The Worst Budget Ever.

Allister Heath

30 October 2024 7:23pm GMT

This was the worst Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by an enormous margin. It is a catastrophe with no redeeming features, a milestone in our decline and fall, an attempt to gaslight the public by a Government that has broken all of its promises.

Socialism, class warfare, a contempt for private property, the belief that quangocrats, not entrepreneurs, are the fount of prosperity: the old Left-wing mind virus has reinfected the Labour party, and the consequences will be lethal.

Rachel Reeves’s Budget will savage the economy, trash growth, increase the national debt, impoverish millions of “working people”, launch a historic war on wealth-creators, savers, investors, family businesses and farmers, and consign this country to irrelevance.

I almost miss Gordon Brown: he was a disaster, but strikingly intelligent and had read the great economists. Brown cut capital gains tax; Reeves is increasing it again. Brown cheered on the private sector and the City, if only as milchcows; Reeves is happy to chase away millionaires.

The Starmer-Reeves-Miliband philosophy, in as much as it exists, is just as much a repudiation of the New Labour Blair-Brown interlude as it of Thatcherism.

The current lot are unashamedly collectivist. They love the state and are baffled by free-markets. They support a new Gosplan, spearheaded by a cadre of woke apparatchiks, tasked with driving “investment”, “growth”, “decarbonisation”, “delivery” and, laughably, “value for money”.

They are oblivious to the possibility of “roads to nowhere”, of public sector waste, overspend and “white elephants” (a la HS2). They don’t realise that top-down misallocation of resources means that state “investment” can reduce growth by diverting scarce funds.

They don’t believe in genuine NHS and public sector reform. Their approach to taxation is to extract as much cash as possible from the private sector, while protecting their public sector friends. They believe that extortionate taxes are moral, and that private schools and landlords are not.

They are Fabians, gradualist socialists, rather than outright Corbyn-style revolutionaries, but only faute de mieux: they believe Miliband was defeated in part because he supported a vicious wealth tax on expensive homes, a policy they are too scared to support.

Reeves’s extension of inheritance tax testifies to the grip of Marxian ideology on this Government. Their blatant lies during the run-up to the election will eventually cost them dear, however. Labour claimed that its manifesto was fully-costed, that it had no plans for additional tax rises (on top of those already announced, such as the disgusting raid on private schools), that it would not put up national insurance, and then proceeded to do the exact opposite, to the tune of £41.2 billion a year. 

The Tories were mercilessly mocked when they claimed that Labour would raise taxes by £2,000, yet Rishi Sunak stands vindicated: Reeves’s final bill is even higher at £2,342 per year per family of four. The rise in employers’ national insurance will be borne overwhelmingly by employees via reduced pay rises, and Reeves’s decision to lower the threshold at which that dreadful tax bites means the lowest paid will be punished especially severely.

We are witnessing the final death throes of a forty year old dream, of the idea of Britain as a mid-point between the US and European economic models, as a free-market, free-trading entrepot economy with a medium-sized welfare state. Tax rates would be set to maximise growth, we would embrace privatisation, deregulation, and the “Wimbledonisation” of our economy, and we would aim for US levels of tax and spend and, thanks to clever reforms, to public services of European quality. 

It worked for 25 years; even Tony Blair’s Third Way broadly accepted this model. Brexit was the last attempt to revive this, at least in the version envisaged by free-market Eurosceptics. Yet under Labour, the aim appears to be to outspend and out-tax as many European nations as possible, and damn the consequences.

Tax as a share of GDP will rise from 36.4 per cent this year to a record high of 38.2 per cent in 2029-30, ahead of the G7 average and 5.1 percentage points higher than before Covid. The tax burden had fallen to a smidgen over 28 per cent in the 1990s – by today’s standards, we were a fiscal paradise – as a result of the Thatcherite revolution, which has now been almost entirely undone. Public spending fell to only a little above 34 per cent of GDP at the peak of Thatcherite influence; under Reeves, it will surge from 44.9 per cent last year to 45.3 per cent this year, before dipping to 44.5 per cent in 2029-30, 4.9 percentage points higher than pre-pandemic.

