid every now and then, but a large part of me would rather not be sitting on an empty house I can’t sell because interest rates are so unstable that no one who wants to buy it can get a mortgage. I don’t know.
There are some people who are happy with the cuts…
Apart from the usual right wing hangers-on who are becoming world experts in practising cognitive dissonance, they’ve also pleased the hedge fund managers that managed to short the pound and make a fuckload of money from the rest of the country’s impending misery, and not forgetting the top 1% of earners on £150,000+ who’ve been passed the biggest tax cuts, and are currently busy trying to persuade us that it’s really not all that much to live on when you have outgoings, whilst simultaneously telling us it’s quite possible to live on £50 a week if we just budget harder.
I for one am very glad we’re finally looking out for the 1%. Warms the cockles of my heart. Fuck social care and schools, infrastructure and all that bullshit, right.
This new budget doesn’t come cheaply; the Government plans to borrow HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of pounds to finance the tax cuts over the next few years – which will be even more expensive now the pound is worth piss all. It almost makes £37billion on a useless Track and Trace system look like a worthy investment.
Now I’m no expert, but it seems like a big load of crap to me.
That is my entire opinion on it at this stage. They suck, it sucks, everything sucks.
It barely seems worth putting pen to paper – well, fingers to keyboard – to complain anymore, because this is what is happening. This is what they do, the Tories. They don’t give a solitary fuck what is best for anyone other than their paymasters – not even within their own party.
If you are poor, it sucks to be you. Why have you just thought about being richer?
*Title inspired by one of my favourite tweeters: