Who should pay the tax

Subject: Who should pay the tax

The news paper are full of stories of the shortages, HGV drivers, nurses and doctors, fruit pickers and the lik
e. These same newspapers now agaste at these shortages were the same newspapers who wilfully denied it would happen when we left Europe and the pool of labour it provided. The lull in observing those consequences, the blatant mistruths of reporting “we told you so” when things seemed to be continuing as before whilst ignoring the fact that regulations hadn’t kicked in during the interim between signing and implementation. Now as the shutters come down on our own producers selling into Europe, European producers are doing a roaring trade because the much vaunted  alternative supplies from other countries simply hasn't materialised.

As the supply chains fail and the supermarket shelves empty, will the empty words of Boris and  his coatery be recalled and more importantly, will they pay any meangful price for misleading us.

The Tory party is currently working itself up into a lather as NI taxation is proposed to rise to pay for the huge dislocation of the NHS and the enormous backlog the pandemic has caused on the normal business of hospitals which has only added to the realisation of the perilous state of our Social Care.  It appears Tory back benchers are more dismayed at a broken election promise, not to raise taxes than the need to repair the financial roof.. When do manifesto promises not get broken but the thought of tax rises fills them with dread. It’s not as if increasing NH Insurance will hit the retiree, retired people don't pay NI  but the people it will effect are the low paid who do pay NI, which as a percentage of earning, is much much higher than a person earning 70.000 a year. Progressive taxation, taxing the dividends of the wealthy as well as the undisclosed earnings of the Tech Companies seems beyond HMRC. But the Tory party, having become something of a hybrid winning so many Labour seats at the last election,  Boris needs to keep these voters to re-elect those seats in his promised to "level up" the economy and invest in the North.

Our economy is limping and with so many imponderables such as the effect of Brexit, and now the pandemic it's hard to see, in a world where Covid has laid waste to the delicate balance of economic self sufficiency where the economic upturn will come.

Of course we could go back to our wartime indifference over the lack of things and introduced the ration book again and imposed restraint on our purchases. We have been conditioned to expect out of season produce on our shelves and the constant competition between the supermarkets have held prices down to the detriment of the supplier. As shortages become the norm and the supermarkets scramble for  limited choice, the opportunity or necessity to raise the prices of the dwindling choice will be impossible to resist.

Watching the shiny new electric motor cars revealed at the German motor show one sees a nation gearing up for change whilst we squabble over the old chestnuts of who should pay tax.