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From: Mike Mike
My reply to Conservative Party person who I know who wrote to me post budget to say he was pretty unhappy with all the tax and spend etc ****** As for everything political - where to start? Well - the (very) good news is that we did get out of the EU "transition period" finally at the end of last year. On a broadly reasonable basis. Beyond that, Covid. As you know I felt the government went beyond what was legitimate in their interference with and limiting of personal freedom. I do not believe it is any concern of the government, for instance, who I invite to my house. To that end, in March on the anniversary of the first lockdown taking legal effect - and while it was still unlawful to have a guest in your garden, we had a few friends over, I gave a short speech on freedom, Boris and Professor Lockdown were thrown into the moat (in effigy) and then we enjoyed a most pleasant illegal lunch. Why they are still testing people who are not unwell - and school children in particular - is a complete mystery to me. Certainly if we had children at school they would not be wearing face masks nor being subjected to routine testing. All our restrictions on international travel are nonsense too - although I think that has finally been accepted. The simple facts are that the vaccines work, the virus is thankfully generally very mild in the young and (I think) the whole thing has been over for months. Credit to Boris that he finally canned the restrictions. Let's hope he holds the line. Of course the NHS is in crisis, will be in crisis and always has been. As I have said on twitter recently the NHS is socialism and no country is rich enough for socialism, as we are finding out. I don't want to protect the NHS - I want to abolish it. I would like an insurance based model where everyone pays something, and where there are a multiplicity of providers. I wonder whether Aneurin Bevan realised that his creation of the NHS would ultimately bankrupt the country. As if that wasn't enough, Boris Johnson appears to want to create another socialist behemoth in the shape of the "Care" sector. Words do fail me there. One ray of light in all this might be the exit of the appalling authoritarian Hancock - hoist quite rightly by his own petard. He tweeted last year that "The NHS is the best present a country has ever given itself". It's not the staff of course, I'm sure they are no worse (or better) than those who work for Mercedes, Asda etc. Why would they be? It's just that the system does not have the essential feedback mechanisms that are necessary for improvement to occur, so it does not and cannot. Then the economy and all the tax and spend. I'm pretty right wing, I don't believe governments should be allowed to borrow. For the same reason you don't give cash to alcoholics. Yes we have inflation - they've removed most of it from the official measures but we can see it in asset prices, we can see it in building materials as well as labour rates. I do think that part of Brexit has to be that everyone who lives in the UK should have the opportunity through hard work to built a decent life for themselves and their families. "Cheap" labour coming from the EU, especially the Eastern EU, has been a sugar rush rather than a proper meal. We've allowed vast numbers of British nationals to largely loaf about at the expense of the state - you can see this with Universal Credit. I do of course welcome the cut in the taper, ie the effective rate of tax but it is a fact that there has been a lot of "job splitting" going on at the lower end of the market - so people work 16 or 24 hours a week and that's regarded as "enough" so UC has made up the balance. Great for employers and good at hiding unemployment. Not so good when there is work to be done and nobody willing to do it. It looks as though interest rates will finally go up a little. My view is they should never have gone below 4% - it's fuelled house price inflation. How can that be a good thing when the young will not be able to afford anywhere to live? I suppose we will see that vast amounts of money have once again been loaned to people who cannot make the repayments once rates go up a bit. Further to the budget Michael Portillo spoke to Times Radio and said This is certainly not Conservative philosophy, this is something quite different. This is what Conservatives absolutely do not believe in. The Conservatives do not believe that these policies could possibly be successful." I am not a fan of Rishi - I don't like Chancellors who like to be liked and all this "Boris made me do it" stuff doesn't wash with me at all. A brighter note is that I see Sajid Javid quotes Ayn Rand as an influence. I should add that long before her elevation to Foreign Secretary we have both been "Liz for Leader". So I'm politically homeless for now - many of my friends feel the same. It's back to Butskellism under Boris and I don't like it one bit. At least it's not Corbyn!

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