We have hardly reached the end of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Much of Reeves’s splurge will take place this year and next, driven by public sector pay rises. Real terms current spending growth will fall to just 1.3 per cent a year from 2025-26, a level the Left will decry as a return to austerity. The Chancellor will surely end up boosting spending again, and raising taxes again to pay for it.

It is simply not true that all, or even most, of the higher taxes were needed to fill a “black hole” bequeathed by the Tories. The £22 billion number is a disgraceful fiction that demeans Labour. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) claims “the Treasury had information about £9.5 billion of net pressures on departments’ budgets in 2024-25 which it did not share with us”, but not all of this would have ended up categorised as extra spending. 

The only certainty, it seems, is that the OBR would have dropped a £2.9 billion underspend assumed in its forecast. Jeremy Hunt’s numbers might have been a few billion pounds too optimistic, but I see no evidence it would have made an iota’s difference to the big picture.

Reeves is putting up taxes out of choice, not necessity. She could have borrowed more for one-off costs such as infected blood compensation, and otherwise kept to Hunt’s spending plans. She needs to take responsibility. She is a Left-wing ideologue in our most socialist Government since that of James Callaghan in the 1970s. Barring a miracle, the game is up for Britain. DT.

The GOOD Reasons To Believe in Jesus. J.John.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVKrYbyFlyM

CGT - Stupid Treatment In The Budget. Abolishing It SAVES Money!

 Indeed, countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand have no capital gains tax, and historical evidence shows reductions in capital gains tax rates can lead to increased tax revenues. For instance, when Ireland halved its capital gains tax rate in 1997, revenues doubled within two years.

Mr Young’s modelling suggests that eliminating capital gains tax in the UK could increase national income by 0.9pc annually, equivalent to £2bn, with two-thirds of lost revenue offset by increased tax revenue derived from that higher national income with further revenue increases resulting from higher investment and productivity. DT.

A Communist? - SICKENING!

Reeves replaces portrait of Nigel Lawson with Communist Party co-founder.

Photograph of Chancellor on eve of her first Budget reveals that new image has been hung on wall overlooking No 11 desk

Before and after: Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, and his successor Rachel Reeves pictured working in No 11 Downing Street 

Genevieve Holl-AllenPolitical Reporter

29 October 2024 6:16pm GMT

Rachel Reeves has replaced a portrait of Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor with a picture of one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

On the eve of the Government’s first Budget, the Treasury released a photograph of the Chancellor in her office in No 11 in front of a new portrait of Ellen Wilkinson, a former Labour education minister.

Ms Wilkinson was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920 before becoming a Labour MP.

Photographs of Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak at the same desk in Downing Street show that a photograph of Nigel Lawson was previously hanging on the wall. DT.

Please Pray For The Sick.

Victimisation.

Enslaved to malevolence

There's a crucial distinction between victimisation and “being” a victim

Melanie Phillips Oct 30

Jews taken as slaves; bas-relief panel on Arch of Titus, Rome

The Labour party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has got himself into trouble over slavery. Commonwealth leaders have demanded that the UK make reparations to countries that were historically affected by slavery and colonialism. After first rejecting such a demand and then desperately trying to change the subject, Starmer weakly conceded that Britain would discuss it next year. 

The reparations demand is obviously preposterous. Slavery has existed across the world in society after society, perpetrated for centuries across Africa, Asia and elsewhere by their indigenous peoples. Britain was the first country to end its participation in the slave trade and encouraged others to do so. 

In addition to these obvious objections, however, slavery also raises the issue of victimisation and victim status. Like slavery itself, “victim culture” is being used to demonise the west and fry its collective brain.

