Coffee Space 
I have found it very difficult to write about politics in recent days. There is so much to express, and far little time to do it in, and costs too much stress to think about for long periods of time. There is nothing short of extreme exhaustion just thinking about what our latest Labour government are doing to us.
Don’t get me wrong, Labour are just the straw that broke the camels back, and Labour were voted in largely as a protest vote because of the failures of the previous Conservative governments. The people wanted right-wing policies, but got watered down left-wing policies instead. The Conservative party spend far too long worrying about their ideological enemies such as Hope Not Hate and Stone Wall think of them, a far-left politically captured NGO funded by the fucking Conservative party. Whilst worrying about the far-right, climate change, LGBT, and any other left-wing agenda thrown at them, they dropped the ball entirely on everything else.
Every Conservative leader for the last 20 years has campaigned on lowering immigration, and yet it has done nothing but increase. Every Conservative leader has campaigned on getting the UK’s spiralling debt under control, and yet it has done nothing but increase. I have heard Dominic Cummings suggest that the largest issue is the civil service (i.e. permanent state), and whilst I agree, the Conservatives are also internally fractured. They had the majority control to shape the law as they saw fit, and yet we got nothing but excuses the entire time.
All this to day - I am not in love with the Conservative party. In this context, Labour were voted in with a majority as the King’s government, and my god it has been an almighty cluster fuck.
PIP, i.e. Personal Independence Payment, is a payment to allow people with various disabilities to aid in their ability to carry out their lives effectively. If you are wheelchair bound, it may mean having money to get a specialised vehicle, for example. Sounds pretty good on the surface,
That is until you note a few facts. It is delivered irrespective of income or any other benefits received. The only real checking that a personal is allowed to receive PIP is a form and a phone call, after which points are awarded. If you phone up citizens advice, they will literally help you fill out the forms and tell you what to write to be successful in your application.
What resulted was enormous numbers of people in the UK receiving PIP, with over 1000 applications per day. The Labour government, desperate to pay for a long list of spending and borrowing, wanted to make cuts, because:
Spending is rising from £52bn last year and, without reform, is forecast to reach £66bn by 2029–30.
But the Labour MPs are brimmed with dimwitted activists, with zero compromise. To get the bill to pass and prevent humiliation this early into the Labour government, the guts were ripped out of the bill. Rather than saving an estimated £5bn, it is now expected to cost an extra £100mn to the taxpayer. Only the Labour government can set out to save money and actually end up costing more.
So Rachel Reeves, the girl boss in charge of the Country’s credit card, need to raise funds from elsewhere to pay for their spending. She is known to be playing with the idea to start screwing with cash ISAs, which has allowed savers to earn interest on their savings that push back against inflation, so long as it is below £20k. The best part is that the earnings are tax free. £20k these days is about 6 months out of work, which is ideally how much every person has in easily accessible cash.
Rachel from accounts learned that there is about £300bn tied up in these cash ISAs, and her puppeteers have decided that this money is better pushed into a stocks and shares ISA, particularly invested into UK companies. The idea is that investment into UK companies encourages economic growth, increases company tax, saves the government having to invest into businesses themselves. The problem is that stocks and shares are more risky, have lower returns and are at great risk from dumb government policy changes. Holders are also likely to need to hold on for longer to realise any positive return.
It was not that long ago that the Labour government punished businesses by increasing the national insurance tax, which has been particularly damaging to smaller businesses with lower margins. I have seen five local businesses be killed off so far by this change, and I know of a few more small businesses on their knees. Small businesses are a requirement to produce larger businesses, they carry more risk but have the greatest reward.
The UK has consistently failed to properly invest into smaller businesses. UKRI is one of the few internal government backed investment opportunities, which is highly competitive. In order to get funding, you not only need to be extremely innovative, you also need to offer a massive return on investment (without consideration of risk) and you must also meet a series of other objectives, such as DEI, climate change, etc. The result are proposals that over promise, are high risk and try to achieve massive returns in dead areas of growth.
If a company is lucky enough to develop a product using UKRI funding, they then need further funding to produce their product. The problem is that UK investors only want to invest when a company has clients and is making sales, so there is an enormous funding gap. In the rare opportunity that a UK company can find investment, it is from the likes of foreign US investors. They either build a large company of absorb the IP. UK investors are left to pick out whatever is left.
Recently UKRI stopped providing the SMART grant due to the funding being put towards the EU’s Horizon project. They do offer start-up investment for small businesses, but it is far smaller amounts and there is a minimum number of 5 employees required.
Of course small businesses are unlikely to be publicly trading, and therefore have no stocks. When Rachel Thieves pushes the cash ISAs into stocks ISAs, small businesses will receive precisely 0% of that.
And there you have it, the death of UK growth. Savers will be forced to invest into near maximally grown large publicly traded companies, whilst small businesses are left to die. Savers will likely not make money, or even lose money in low growth businesses, and look for other investments such as government bonds. I wouldn’t be trusting those guilts, because the only way they can currently pay them off is to borrow more - and the appetite for them is not great in an increasingly concerned market.
More people will become unemployed, more people will be incentivised to apply for PIP to bump up the social credits, less people will pay into large financial burdens such as the NHS and pensions. To help us with our death spiral we have illegal (and legal) migrants claiming asylum in the UK and jumping onto the social system, at best doing jobs whilst avoiding tax but still using the public services.
The Labour government is a dead duck, they cannot pass any bill that cuts back any spending, and can only pass bills that increase spending. The Labour government should do the right thing and call a general election. Instead, they will cling to power for another 4 years whilst dragging us down with the sinking ship, all the while blaming everybody but themselves.
The worst part is seeing this and not being able to do anything about it.