UK 2024 Budget – for those interested – highlights from a Sky News article with comments

Labour’s first budget in over a decade has been announced.

Here’s a couple of key points:

• All government departments will have to reduce their budgets by 2% next year. This will be achieved by "using technology more effectively and joining up services across government".

A 2% cut in costs by using technology – no doubt spending 5% extra to get it!

• The OBR expects public sector net borrowing to be £105.6bn in 2025-26, £88.5bn in 2026-27, £72.2bn in 2027-28, £71.9bn in 2028-29 and £70.6bn in 2029-30.

Keep an eye on those numbers (a quarter trillion of borrowing in the next three years – 400 billion over 5 years) and compare it with this little nugget:

• Public finances will be in surplus, rather than in deficit, by the 2027-2028 financial year. The government claims this means reaching stability two years earlier than planned.

Wtf??? How is a borrowing of 70 billion pounds in 2027/28 consistent with a fiscal surplus????

My guesstimate is that the UK will be seeing deficits of a 100 billion a year by then.

Notice there is no direct accounting of the costs of putting up illegal immigrants in hotels the length and breadth of the country? I hazard a guess ay a million of these “welfare migrants” who are in private accommodation. Hotels that would usually be maybe 60% full of paying customers, this time of year, are now devoid of those and have been replaced by 100% occupancy with taxpayer funded welfare migrants.

Notice there is no reference to the tens of billions of pounds for “net zero” construction and infrastructure! Just an increase in “windfall” (should call it “oilfall” or “gasfall”!!). All those offshore wind turbines that slaughter sea life and those onshore wind turbines and solar panel plantations that render land unusable and prevent FOOD being grown are ignored. That should make Ed Milliband happy – his dirty secrets are all “under the table”.

No reference to the sequestration of assets from UK pension funds to put ito a UK wealth fund - run by financial morons with no understanding of risks. returs costs - et aloe the time value of money and opportunity costs!

Notice also there is no reference to compensation for the vaxx killed and injured. These claims could easily exceed a 100 billion pounds over the next 4 years (500,000 people damaged costing an average of 1,000 pounds a week for care).

In short - 100’s of billions of pounds - if not trillions over five years - of spending is not in the budget

Here’s some other selected highlights from the Sky News piece here – with a few of my comments below the bullet points.

Budget 2024: The main announcements in Chancellor Rachel Reeves's speech | Politics News | Sky News

• The budget will raise taxes by £40bn.

• National insurance (NI) contributions for employers (not employees) will increase by 1.2 percentage points to 15% from April 2025.

• The lower rate of capital gains tax (CGT) on the sale of assets will increase from 10% to 18%. The higher rate will go from 18% to 24%. CGT on the sale of residential property will also increase from 18% to 24%.

So that’s the tax part of the usual tax and spend policies of the socialists/Marxists now in charge. Then there’s this:

• The minimum wage will rise by 6.7% to £12.21 an hour for people aged 21 and over. This is the equivalent of £1,400 a year for a full-time worker. Workers aged 18 to 20 will see their minimum wage increase by 16.3% to £10 an hour.

No doubt, employers will be thrilled with having to pay 24,000 a year in wages for no increase in sales – a straight cut to profitability unless it is made up for in inflationary price increases. Either that or go on welfare.

• The household support fund will receive £1bn to help those in financial hardship with the cost of essentials.

Make of that what you will, I am sure that illegal immigrants will also qualify.

But wait, there’s some good news for businesses!

• An increase in employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,000 will mean 65,000 businesses won't pay any national insurance at all next year. It will also mean more than a million businesses will pay the same or less than they did previously.

Businesses will have to work that one out with the increase in the minimum wage! Nothing in life – with government bureaucracy involved – is ever simple as the next point illustrates:

• Business rates relief will fall from the current 75% down to 45% for retail, leisure, and hospitality businesses.

I wonder what the justification for this might be. From Brave AI “UK Business Rates Relief is a government initiative aimed at providing financial support to small businesses in England. It reduces business rates for eligible properties, giving a much-needed boost to the finances of small-business owners.” The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!

Now comes the big-ticket spending items:

• The day-to-day NHS budget will increase by £22.6bn. There will also be a further £3.1bn investment in its capital budget for facilities and equipment.

• This will facilitate 40,000 extra hospital appointments and procedures every week and will include £1.5bn for new hospital beds.

The spending o the HS has increased from 50 billion pounds in 2000 to over 200 billion – whilst the population has increased by just 15% (thanks big pharma???).

On to housing – recall that the manifesto promise was to build houses at more than double the 200,000 annual rate of building with an extra 300,000 houses a year (to house all the illegal immigrants?!?) – an extra 1.5 million homes over the 5-year Parliamentary term. These homes will, of course, be green and will cost an average of around 400,000 each, No sign of that promise in the budget!

• An investment of £5bn in housing, which will increase the affordable homes programme to a budget of £3.1bn.

At an average price per home of, say, 250,000 pounds that works out at 20,000 homes – a far cry from 300,000 – which means that the house building plans have either been shelved as stupid, or the plans are being hidden.

Permit me a little personal space with the usual rise in tobacco tax – as instructed by the UN FCTC.

• The tax on tobacco will rise at the rate of inflation plus an additional 2%. There will also be an extra 10% on rolling tobacco.

Pity there is not a tax on injections that kill and maim, and maybe “shed” on people, right?

Not a major point, but an observation:

• Some 500 old state schools that are not fit for purpose will be rebuilt at a total cost of £1.4bn

So, a school costs an average of 2.8 million pounds?

• Air passenger duty on private jets will rise by 50%, which is the equivalent of £450 per passenger.

John Kerry will not be pleased! Does this apply to Air Force One?

• The energy profits levy on oil and gas companies will increase to 38% until March 2030.

Yeah, must have a favourable comparison with the useless and expensive “renewables electricity costs, right? “Look how expensive we just made oil and gas?” • The annual defence budget will fall below the pledged target of 2.5% of GDP next year - with an increase of £2.9bn.

• There will be a commitment of £3bn a year for Ukraine for "as long as it takes" to end the war there.”

Does that mean defence spending goes up the sum of 2.9 + 3 billion a year?

Onwards!!

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