There is an enormous difference between victimisation and “being” a victim. Failure to appreciate this distinction has led in some cases to the former being denied, while those who make victims of others are excused or ignored. 

Victimisation occurs when an aggressor attacks someone. That someone is therefore inescapably a victim. They don’t choose to be a victim. They simply are by virtue of being attacked. 

“Being” a victim, by contrast, is a matter of choice. It means someone chooses to think of himself or herself as a victim, or behave as one. 

In cases where they really have been victimised, this deepens the damage that’s been done.  Victimised people may feel beaten and powerless. They may become demoralised and demotivated, giving up on life. They become losers.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Many people are the victims of circumstances. They may be abused as children, suffer the fallout of family breakdown or grow up in poverty or other kinds of disadvantage.

However, they have a choice. They can either think of themselves as victims, in which case they may well turn themselves into losers. Or they can decide to overcome their disadvantage and accordingly discipline themselves to do so.

The difficulties they may face are often formidable. That’s why those who have the interests of such people at heart have a duty to help them help themselves by encouraging and supporting them to think and act positively, to be active rather than passive, to stop dwelling on the past and focus instead on making a better future for themselves. Treating them as victims — encouraging them to “be” a victim, to react rather than to do, to receive rather than to give  — is just about the worst thing such “helpers” can do to them. 

Unfortunately, western society has made a fetish out of “being” a victim. This has absolutely nothing to do with compassion. It has everything to do instead with a denial of objective truth and a negation of individual conscience and personal responsibility.

This “victim culture” derives from the Marxist view that all relationships are based on power. Either you wield power over someone who therefore becomes your victim, or you are the victim of someone with power.

This is a ruthlessly distorted view of human nature and the world. Its appeal in this godless age is that it provides a free pass for misdeeds committed by anyone identifying as a member of a designated victim class, and it enables bullies from such a victim class to intimidate and harm others while virtue-signallers roar their approval.

Anyone from a “powerless” class is deemed to be incapable of doing anything wrong, while anyone from a “powerful” class is deemed incapable of doing anything right. This enables actual power to be abused, with groups accused of being victimisers even when this is untrue or unfairly decontextualised.

Accordingly, it’s a way of demonising all white people on the grounds that they are the “colonialist oppressors” of people in non-European countries. Hence the false accusation that the west is guilty of slavery while all dark-skinned people are the exploited victims of colonialism.

By trading in false accusations, avoidance of responsibility and abuses of power, “victim culture” has helped destroy the west’s moral compass. It also turns into double victims some who really have been victimised. For those pushing a false status of victimhood often seek to deny the reality of true victimisation, because the sharp contrast between actual victims and “victim culture” reveals the latter to be a manipulative sham.

The principal group targeted for denial in this way is the Jewish people.

Jews — grotesquely designated in “victim culture” as an oppressor class — are the most victimised people on earth. Jew-hatred through the centuries has led to the persecution, attack and murder of millions. Today it continues at epidemic levels which are out of control throughout the west as well as in the Islamic world. 

Antisemites deny this victimisation. They claim that the Jews invent it, “playing the victim card” to conceal their assumed misdeeds and exploitation of others. They believe that Jews use the claim of antisemitism to enable them to “get away with it”. And what exactly do they believe Jews thus “get away with”? Why, that the Jews are a powerful and sinister cabal with global power which they use to further their own interests and harm others — in other words, all the antisemitic canards about the Jews that are a vicious lie but which antisemites believe to be true. 

Such people also resent any evidence of antisemitism because they want to hate the Jews without being prevented from doing so by social opprobrium. They cannot tolerate the truth about Jewish victimisation because that would reveal themselves to be the disgusting people they are. They want to be able to hate the Jews while continuing to drape themselves in the mantle of moral virtue.

Proponents of “victim culture” have a further problem with the victimisation of the Jews. Using their own “victim” status as a social and cultural weapon, they can’t tolerate the fact that the Jews never play the victim card. 

