See, I told you, every business and organisation would struggle with the new higher rate of employers’ national insurance.

Hospices up and down the land were already skint; now Labour’s NI hike is causing an even bigger crisis. Honestly, who knew their biggest cost was wages, mostly nursing staff of course.

Presumably without any experience of running anything at all, ‘economist’ Rachel Reeves and solicitor Starmer hadn’t a clue. If you were running Mountbatten hospice, would you be prepared to sack nurses, or turn seriously ill palliative care patients away? Sainsbury’s reckon the NI increase will cost them £140 million extra, and that’s without the cost of raising the minimum wage.

Today’s quiz question is, “Where will Sainsbury’s find the money? Is it (a) management salaries, (b) shareholders’ dividends, (c) down the back of the deli counter or (d) increasing the price of the goods they sell to hardworking families?

But really, it’s not rocket science, is it? Chancellor Rachel – her with the iffy CV – insists she was “an economist” at the Bank of England. I have my doubts about those who work there; their track record is dreadful. They helped create runaway inflation by pumping too much money into the economy. By 2022 it was 11 per cent, a 41-year high and five times their target. Then when the economy was evidently struggling, they repeatedly failed to cut interest rates. Their dithering clobbered “working people” through higher monthly mortgage payments. Now Labour’s tax bombs, combined with a general doom and gloom outlook, has caused long-term mortgage rates to rise again.

Last week, a big kitchen supplier told me they’re 42 per cent down on sales this year. It’s not good, is it? Rachel boasting about working at the BofE seems as idiotic as Sir Keir’s assertion that his Dad was a toolmaker. Heaven help us if the PM really believes that being a junior at the bank means Rachel knows better than everyone else how our economy works. Ask a farmer; the early evidence is unconvincing.

Rachel’s next plan is to allow bigger council tax rises. So ours will definitely rise by 5 per cent next year. They’ll claim it’s “only” 99p a week for a Band B property, or some such nonsense, but when taxes are already at record levels, why do they need more money? How did they manage in the days when we still had youth clubs, libraries, swimming pools and weekly bin collections?
Those of us who pay it know that council tax always rises above inflation while services are cut. We’re used to paying more for less. The council loves to blame “government cuts”, so where’s all our money going? “Adult social care” they cry, but pensioners and huge interest payments on treasury loans can’t account for all of it. And then I saw Rupert Lowe MP, claiming a whistleblower at the DWP informed him that “50,000 foreign nationals a month pass the test to claim universal credit.” Read that again. Fifty thousand new claimants – people born elsewhere – qualifying for UK benefits every single month.

Weirdly, 10 per cent of them are said to be “UK citizens returning from abroad.” All take something called a “factual habitual residency test” whatever that is. Anyone granted refugee status here is entitled to claim universal credit and 3,379.500 [3,379,500?] have qualified this way since April 2019. I’m sorry, but it’s time we stopped being so generous to those fleeing from elsewhere because we’ve run out of money.

The DWP says they don’t hold data on the nationality of those claiming benefits. Assuming they come with nothing but the clothes on their back and the iPhone in their hand, it’s surely likely that, as soon as they’re eligible, many refugees will claim benefits?