I’m sad to have to write this, but it appears that our nation is currently being governed by a group of extreme right wingers whose only loyalty seems to be to themselves and those earning in excess of £150,000 a year and who seem to be in thrall to the Conservative European Reform Group.
Needless to say, almost everything they do is, I believe, contrary to the example and teaching of Jesus Christ whose words I try to follow in my own life.
Let’s start with today’s so called mini-budget; which isn’t so much mini as a wholesale sweeping change that serves solely to put more money in the pockets of the wealthy, leaving a few “crumbs from the table” for most of us and nothing at all for the very poorest in society.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, has announced that from 1st April 2023 the 45p tax bracket for those earning over £150,000 will be abolished, benefitting those who already have more income than the vast majority, yet he hasn’t raised the tax threshold at which people start paying income tax. It would actually have been unbelievable a few days ago that any Chancellor would do this. In effect he is a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to benefit the rich.
Kwarteng has also announced that the 1.25 rise in National Insurance contributions will be reversed from November. He has also announced a reduced in the basic rate of tax to 19p. This will, according to the BBC News website, benefit somebody earning around £20,000 to the tune of £167 per annum, or £3.21 a week. In contrast, somebody earning £100,000 will be better off by £1,470 per annum (£28 per week). Again, those already earning decent money are the winners.
Of course, with rising inflation this means that those earning average salaries will still be worse off. According to The Institute for Fiscal Studies median earners were expecting to see a 3% (£600) fall in real income this year.
This is not a “mini-budget” that will benefit the majority in this country. It’s aimed at benefitting those who do not need it, those who complain about greedy workers demanding realistic wage rises and decent working terms and conditions.
As a Methodist Christian social justice matters very much to me, and the mini-budget appears to be about as far from socially just as you can get!
Moving on, we have the government’s decision to lift the ban on fracking to increase our supply of natural gas. We are assured that fracking won’t resume without local consent, but Jacob Rees-Mogg, the living embodiment of Victorian values, won’t tell us how the government are defining local consent. When our world is in the midst of a devastating climate crisis that is already leading to droughts, forest fires, flooding, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather events, what sane individual would suggest an increase in the extraction and use of the fossil fuels that are causing this unequaled global warming? Instead of encouraging the use of fossil fuels the government should be investing in eco-friendly energy technology and production.
Talking of energy, the governments solution to the rising gas and electricity bills is to cap them at a rate still unaffordable to the poorest, and to pay for it by adding the cost to energy bills in the future, maintains the obscene profits of energy producers. How about a statutory limit on energy company profits, or better still a windfall tax to pay for the extra cost of energy? How about nationalising electricity and gas and providing them at cost price? Of course, the Tories will never do this, not particularly through political conviction but because it’s their wealthy and privileged friends and donors who benefit from those high profits. Again, the wealthy a privileged are out above the vast majority of the UK population l
It seems that this government doesn’t care about most of us on this country, about our needs and aspirations, about families choosing between eating or hearing their homes and sometimes being able to afford neither. All they seem to be bothered about it helping their rich friends hang onto and increase their wealth. The Apostle Paul wrote that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and it seems that this government’s love of money is at the root of obscene social injustice and avoidable human suffering and misery.
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