Despite the ever-ending persecution the Jews have suffered, they have always picked themselves up and sought to transcend their pain and distress by making the best out of their lives and the lives of others. 

The only reparations they sought after the Holocaust were to secure the return of what was rightfully theirs and had been stolen from them. They have never demanded that the Catholic church, the British ruling class or the continent of Europe pay reparations for the centuries of persecution they inflicted upon the Jews. They have never assumed that the appalling way the world has treated them means that the world owes them a living. 

They just got on with building positive and productive lives. From the ashes of the Holocaust, they created the spectacularly thriving, life-affirming State of Israel. And in the war that has followed the barbaric atrocities of last year’s October 7 pogrom in Israel, where a terrible toll has been taken of the best and bravest who are still steadily falling in battle, a grieving and traumatised people under constant attack is continuing to display astounding levels of heroism, steadfastness and resilience.

Despite the fact that they have been so badly victimised, Jews choose never to “be” victims, never to live or behave as victims. Stating this fact drives antisemites mad. “But they play the victim card all the time!” they scream. To them, Jew-hatred is a self-serving fiction. They can’t acknowledge the moral necessity of identifying its unique and all-too-real characteristics. They can’t recognise the difference between truth and lies. All that matters is maintaining their own warped and malevolent narrative about a world they choose not to understand. And that, of course, is why such people hate the Jews, who show these haters up for what they truly are.  DM.

Birdie.

 

Sack This Man: Get Somebody In Who Respects The Scriptures!

 The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby(Photo: Geoff Crawford/Church of England)

The Archbishop of Canterbury has "been on a journey." In an interview with Alistair Campbell he was asked about where he and the Church of England had got to in relation to moving beyond the traditional teaching on sex and marriage embedded in the Church's history and canons. His reply was:

"Where we've come to is to say that all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship and whether it's straight or gay."

This statement, contradicting his Church's official teaching as it does, has caused a great deal of concern since, as everyone knows the C of E is in the middle of a civil war over the role of sex, erotic love and changing the definition of marriage. CT.

Global Persecution Increasing.

Global persecution of Christians has worsened - report.

Staff writer  23 October 2024.

Fr Sam Ebute buried 21 of his parishioners after bandits attacked Kukum Daji village, Nigeria. He is pictured here standing in front of the victims' shoes.(Photo: Aid to the Church in Need)

The persecution of Christians worldwide has "significantly worsened" in the last year, a human rights charity has warned. 

In a report published this week, Aid to the Church in Need said that Christians are living under increased threat of violence, discrimination and other human rights abuses. 

The report analysed data across 18 countries of particular concern between summer 2022 and summer 2024. Key findings include a shift in the epicentre of militant Islamist violence from the Middle East to Africa, with Christians being "terrorised" by "extreme violence" for their faith in places like Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Mozambique. 

Authoritarian regimes like China, Eritrea, India and Iran have become more repressive, resulting in the increased targeting of Christians as enemies of the state or their local community. 

Christian children, especially girls, are living at increased risk of abduction, sexual violence, forced marriage and forced conversion. 

In some places, Christians are being caught up in the weaponisation of legislation to criminalise acts deemed disrespectful to the state religion. 

Christians are being imprisoned in a number of countries for their faith, including Eritrea, where around 400 have been imprisoned without trial. In Iran, Christians detained for their faith rose from 59 in 2021 to 166 in 2023. Estimates for the number of Christians imprisoned in China range from the low thousands to around 10,000. 

In India, there has been an increase in recorded attacks and other instances of persecution against Christians, rising from 599 in 2022 to 720 the following year. 

In Myanmar, the military has been accused of destroying over 200 places of worship, including 85 churches. 

In some countries, years of persecution and sometimes conflict have led to an exodus of Christians. In Syria, it is estimated that only a quarter of a million Christians remain, compared to over 1.5 million in 2011 before the outbreak of the civil war. 

