As promised my ponderings on the Budget by the first ever woman UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, just in case you missed that information. Keir and Rachel were very proud of that fact, though I thought he was unsure what a woman or even a working person are. I was expecting it to be a bit of a Liz Truss style car crash, but was surprised on a few points, though her opening speech was so boring after pointing out, again, it was to put in place foundations after 14 years of the Conservatives, there was even a murmur when she said about her high ranking banking job she had held before becoming an MP.
The big surprise for me was not raising duty on petrol or diesel and dropping the price of a pint by 1p. Though, as just a shopkeeper, I do speak to a great many small business owners who have a medium number of staff and they feel hard done by. As the amount a worker can earn before the employer has to start paying National Insurance has risen, most I know, shop keepers, hospitality, etc, have staff who easily fall into this higher bracket add to that the Minimum Wage rise too, means that the money paid out for, say ten to twenty staff, has gone up a great deal, this does not mean that turnover will increase, but with ever rising, uncapped, energy costs, mainly for hospitality, the only options are to increase prices, impacting inflation, or reducing hours or numbers of staff, increasing the workload on the remaining staff.
Many I have spoken too have already cut costs as much as possible after the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, I am worried that this might backfire on what Labour are claiming they are trying to do. I have piped up about business rates before and they are going to be looked at in two years’ time, meanwhile remain with a 40% reduction for retail, hospitality and leisure, which is welcome, it was the stress of this tax that sent me in a dark place, a motorway bridge on the M6 at 3AM. There are many other points that are good and bad, which is normal, but the farmers seem to be the most upset, though as I know no farmers I will let them sort that out.
Meanwhile in the blue corner, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick fought out the Conservative leadership contest, how many is that now? Kemi Badenoch won, by an ok margin but I am interested to see how she squares up to Keir at PMQs, she is more than a little outspoken and may well raise a few eyebrows in the chamber, but as I always say if you want a strong government, you need a strong opposition and I am convinced that Kemi will keep Labour on their toes.
Meanwhile in Wigan there are more contractors knocking around than students from the college, there are definite signs of the beginnings of the beginning of the New Market Hall being started, more positive noises from the Civic Centre and the old Debenhams has the contractors for the conversion to Stack, street food and live entertainment venue. It does look like in 2025 Wigan will be great again.