I’ve been writing about the tension between purpose, money & meaningful work, and sharing honest reflections on leadership & charity.
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The OBR forecast £17.7bn of borrowing for May. The number came in at £23.3bn. The forecast misses are truly eye-watering now.
They missed by a third last month. Net debt is now 95.1% of GDP, a level we last touched while paying down a world war. Debt interest is up 54% in a single year. Read that again, because it is now the fourth largest item in public spending, climbing past the departments that actually run the country, and it keeps growing. £11.7bn of debt interest in a single month, purely to service what we already owe.
Receipts are up, following the enormous tax hikes we've seen. They are always up, but despite this, the deficit gets much bigger anyway.
When the forecast misses by this much, this early, the gap doesn't get closed by a spending review... not that we have a government capable of reducing spending anyway. It gets closed by you. Every line of this points at the autumn Budget and what will likely be more "difficult decisions" for the chancellor as she, or whoever is in post then, presides over another tax raid.
Brace yourselves... it's very likely that those broad shoulders you all have are about to have a few more tax boulders added to them.
And it would be interesting to hear what the newly elected member for Makerfield makes of all this.
The OBR forecast £17.7bn of borrowing for May. The number came in at £23.3bn. The forecast misses are truly eye-watering now.
They missed by a third last month. Net debt is now 95.1% of GDP, a level we last touched while paying down a world war. Debt interest is up 54% in a single year. Read that again, because it is now the fourth largest item in public spending, climbing past the departments that actually run the country, and it keeps growing. £11.7bn of debt interest in a single month, purely to service what we already owe.
Receipts are up, following the enormous tax hikes we've seen. They are always up, but despite this, the deficit gets much bigger anyway.
When the forecast misses by this much, this early, the gap doesn't get closed by a spending review... not that we have a government capable of reducing spending anyway. It gets closed by you. Every line of this points at the autumn Budget and what will likely be more "difficult decisions" for the chancellor as she, or whoever is in post then, presides over another tax raid.
Brace yourselves... it's very likely that those broad shoulders you all have are about to have a few more tax boulders added to them.
And it would be interesting to hear what the newly elected member for Makerfield makes of all this.
@jat2210 I can narrowly beat that. Two sentences.
"You have turned down my business on the suspicion of fraud or money laundering. I am the Archbishop of York. "
@DanielPriestley His argument are so ill considered.
There is zero evidence that gov is a good allocator of resources.
And if the population at large cannot afford a good or service, how can it afford the thing + the cost of a huge administrative body to deliver it?
Call me crazy, but I think parents should determine what their teenagers do online rather than the government.
And that governments shouldn't use system-level ID checks to identify and monitor everything.
They will happily let you think it is your fault.
I’ve written a piece that empathises with the many whose welfare and well-being is corroded by predatory debasement.
🚨NEW: The confirmed list of social media apps/sites under-16s in the UK will be banned from using:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Instagram
- X (formerly twitter)
- Reddit
- Facebook
- Twitch
- Kick
- Threads
@avp40times@PolemicTMM Remarkable really, given the complete lack of evidence that they have any competence in resource allocation. Impressive combination of hubris and delusion.
Padstow harbour, a sunny Sunday morning, reading this by the brilliant @DominicFrisby
Also pointing friends to this reflective piece. You’re not weak but they don’t mind you thinking you are, as long as you don’t realise what they are doing to you.
https://t.co/k3lwstxjys
My feed is full of Elon Musk being a trillionaire people getting upset about other people celebrating that because they’re poor and lazy
Other people getting upset because he focuses on his own projects instead of humanity but what if he believed he was making humanity better?
So everything contradicts everything…. Because we don’t live in Elon‘s head and we don’t know his motives or his perspective.
How about we just focus on our own lives and making it the best life we can have?
You are not weak, and you were never rowing badly.
You have been pulling against a current that was engineered to be invisible. Once you see it, you stop blaming your own arms.
I've written about what it is, and the centuries-old trick behind it.
It's called The Current. Link 👇