In Iraq, the Christian population has dwindled from around a million 20 years ago to fewer than 200,000 today. 

The report, which was launched in Parliament this week, reads, "Mass migration of Christian communities, triggered by militant Islamist attacks, has destabilised and disenfranchised them, raising questions about the long-term survival of the Church in key regions."

It also states: "Authoritarian regimes, including those in China, Eritrea, India and Iran, ramped up repressive measures against Christians, either in the name of religious nationalism or state secularism/communism.

"The restrictions included tougher sentencing for alleged insults against state ideology, confiscation of places of worship, increased arrests of clergy and laity as well as longer periods of detention." CT.

The Joy of The Lord.

Birdie.

 

Petition For Starmer.

 https://www.christiantoday.com/article/nearly.60000.people.sign.letter.asking.keir.starmer.to.protect.freedom.of.thought.and.prayer/142299.htm

IDOP.

 

IDOP: 5 days to go!

This Sunday, Christians around the world will be coming together for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Will your church be taking part? There’s still time to book into our special online event on Sunday 3 November, together with the Evangelical Alliance, Open Doors and Release International. CSW will be giving particular focus to North Korea, one of the most repressed and secretive countries in the world. We hope you’ll join us on the day, or mark IDOP with your community throughout November. Let’s stand in solidarity with those facing persecution across the globe. Find all you need at csw.org.uk/IDOP

The Free to Believe podcast

Have you tuned in to the Free to Believe podcast yet? As the world tackles ever worsening inequalities and rights violations, CSW’s advocacy for freedom or religion or belief is needed now more than ever before. Each episode brings you the very latest stories and insight from experts and survivors across the globe. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Book your speaker for 2025

We can provide speakers for all kinds of events and church services – and we value each opportunity we get to do so.  Our team, which includes advocacy experts and communications staff, represents a range of backgrounds and experience.  Together, with your support, we work to achieve incredible results: setting prisoners free, speaking truth to power and challenging laws that deny millions the right to freedom of religion and belief. Book a speaker to come and share more about our work at your church, workplace or event – inspiring everyone to act for justice.

Sign up to pray with us every Saturday... Get Response magazine in your inbox four times a year... Make a gift to support our life-changing advocacy...

Follow us

Hmm. £224 BILLION Annually. Profligate Organisations Running Without Effective Checks. £80 Billion Annual Savings Possible.

 A huge chunk of public spending goes on quangos. In 2021, an annual report was published by the Cabinet Office, Public Bodies 2020. It ‘gives data on non-departmental public bodies, executive agencies and non-ministerial departments’. It listed 295 such entities. Their total annual spending comes to a staggering £224bn. It is disappointing that given such a significant sum there is not greater scrutiny given to it from politicians, the media and others. 

What is even worse is that the figures are so out of date. Where is the report for Public Bodies 2021? Or Public Bodies 2022? Or Public Bodies 2023? When I sent the Cabinet Office a Freedom of Information request last July, asking how much is spent on quangos, they replied that they knew but they wouldn’t tell me as, ‘we consider it is reasonable in all the circumstances that the information held should be withheld from disclosure until the future date of publication’. 

In January, I asked for an update on the publication date. They replied it would be ‘in the coming months’. The transparency requirement is supposed to be subject to annual publication. That fact that it is scheduled is used as an exemption from Freedom of Information requests. That is an excuse that can be used even when the publication does not actually take place. Thus a commitment to transparency in theory is used to prevent transparency in practice. 

Despite being thwarted in this way, I’m afraid it is a pretty good guess that the spending will be even higher. If spending had risen with inflation since 2020, then quangos would be in receipt of £271bn. 

We have also seen a smattering of new ones emerge: Building Digital UK, the Trade Remedies Authority, Active Travel England, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body and the Office for Environmental Protection. These are just a few, and God only knows what they are all supposed to do. But I don’t imagine they will come cheap. 

