We’re publishing another guest post by Charlotte Niemiec, a freelance journalist. This one is about the unseemly haste with which the Government raised National Insurance earlier this week and the flimsy rationale for doing so. How can the Government ask us to fund a financial shortfall in the NHS when it has wasted so many billions of taxpayers’ money through its mismanagement of the pandemic?
Earlier this week, the U.K. Government voted to increase national insurance contributions by 1.25% from April 2022 – a “fair and reasonable” amount that will raise £12 billion a year in extra funding for the health and social care sector, according to PM Boris Johnson. It is hardly unexpected.
I suspect many of us would willingly contribute what we could to the public purse in the face of a serious humanitarian crisis. Most stoically accept year-on-year rises that reflect inflation and population growth, especially when that money is invested in services we or those we love use now or will one day. We’re told the hike is a regrettable consequence of an unforeseen pandemic that has served to reveal cracks in the system, most notably a lack of resources in our ‘world-beating’ NHS. This should sound perfectly reasonable.
Why then, if Twitter is anything to judge by, do so many people on both sides of the political divide feel totally shafted? Perhaps it’s because we don’t have bottomless pockets and altruism only goes so far when we see our money being wasted. Forcing us to pay more to deal with a backlog that is a direct result of the government’s own poor decision-making feels like something of a cheek. The NHS needs extra funds primarily because it chose multiple, short-term, ineffective lockdown policies instead of strategies that safeguarded public health, the NHS and the economy in the long-term. Alternatives, such as the Great Barrington Declaration or the Swedish model, have always been available, but never considered.
We are to pay – again! – for the Government’s bungling ineptitude over the last 18 months, for the public funds it washed down the sink, enriching themselves and their friends while the rest of us feared for our jobs. The Government purchased PPE to the tune of £18 billion, much of which turned out to be unusable. Next it coughed up – by some estimates – £530 million for the temporary ‘Nightingale’ hospitals it never used because it hadn’t realised the NHS didn’t have the manpower to staff them. (They did, however, inspire arguably the most Orwellian image of the pandemic so far, although this may not be a real photograph.) Its next brainchild was the £22 billion barely-fit-for-purpose ‘test and trace’ system, which ‘pinged’ those who hadn’t left their homes for weeks while the phones of those in direct contact with infected individuals stayed silent. The PPE scandal and test and trace disaster together cost around £40 billion. It will take more than three years to claw this back under the new tax rate.
We can add to the tally the £12 billion spent on the first two doses of ‘vaccines’ with results that seem to be, at best, disappointing. In the final week of August last year, England saw 46 deaths attributed to Covid, with no vaccine available. In the same week this year, that figure is 391, with a vaccine. What has been achieved? The Government will now spend more money on vaccines that don’t appear to be very effective to jab those who are not at risk from the disease and reinject those whose six-month vaccine loyalty card is running out. The ongoing plan seems to be to repeat this strategy, ad nauseam, with an ever-mounting bill. Are we getting our money’s worth?
How will these extra funds be spent? Maybe on more ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ managers imploring white people to “be uncomfortable” in return for £50K salaries, while 13 million people wait for medical treatment. Perhaps it will be spent training and recruiting the estimated 190,000 new NHS workers we’ll need if the existing, fully-qualified-but-unvaccinated ones are forced to leave their jobs in the wake of the Government’s anticipated ‘No Jab, No Job’ policy. It could also be spent on the additional NHS workers we’ll need because of the shortfall we started with in the first place. The Government could scrap – or at the very least, defer – the ‘No Jab, No Job’ policy. But it probably won’t. Instead, it will choose to throw good money after bad.
Some of this cash, albeit allocated in name to the healthcare sector, could even be spent on the insidious ‘vaccine passports’ – the biggest threat to our civil liberties since the war, to go along with the biggest tax hike since the war – even though they have no medical justification.
