Isn’t it awful that in order for a country like the United Kingdom, the 7th richest nation on Earth, to get our tax burden down from a 70 year high we have to rely on the on a bloke who has no interest in out-of-the-box thinking as he knows the good people of Farnham are, in any event, going to throw him out in November. In fact, Jeremy Hunt is so defeated by his job, that in a bizarre interview this week he said he was embracing the Gordon Brown mantra of "prudence’’ as his watchword.
Have I heard right? A Tory Chancellor giving a like to a Socialist who spent his entire career working out ways of screwing the middle classes to hand the money to the subsidised classes.
The only time I had a proper conversation with Hunt was when he was Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and either he, or his dim advisers, came up with the quite potty idea of giving out licences for local television.
I knew something of this market as I had been managing director of Live TV which had tried and failed to make local work. Mind you we did create Topless Darts and the Weather in Norwegian so it wasn’t a wasted venture!
Anyway I told him not to bother. There was no advertising money to support local TV and regrettably nobody cared enough about local news to watch it, although as Facebook networks have proved they will read about it.
My view to Hunt and his advisers was there was no audience and no cash. You would have thought they were two pretty good reasons not to take the idea forward.
But the idiots at DCMS thought we would follow Atlanta or Chicago where, at the time, there were healthy ratings and healthy advertising. Not so true today mind you but the reality is that the US is five times our size and hasn’t got the BBC taking half of the free-to-air market.
Hunt took no notice of my advice and local TV has been a disaster for anybody interested in local news (the output was simply dreadful) and the investors, all of whom have been wiped out.
So, as you can see, I am no fan of Hunt. Personally, I would like him to scrap inheritance tax and lift stamp duty on houses to £2million but with his advisers whispering in his ear ‘’don’t do a Truss’’ there will be nothing bold.
There will be a lot of technical stuff but very little of a popular, easy-to-understand nature. Uniquely that will lead to the Tories falling further back in the polls and Reform heading towards the magical 20%.
And that’s without Nigel Farage showing his hand. The minute Rishi announces the General Election date he will take over the reigns at Reform.
His charisma and intelligence will add another 4-6%, all of which will come off the Tories.Mind you with a Tory Chancellor identifying with a Labour Chancellor the faster they are thrown out the better.
An Islamic Party in the House of Commons? It’s just a matter of time…
I am grateful to the Spectator for doing the legwork showing the collapse in births across the UK, but holding up pretty well in Muslim communities.
In 2022 the fertility rate for England and Wales fell to 1.49 and we need a replacement rate of 2.1.So where is it highest and lowest?
Lowest
City of London: 0.63
Cambridge: 1.0
Brighton and Hove: 1.06
Westminster: 1.02
Highest
Barking and Dagenham: 1.98
Luton: 1.96
Oldham: 1.94
Slough: 1.92
Gravesham: 1.9
The figures were complied by the ONS. The Muslim population is currently about 4million and with this baby boom, overstaying students, illegal migrants and those with legitimate visas choosing to remain, you can see that it’s not just a scare story that Parliament could have a significant political party of followers of Islam within the next decade.
I can see nothing but growing divisions in society.
Britain’s rip-off railways
The increase of 4.9% in rail fares is a shocker.
I commute at least four times a week on South Western Railway. Invariably the trains are either cancelled, delayed or the journey takes much longer than advertised and a guard (who we don’t need) explains they are sorry but…
As I write you can’t get from Waterloo to Woking (or from Woking to Waterloo) because of a problem on the line and it will last all day.Is it the management? Is it the unions? Why don’t other Western nations face these issues?
It’s clear they want our money. What they don’t want is us.
