Jock Wishart 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 End Colonial Rule

Chancellor John Healey is set to hike alcohol duty and slap 2p on every pint in the Budget. 🍺 The government takes over 10 times more than the pub owner. The cost of living crisis is a cost of government taxation of small businesses crisis.

The Labour government treat small businesses like an ATM. They hammered family businesses with inheritance tax and hiked employer National Insurance to 15% and dropped the threshold from £9,100 to £5,000 - a £25bn tax on jobs that lands hardest on the high street, the family firm and the people who actually employ people. Minimum wage hikes and endless new employment rights piled on top. Then they wonder why hiring freezes, local independent businesses lay off workers, scale back, shops close and economic growth collapses. All to keep their union paymasters and bloated public sector comfortable, the public sector headcount high and the public sector spending machine running. Real private sector businesses take the risk, create the jobs, generate revenues and create the bedrock of the economy. Labour’s answer is to squeeze them harder for it. This isn’t “growth”. It’s a deliberate cash grab at the expense of the small business owners. And eventually many small businesses buckle, close and eventually asset grabbed by the major corporations like BlackRock - who the Labour government are also in thrall to. It’s a deliberate strategy to punish and destroy small businesses for the benefit of union and major corporation greed. Expect more of this wilful bonfire of the small businesses in the Budget tomorrow. Absolutely shameful.

When Alex Salmond was the leader of the SNP & First Minister of Scotland, he understood the huge economic importance of North Sea oil and gas to the prosperity of North East Scotland. He wholeheartedly championed North Sea oil and gas. The current leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney however, has typically shown absolutely no decisiveness, vision or basic intent on North Sea oil and gas. He just floats around it with half-hearted and equivocal indecisiveness.