Once again, those who have the least will lose the most. The higher tax will penalise the young, the working class and ethnic minorities, those who made the largest sacrifices to ‘protect’ their wealthier elders. They were the frontline workers, delivery drivers, rubbish collectors, shelf stackers. Many did not have the luxury of furlough but worked on regardless of any risk Covid posed them. Their reward is to be worse off – the Government will take from the poor and give to the rich.
And the rise coincides with a record 12% hike in energy prices that may very well see the elderly and vulnerable we sought to protect die of cold this winter. This, combined with ill-thought-through ‘net-zero’ schemes designed to make the PM look good on the international stage at COP26 in November – to ‘Build Back Better!’ – will see us only building backwards.
But most disturbing isn’t that the Conservative party has broken its manifesto commitments, or that hiking taxes goes against Tory principles (to such an extent that many in the tax-loving Labour party balked at endorsing the idea) or even that so few Tories voted against the rise. No – it’s that this vote took place with only 24 hours’ notice, under threat of a reshuffle. It is yet another example of the many changes Boris and his closest cronies have pushed through without proper scrutiny. In June, the Government even had the gall to send press releases to the papers outlining plans for the Covid roadmap before it told fellow MPs what information they contained. An apoplectic Speaker Hoyle found it “totally unacceptable that, once again, once again, we see Downing Street running roughshod over members of Parliament”. Hear, hear, Hoyle.
Contempt for the House is one thing, but the Government now looks set to disregard the advice of its own medical advisors and proceed with vaccinating 12-15 year-olds. In doing so, it can no longer be said to be “following the Science”. It is on a dangerous footing, climbing the first few rungs of a totalitarian ladder.
Who will guard the guards? We, the people, must protest, protest, protest this Government’s hubris before we wake to find our wallets empty, our rights permanently eroded and our liberties held hostage.
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Socialists, you have nothing to complain about.
Well the right has even less than nothing, since they brought this on us.
If you think that any party holding seats in the UK parliament right now is “the right”, you must have been living under a rock for the past 30 years. The Tories are centre-left at best.
How silly. You need to join Chris Whitty in a world of distorting mirrors.
Just because you live in a world of bug-eyed distortion with this sort of solipsistic abuse of language and thought, using your own dictionary, the world goes on regardless.
It’s not me in retreat from reality and peeping out from under a rock. You remind me so much of the Tooting Left in your navel-gazing.
Well that’s three self-confessed candidates for the Chris Whitty ga-ga prize for Ayan Rand arse voles
Strange down voting going on here. Not enough of us would care that much.
Net three.
You’re right, the Tories have essentially turned fascist. The state and various corporate players have become 1. We’ve socialised costs that used to be down to individuals; furlough, social care, feeding kids, now the green agenda.
Modern monetary theory will now see the state take over an increasing level of the prior role of the individual as taxes are ratcheted ever upwards.
Look at Italy or Nazi Germany, replace their armed forces with the NHS & that’s where we are.
This doesn’t end well.
Whilst I definitely agree with you that the Tories have turned fascist, isn’t it strange how that happened, eh? Increasing taxation and removal of individual rights are traditionally associated with the left. So the Tories have went so far to the left that they ended up fascist on the right? Strange, isn’t it?
Just further proof that fascists and socialists are two sides of the same coin.
The Fascists were former Communists. If only the Tories really were promoting distributism, like good old Chesterton…
This was never going to end well, it’s been decades in the making.
Are you now giving us monologues on self reflection?
It’s quite simple. You made the assertion that it’s the right that brought this on us. Since there is no right in British politics, that proves you wrong outright. Then add onto that that the right is usually for individual freedom and responsibility and for lower taxation, then I can hardly see how the right is to blame for authoritarian mandates and taxation hikes.
You are delusional.
I’m afraid it’s you who are delusional in terms of defining an admittedly flawed one-dimensional political description with your own eccentric (in the literal sense) wish-fulfilment nonsense.
