I am writing this prior to Christmas but print timelines mean you will be reading this post the Big Day. I hope you had a very enjoyable, peaceful and safe Christmas. Let me start by wishing you the happiest of New Years and a 2025 full of good things.
A new year either brings New Year’s Resolutions – often pie crust in durability or an attempt to crystal ball gaze, Mystic Meg-like into the future. From an international perspective, the incoming Trump White House will be ‘interesting’. Will he be true to form or seek to be more of a Father to the Nation international leader? My fear is he will be the former – bad news for Climate Change, Ukraine and the Rule of Law. Instability in both France and Germany, the two economic powerhouses of the EU, does not bode well. At home, I fear that as the totality of the parts of the Budget begin to be implemented and bite, that our Nation’s economy will come under severe pressure both in terms of confidence and scope of operations. Inflation is creeping up meaning interest rate reductions are delayed or cancelled. Employer confidence is likely to continue to worsen meaning that a period of stagnation or worse recession hovers on the horizon.
By any rational assessment the Government came in with undoubted good intentions but not real plan for delivery. Gaps in understanding and experience have not been filled by reaching out to those with the wherewithal to improve policy. We have to hope that as Ministers feel more comfortable in their roles that the act in haste repent in leisure attitude to governing will disappear. In my last article I set out the broken promises surrounding Winter Fuel Allowance, the Family Farms Death Tax and the hammer blow of NICs increases and threshold lowering. I am sure you, like me, had hoped that there would be a pre-Christmas respite but no. Just before the House rose we learned that WASPI women would not receive what they expected to receive from the Government. This will be a disappointment to them as they were promised the opposite by Labour in Opposition. It is another example of say one thing to get elected and do another when having been. Voters will neither forgive nor forget.
I appeared on Times Radio recently in a new programme called MPs It’s a Knockout hosted by Ed Vaizey. Two MPs have to give three interesting facts about their constituencies and then a winner is declared. I am delighted that North Dorset won. I offered up the fact that the Hovis ad had been filmed in Shaftesbury not Yorkshire (did you know it was directed by Ridley Scott of Gladiator fame?). That the famous chandelier scene in Only Fools & Horses was filmed at Clayesmore School and that Buster Merryfield (Uncle Albert) is buried in Verwood. And, finally that Asil Nadir fled the police by flying to Cyprus from Compton Abbas Airfield (now owned by Guy Ritchie) to escape justice following the collapse of Polly Peck.
I mentioned above that I feel/fear 2025 will be full of challenges. I stand ready to assist and help you wherever and whenever I can. Please do email me on [email protected] with your issue or to book an Advice Surgery appointment. Again, I wish you a happy New Year.