We can get some more clues from a few spot checks. Some individual quangos have continued to make the effort to publish their annual accounts. The Arts Council got £490m from the taxpayer in 2020. The latest accounts state the ‘funds received from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’ as being £524m. 

Or take the case of the Environment Agency. That was funded by the taxpayer to the tune of £880m in 2000. The latest figures state ‘funding received from Defra; came to £1.3bn in 2022/23. 

Some quangos are much smaller, of course. In 2022/23, the Office for Budget Responsibility cost us £4.4m. No ‘implausible austerity’ for their staff to worry about. Have its predictions become any more accurate with the increase in spending? CAPX.

        Christology was normative only in the Western church.

The Arian controversy

St. AthanasiusSt. Athanasius, detail of a 12th-century mosaic; in the Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Italy.

The lingering disagreements about which Christological model was to be considered normative burst into the open in the early 4th century in what became known as the Arian controversy, possibly the most-intense and most-consequential theological dispute in early Christianity. The two protagonists, Arius (c. 250–336) and Athanasius (c. 293–373), differed over matters of theology but were quite similar in temperament and personality—learned, self-confident, and unyielding. Both were from Alexandria, Arius a distinguished churchman and scholar and Athanasius a brilliant theologian.

Christianity | Definition, Origin, History, Beliefs, Symbols, Types, & F... Christianity is a major religion stemming from the life, teachings, and death of Jesus of Nazareth in the 1st ce...

Saint Athanasius | Biography & Facts Saint Athanasius, theologian who defended Christian orthodoxy from Arianism in the 4th century.

Arius | Biography, Beliefs, & Facts Arius, Christian priest whose teachings gave rise to a theological doctrine known as Arianism. The doctrine was ...

Protagonist Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary PROTAGONIST meaning: 1 : the main character in a novel, play, movie, etc.; 2 : an important person who is involv...

Arius’s Christology was a mixture of adoptionism and logos theology. His basic notion was that the Son came into being through the will of the Father; the Son, therefore, had a beginning. Although the Son was before all eternity, he was not eternal, and Father and Son were not of the same essence. In Jesus, who suffered pain and wept, the logos became human.

Logos | Definition, History, & Facts Logos, in Greek philosophy and early Christian theology, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it a...

Jesus | Facts, Teachings, Miracles, Death, & Doctrines Jesus of Nazareth, a historical figure revered by Christians as the Son of God, is known for his profound teachi...

One strength of Arius’s position was that it appeared to safeguard a strict monotheism while offering an interpretation of the language of the New Testament—notably, the word Son—that conformed to general usage and meaning. The weakness of his view was that, precisely because Jesus was capable of suffering as a human, it was difficult to understand how he could be fully divine and thus effect the redemption of humankind.

Safeguard Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary SAFEGUARD meaning: something that provides protection against possible loss, damage, etc.

According to Athanasius, God had to become human so that humans could become divine. Thus, at the heart of Athanasius’s Christology was a religious rather than a speculative concern. That led him to conclude that the divine nature in Jesus was identical to that of the Father and that Father and Son have the same substance. He insisted on the need for the Nicene homoousios to express the Son’s unity with the Father.

Britann

The controversy did more than severely agitate and bitterly divide the Christian community; it also threatened the political stability of the Roman Empire. Eager for a resolution, Emperor Constantine convened and presided over the Council of Nicaea, which formulated the Nicene Creed, affirming the Athanasian position. Constantine, according to his biographer Eusebius of Caesarea, had sought to achieve a rapprochement between the two sides by suggesting the use of the word homoousios, which was accepted by all in attendance with the exception of Arius and two Libyan bishops. The Western bishops, who like most of the bishops in attendance had not given much thought to the issue, were not troubled by Constantine’s term, which they understood as equivalent to the Latin word substantia, which Tertullian had used to describe the two substances of Jesus.