You’re on the wrong side of history and language. In simple terms – talking solipsistic bollocks with no reference to reality. Your ‘arguments’ are purely circular, and disappear up their own arse in the world of logical discourse.
Don’t mistake – my response isn’t essentially political – it’s a recognition of the same raddled and disconnected thinking that (un)informs Covid compliance and the ramblings of Tooting Trots.
In summary – you’re just talking utter self-indulgent, playground bollocks when there are real political issues at stake outside your sheltered hidey-hole of navel-gazing nonsense.
This crisis deserves better than the baby talk of knee-jerk politics.
So many words in order to say nothing at all… Do you have anything other than meaningless ramblings designed to sound smart and nothing more?
Oh dear. You’ve lost it – even given a chance of coherence.
Ah well. Point confirmed – bollocks up against the buffers.
Meanwhile – the 5th Test is abandoned for just as specious reasons. Far more serious than Randy Ramblings.
In any case, who cares if one calls it right wing or left wing, it’s still human rights abuses by all the main parties. On an industrial scale. And that is my primary concern right now (though credit where due to the Lib Dems for at least opposing “vaxports”)..
Exactly. Let’s not fall out over what or who is left or right or centre. Who cares! We must stick together and not get caught up in the party ideology nonsense. It is just another distraction. We are on this site due to the common causes of freedom and truth. If we start bickering amongst each other, we have already lost.
I agree wholeheartedly; I don’t think the newest dictator on this planet cares a flying fuck about the political nomenclature assigned by the masses.
The leaked Whitty soon to be made announcement that Johnson has ordered “vaccine” roll out to children 12+ – and where parents may be sidelined in a blatant state sponsored theft of the inmate responsibilities parents have is a game changer for me if I needed one.
RickH – Who is “left”, “right” or any other political leaning is absolutely FUCKING IRRELEVANT. May I suggest that we who know that what we are told about all aspects oh SARS COV 2 from GoF research in the early 1990’s, through the blatantly fraudulent mass testing regime invented by Cormen/Drosten to the miraculous invention of a mRNA “vaccine” some aspects of which were patented BEFORE SARS COV2 was unleashed on this planet, need to have the courage to direct non sceptics to the mass of information that trounces what Johnson and co have perpetrated on the UK and endorsed the shite Ferguson modelling shit show to the rest of the world. The more people read and see what we sceptics have done the better the chance that there will be mass civil disobedience to force Johnson out even if that doesn’t happen until, the next election – 10 more years of Bozo will finish the UK.
Digitally enabled internecine squabbles aint going to help.
The Tories like Labour are out and out fascists. Both parties are clearly pursuing and/or supporting the globalist depopulation agendas. Nothing else matters that much.
Yes, I agree with that. What I am trying to get people to understand is the false dichotomy that is the left-right axis. I mean, you just said that a self avowed leftist party like Labour, one that is open about its socialist tendencies, can easily be recognized as far right fascist. So the question arises: how did a far left party instantly jump on the far right if the far right is supposed to be the polar opposite of the far left?
The answer is, at least to me, simple: far left, far right, fascism, communism, they’re all two sides of the same authoritarian coin. The only axis that matters is authoritarianism vs freedom.
Reminds me of the person who said that the Labour party is like the Church of England – neither are socialist officially, but both attract some socialists.
Point to who is on the right now a days that is in power. I’ll then show you a wolf in sheep’s clothing
If you want to see how bad it can get just look at Australia. The place is a giant prison camp – with authoritarian police now restricting alcohol purchases.
Silly interviewers but at least the answers are getting aired!
Well reasoned, obvious, common sense answers – we need to see more from Reform in the mainstream (if they allow it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bILrmrR2cGI
First few rungs of the totalitarian ladder? A tad understated I would say, but good article otherwise.
I think the wasted resources may be understated. But who can keep count?
But this isn’t :
” …the Government’s bungling ineptitude over the last 18 months”
That’s far too kind. It’s total, lying recklessness in pursuit of malignant objectives.
