I’ve held my tongue so far on the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas spectacle of the Conservative Leadership selection; think bags of truth-altering drugs and disjoint snarling faces. Ralph Steadman could paint it. There’s a guy who made a fortune in the finance business and a woman on a PR trip. The guy wasn’t …
Tag archives: Saint Rishi Sunak
UK Benefits – Sunak Says Computer Says No
In an interview with Bloomberg TV last week Saint Rishi Sunak, the now not-so-shining UK Chancellor (Minister of Finance), said that he couldn’t increase welfare spending to help with the inflation-fuelled cost-of-living crisis because the ancient computer systems won’t let him. A couple of points here: Who’s been in charge of these systems for the …
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Amateur Chancellor
Shiny Rishi seems to have lost some of his buff this week. That your wife as a foreign national holds ‘non-dom’ status and can pay some tax elsewhere is perfectly legal. There’s no laws against having a US green card while in UK office. All in all these show modern international cosmopolitanism refreshingly at odds …
Parable of the Flood
I’ve been thinking of this lately. You know it from the West Wing: man hears news the town will flood – “God will save me”. Waters rise, someone rows past in a boat and offers help – “No thank you, God will save me”. House is flooded, helicopter drops a ladder to him on the …
What To Do With The Free Money
Dear Rishi, Long time no hear, how are you? And the wife and kids? I have a question. I read this morning that our friends in the International Monetary Fund, the world’s overdraft bank, have created $650 billion in SDRs (you remember special drawing rights, that made-up currency they use that works as real money). …
Universal Credit Top Up To Go – Who eats bread and who eats cake?
The UK is miserly with social security. There’s a logic that this makes people look for work, which makes them better off. We won’t go into that, but Saint Rishi added £20 per week to the dole (Universal Credit) when Covid landed, which is an admission that it’s not enough to live on. £20 a …
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Fourth of July All Over Again?
Most of those likely to die are vaccinated, so it doesn’t matter if everyone else catches Covid, right? Mmm not quite, for three reasons. There’s many who can’t vaccinate. With few infected they’re probably safe, but when there’s lots of it about they’re at big risk. Some of them are refusers and we mightn’t feel …
UK Government’s 10% Commitment to Education
Yesterday Sir Kevan Collins quit his role as Bloke in Charge of Fixing Education Post-Covid. He was disgruntled at the mere £1.4 billion the government proposed to spend on resolving all education problems caused by the pandemic. He himself had done a good proposal, and reckoned the cost to be £15 billion. I don’t see …
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Budget Bits
Saint Rishi’s budget mostly seemed sensible enough. A Hindu’s very Augustinian approach: “Grant us tax to pay this monstrous debt, but not yet”. There’ll be quibbles: taking away the paltry £20 surplus to our stingy dole at precisely when unemployment is expected to be worst is mean, but probably stupid rather than pernicious. His numbers …
Do They Know It’s 0.2% At All?
Saint Rishi’s clawing back of a promised international development spend with a 60% funding withdrawl to what the UN is calling “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world” is callous in the extreme. Apparently Honest Boris’s clique have killed enough at home, time to move on. 400,000 children are an easy target. It’s OK. They’re …