It Could Be Worse - Not...

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Utterly dispiriting viewing this afternoon, PMQs: the PM rather desperately trotting out the only vaguely possible positive litany of energy price caps, despite a deluge of questions over the broader economic problems currently at issue. Whenever tasked about the tanking economy, people struggling to cope with *significant* increases in food and accommodation costs, she blithely turned the question around to the triumph[!] of limiting increases in average fuel bills to [only] £3,000/annum.

As to 'growth', we are treated to frankly fatuous pronouncements on allowing people to keep more of the money they earn, so that they can spend more, and hence grow both the economy and their own personal wealth. Ahem. Most people will be completely untouched by tax and NI cuts, however large or small they might be: the bulk of working people in these islands don't earn anywhere near enough to pay sufficient taxes - if any - for cuts to make the slightest bit of difference to them; and yet, their overheads  - the basics of survival - have gone through the roof overnight. Their spending power has been crushed to nought save bare survival.

As to pissing around with stamp duty - always an old electoral standby - two things stand out. One, stamp duty is now payable on homes whose prices fall within the range of average property prices. Two, virtually no-one outside the property ladder/market earns enough to even buy a starter home, anyway. Meanwhile, rents have gone into the stratosphere, along with energy costs (three grand a year is still double what people were budgeting for last year), the knock-on of commodity - read food - cost increases, and mere existence for many, many people looks tenuous at best.

If something doesn't happen soon and the government either finally gets a bloody grip or we have a general election to get shut of them, it looks like Britain is headed for a deep economic depression. The nation's credit rating is now on the slide, which means that the issuing of bonds to fund our recovery will become untenable. With low wages, low investment in public services, low taxation and disappearing access to borrowing, it won't be long before banana republic will be the most appropriate description of Project UK. Except we don't have much of a banana industry here, either...

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