SUNDAY COLUMN: The Coming Crisis, Inflation is at its highest rate for 30 years

Anne Marie Waters

Sunday 13th February 2022

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We are told to brace ourselves, to prepare for the worst. We are apparently facing one of the worst cost-of-living emergencies for decades. Inflation is at its highest rate for 30 years, but what is causing it and what can (and should) the government do about it?

First of all, let’s be clear, those who make the decisions, who decide what is done with our money, do not feel the pinch themselves. MPs are well paid, government ministers even moreso, but they also get to claim expenses from the public purse. According to the Daily Express, “across the 2020-21 financial year, some 316 MPs claimed a total of £182,983 for gas, electricity and dual fuel.”

The man in charge of the purse strings Rishi Sunak is believed to be the richest man in the House of Commons, and is married to a billionaire. In other words, these people don’t understand money, or lack of it, and they will never feel the pain of their own decisions.

So what is the cause of this crisis? According to some, supply chain disruption due to covid lockdown is a major contributing factor. This means that resources and services are harder to come by, causing prices to go up.

The price of oil has also increased dramatically. Having collapsed during the height of the pandemic, the price of a barrel in January was hovering around the $80-90 mark. This of course will increase transport and other business costs, which will be passed on to the consumer.

The big pinch for households however, expected to hit in April, is gas and electricity. Our bills are due to increase by around 50%. Gas prices are at record highs, and ‘green’ energy has not been productive – something that should surprise nobody. Even the left-wing Guardian is forced to admit that “lower levels of wind over the summer” meant a lack of energy production. But the madness is, the government will continue to pursue these ‘green’ initiatives: they won’t work, energy will become a scarcer and scarcer commodity, and that inevitably means we’ll be less and less able to afford it.

To add insult to injury, our national insurance bill is set to increase in April as well. This rise will apparently pay for the NHS – an organisation never asked to account for its spending. For Britain wants to audit the health service instead of pumping more public money in to it, this is absolutely essential. But mainstream politicians won’t do this, they fall over themselves to promise more and more public money to the NHS while the front-line service essentially collapses.

The primary problem is simple, we are not governed by people who have our best interests in mind. They do not make decisions in order to advance our well-being. They answer to globalist bodies like the World Health Organisation or UN, they answer to left-wing ‘journalists’ with agendas, they answer to corporations or billionaires. They do not act for us. If they did, this is what they would do.

Give no more increases to the NHS until its spending is thoroughly scrutinised and waste is drastically reduced. This includes waste on salaries for an enormous amount of managers who seem to do very little.
End all foreign aid (except in genuine emergencies). This will save billions of pounds a year.
Produce our own energy and look at all and any ways to produce it here at home, keeping costs down.
Produce our own essentials; food and other essentials should be increasingly produced here at home, and exports increased.
Lower taxes to increase the amount in people’s pockets that will encourage spending and reinvigorate our economy.
End all green taxes and similar nonsense. This thing is a sham and a globalist aim; a global problem (“climate change”) will require a global response, that’s the mantra.
Target waste across the public sector. Incentivising management to end waste will do two things: end unnecessary spending and identify competent managers and decision makers in the public sphere.
These are just some things we can do to improve public finances but there is absolutely no chance current politicians will do it. They answer not to the people but to others, and they don’t care because price increases won’t affect them.

Maybe this will be the issue that finally ends public apathy regarding our politics. Maybe, just maybe, more people will awaken to the awful way we are governed and will do something to change it. I certainly hope so. Surely there has to a tipping point. Perhaps this is it…

Anne Marie Waters

Leader

For Britain