I WONDER what it’s like to live in RachelLand.
Does everything taste of candy floss? Do the unicorns run free? And is it warm and sunny every day?
It must be lovely to live in such a wonderful place, where everyone is happy, the orchards of magic money trees are in blossom, choices are cost-free and the future is always rosy.
The Chancellor delivered her Spring Statement on Wednesday wearing a burgundy trouser suit with matching rose-tinted spectacles[/caption]
Rachel Reeves delivering her ‘delusional’ Spring Statement[/caption]
Maybe we should ask the Chancellor what it’s like in RachelLand since she has clearly decided to swap 11 Downing Street for this mythical kingdom while the rest of us are stuck back here in the cold, hard reality of the United Kingdom.
There really is no other explanation as to why Rachel Reeves seems to think that her Spring Statement this week — and the Budget she delivered last October — are going to create the economic growth she claims they will.
The Chancellor delivered her Spring Statement on Wednesday wearing a burgundy trouser suit with matching rose-tinted spectacles.
We’ve endured many a Chancellor before now who has tried to deceive us with smoke and mirrors into believing that we’ll all be better off.
But this Treasury chief is a fiscal fantasist of the highest order.
The real worry isn’t that Ms Reeves is trying to fool us by conjuring up £9.9billion “fiscal headroom” through her sleight of hand.
The only things that are going to grow out of her tax and spending policies are our national debt, welfare dependency, inflation and unemployment.
It’s that she genuinely believes she has balanced the books, that we can keep on spend, spend, spending, with no more tax rises to pay for it all, and the desperately needed economic growth we all crave is just around the next corner.
This is utterly delusional. And everyone living back here in the real world knows it.
The Chancellor is residing in fantasy land if she honestly believes she has “fixed the foundations” for growth with her tax grab on business and her hapless welfare reforms.
The only things that are going to grow out of her tax and spending policies are our national debt, welfare dependency, inflation and unemployment.
Make-believe economics
Labour made much of Rachel Reeves being the first woman Chancellor last year, but voters don’t care about that.
They just want someone who understands how the real world works, how business functions and how to boost the economy.
Frankly, I’d rather have the first White Van Man Chancellor.
Much derided by patronising Labour luvvies, every White Van Man knows a heck of a lot more about how the real world works than Ms Reeves and most of Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet, who have barely any experience in the wealth-generating private sector.
Unlike Ms Reeves, White Van Man knows what it’s like to run a small business, what it costs to hire that extra member of staff and what happens when extra costs hit — all things that seem to be beyond the wit of the current Chancellor.
Rachel Reeves needs to wave goodbye to her fantasy land of milk and honey and join the rest of us back here in the real world before it’s too late to save our economy — and her job.
According to her make-believe economics, the best way to boost growth is to put a higher tax on jobs by raising the National Insurance contributions paid by employers.
And the way to tackle our ballooning multi-billion-pound welfare dependency bill is to tinker around at the edges and ask people nicely to go get a job.
Her delusions don’t end there.
She also thinks that £9.9billion of “fiscal headroom”, which is essentially the Government’s rainy day money pot, is enough to cope with an increasingly dangerous and uncertain world.
Yet even without the rising threats from our enemies, Donald Trump’s trade tariff war may be enough to tip the world into a recession.
Likewise, Reeves mistakenly believes that spending a couple of billion quid more on defence is enough to protect our interests at home and abroad.
And she even thinks she can accept free tickets worth £600 to see a pop concert, at the same time as she cuts disability benefits and pensioners’ winter fuel payments, and no one will mind.
Mind you, this is a woman who didn’t know how long she’d worked at the Bank of England or even what job she did at HBOS, so is it really any wonder that she can’t face up to the facts in the job she does today?
Rachel Reeves needs to wave goodbye to her fantasy land of milk and honey and join the rest of us back here in the real world before it’s too late to save our economy — and her job.
JUST STOPPED, SO LET’S REJOICE
Julia wonders whether the real reason Just Stop Oil has stopped its ‘civil resistance’ is simply because it has run out of activists willing to go to prison for their crazy cause.[/caption]
JUST Stop Oil has announced it is hanging up the hi-vis jackets next month and ending its “civil resistance” campaign against fossil fuels.
Three cheers to that!
For three years, it has been carrying out criminal acts of harassment and disruption of ordinary people trying to go about their daily lives, all justified in the name of “saving the planet” while making absurd demands including ending all use of oil by 2030, a move that would plunge us back into medieval times.
Whether it’s blocking the M25, slow marching in the streets, throwing paint over Stonehenge or soup over a Van Gogh painting, JSO has been – along with their mates in Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain – a right royal pain in the backside.
Maybe it has run out of activists willing to go to prison for their crazy cause.
Or maybe the Jacintas and Quentins at JSO just got bored with their own tedious antics and would rather jet off on holiday to sit on a warm beach instead of the Tarmac of the M25.
I’m just happy that Just Stop Oil is ending its deluded eco-hypocritical nonsense and leaving the rest of us alone. Just Stop. That’ll do nicely.
IT is a simple matter of scientific fact that chocolate tastes better when it’s in the shape of an egg.
No one has managed to work out what’s behind this eggs-traordinary phenomenon but chomping on a chocolate egg is far more enjoyable than biting into a rectangular bar, even when we’re charged a lot more for the privilege.
But this year, egg-flation will be even worse thanks to a steep reduction in the global cocoa harvest.
Our chocolate treats have gone up in price by as much as 56 per cent while they have shrunk in size compared with last Easter, the consumer group Which? has discovered.
We already have Ofgem and Ofwat to regulate prices for essentials such as energy and water.
Is it time to set up the OfChoc regulator for our vital Easter egg supplies too?
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