So it’s that time again. Tick the choice of candidate on your ballot paper.
But I have to say, what a choice we have (or haven't). The major parties that the individuals standing for election associate with, all of them advocate, or have practiced, Tax and Spend and throw more money in the bottomless pit. (Lab) (Cons) (SNP) LibDem) (Green).
Of course, every pound they tax us is a pound we no longer have to spend in the local coffee shop or where ever. So local coffee shop lays off staff. Staff get un employment benefit. Business makes less profit, so pays less tax. Taxes have to go up to cover that and then...... We’re bust. As individuals. And as a nation.
And it is at that point off goes Rachel Reeves, cap in hand to the IMF, like Denis Healey in 1976, asking, pleading to bailed out. Anyone remember Mr Healeys injudicious statement "the rich will howl with anguish."? And today, in 2024, they talk redistributing wealth. Labour never changes.
Who can forget the "I'm afraid there’s no money." note left on the desk of the incoming Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Liam Byrne, the outgoing Labour one, in 2010.
The Conservatives are far from perfect. Their leader, unelected by his party, has shown the political nous of a goldfish (sorry, goldfish, don't be offended).
However, on the basis the options open to the
voter are on the scale of bad to really bad, perhaps the bad you do know is
better than the really bad you don’t. Just think, if a Labour do come to power, in a few years time an updated version of this lettter may well await an incoming Conservative government. It's your choice.