I’m afraid ‘apoplectic’ Hoyle hasn’t actually been that great at calling these goons – effectively terrorists – to account. Like him or loathe him, his predecessor did a better job on that score.
I do wonder where Mr Young gets the wealthier elders from, my £120 weekly along with my £72 employers pension does not let me have a great amount to spare if my shoes need replacing etc. I do own a small cottage out in the country which is mortgage free due to me paying all my working life. But, google owner! I am not.
Toby Young you are a dozy git
“I suspect many of us would willingly contribute what we could to the public purse in the face of a serious humanitarian crisis. “
Not me. They’ve pissed hundreds of billions of our money up the wall for their own power, greed and vanity.
Exactly. In Germany, the minister pissed 7 billion Euro for useless masks alone. And now they are planning to cut wages for the quarantined unvaccinated – all of which have amounted to “only” half a billion Euro so far. Let the fuckers who burned and also in part embezzled all public money cover the gaps they caused, and if they cannot (of course), throw them in prison for justice.
I read an interesting thing today about that other perpetually lying and hated Prime Minister Blair. When he raised National Insurance by significiantly less than the incumbent liar he commissioned a report to show exactly what effect it would have and where it would be spent. So where is Johnsons report? Presumably in the same folder as the report into the effectiveness of lockdowns. I have come to the point where I actually hate Johnson more than Blair which I never thought would be possible. The only other person I have ever hated in my life died horribly from Cancer I am glad to say.
That is a close call – one a serial war criminal who assisted the outing of Dr David Kelly along side Alistair Josef Goebels-Campbell, and then enriched himself by brown nosing some of the worst dictators in Europe, near and Middle East, the other who shagged an eco warrior-in-the box (no pun , sorry) and now cannot put her back in the box and spouts the “CO2 is a pollutant” bollox she has injected him with in a Pavlovian Canine manner.
You have to remember that Johnson and his dad are into eugenics long with Bill Gates and his dad. They are hoping the jab will see them off sooner than later. Social care and pensions is a huge drain on the government especially when they have more important things to spend it on like PPE, fake tests and experimental gene therapy…
The £20 billion for the track and trace system still beggars belief. I mean £20 billion! What in earth did they spend it on? It’s the biggest waste of public money I know of and for what? Some software? Call centres? Dodo Harding’s salary, who should be extinct due to her history of fuck-ups? It’s disgraceful. And what is perhaps more disgraceful is the total lack of spine by the jellyfish Starmer in not slaughtering Johnson at the dispatch box at every PMQs. We are governed by liars and fools who think we are all idiots and that because so many clapped for the NHS that they’ll happily shell out more dosh for them too. It is time to say ‘no more!’ No more nonsense, Johnson. You’ve had your time, you were found lacking in just about every sense. A disgraceful excuse for a man. All of the MPs in fact except those that push back and ask questions and do what MPs are paid to do.
My guess is that most of the money has gone into a slush fund. A lot of brown envelopes need filling.
guess who is in charge of the Covid 19 enquiry…..that will be a “wide ranging, unfettered Judge led enquiry to tell me what I got right and where lesson are to be learned, confirm the nature and content of the settled science underpinning the strategy I adopted and will not waste time on the negative attitudes and opinions of Covid and vaccine deniers. to encourage people to contribute , no criminal charges will ensue for all those who give testimony to the enquiry “
Excellent article.
An Interesting article, so care will be free but not accommodation or food which is the most asset draining part of becoming infirm, does free ‘care’ mean being looked after in shifts while in your own home or a live-in carer?
‘I suspect many of us would willingly contribute what we could to the public purse in the face of a serious humanitarian crisis. Most stoically accept year-on-year rises that reflect inflation and population growth, especially when that money is invested in services we or those we love use now or will one day.‘
Am I the only one who suspects this woman is both out of touch and not too bright?
What a brilliant article and so true. Send to everyone you know. I am sending it to Simon Jupp, MP for East Devon. He appears to be on “our” side.