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Spiteful attacks on pensioners. A bashing for business. This Budget will be a vindictive horror show, says JEFF PRESTRIDGE By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday Updated: 22:15, 26 October 2024 e-mail 7 View comments Nearly three months have passed since Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves stood up in the House of Commons and said the winter fuel payment should be means-tested for the greater financial good of the country.
What utter balderdash. It was nothing other than a spiteful attack on pensioners that will besmirch her record in public service for ever. Since then, Reeves has for the most part stood quietly in the background, ignoring heartfelt requests for a U-turn, while allowing her Treasury officials to perpetuate the view that Wednesday’s Budget will be the most vicious in living memory.
Some £35billion of extra taxes are coming our way like a financial tornado. These taxes will make it far more difficult for households to accumulate wealth – and then to either access it or leave a slug of it to loved ones. Tax assaults on our pensions, share portfolios and our right to make gifts (thereby mitigating inheritance tax bills) are all likely.
And a lot more besides. The raid will also include taxes on businesses, the lifeblood of our economy. Some of these taxes - most notably a National Insurance charge on the contributions employers pay into the pension funds of their workers - will be both deeply damaging and divisive.
Nearly three months have passed since Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves stood up in the House of Commons and said the winter fuel payment should be means-tested for the greater financial good of the country The Budget is going to be a horror show of Frankenstein proportion Divisive in that public sector employers will be exempt from this tax, thereby protecting the gold-plated pensions of their employees. Damaging for those of us toiling away in the private sector, as bosses may respond to the hike by cutting back on the generosity of our pension arrangements. The Budget is going to be a horror show of Frankenstein proportion.
For those of you with delicate constitutions, I advise you not to watch it. Instead, read Money Mail’s forensic examination of all its gory detail on Thursday and for a few days thereafter. And, of course, absorb what Wealth and Personal Finance has to say this time next week.
We will do our very best to help you mitigate the impact of what Reeves throws your way. Will vinyl get WHSmith on song? WHSmith is a chameleon of a brand. Its high street branches look tired, indeed exhausted, when compared with its sparkling must-go-to shops in British airports.
But maybe the return of vinyl to some of its stores in our battered town centres will act as a catalyst for an overall revival of the retailer’s brand. I do hope so. For much of the late 1970s and 80s, I couldn’t walk past a WHSmith (or for that matter a Woolworths) without a good mooch in the vinyl department.
Invariably I would walk out with at least one LP to add to my collection. Although I then joined the CD brigade, I clung on to my vinyl. For much of the late 1970s and 80s, I couldn’t walk past a WHSmith (or for that matter a Woolworths) without a good mooch in the vinyl departmen I even purloined some of my parents’ LPs rapidly gathering dust in the gramophone cabinet - such as the soundtrack to the 1958 film South Pacific, starring Mitzi Gaynor and the non-singing Rossano Brazzi.
Some Enchanted Evening still gives me goosebumps. Like many music lovers, I’ve returned to vinyl in recent years, complementing South Pacific, Blondie’s Parallel Lines and Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp with Nick Cave’s Wild God and a remastered version of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel’s The Best Years of Our Lives. I trust WHSmith will choose its Wokingham branch as one of the 80 stores to stock vinyl.
If so, it will become my Saturday go-to venue - sandwiched between the obligatory parkrun (more like a parkwalk these days) and the train journey to watch West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns. Wokingham’s high street has taken a battering in recent years as a result of some major brands giving up the ghost (M&S) and most of the big banks (Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest, and Santander) shutting their branches. Among the banks, only HSBC, Nationwide, Newbury Building Society and a post office remain.
Among the banks, only HSBC, Nationwide, Newbury Building Society and a post office remain Although the NatWest branch has been converted into flats and the old Santander building is now home to a rather state of the art physiotherapist practice, the Barclays and Lloyds branches remain empty - and are blots on the high street. In Barclays’ defence, it now operates a part-time ‘local’ facility in the town’s community centre, although it doesn’t offer any banking services. Recently, officials at cash machine operator Link visited my Berkshire home town to listen to those who believe it would be boosted by the presence of a banking hub.
Currently, the rules governing hubs (community banks funded by the big banks via an organisation called Cash Access UK) are tightly drawn. Although Link makes the final recommendation, it’s the banks that determine the criteria which it must be based on. Sadly, there is not a cat in hell’s chance of Wokingham having one.
For a hub to get Link’s nod of approval, all the banks in the town must have closed – or been put on notice of closure. Given HSBC has already pledged to keep open all its branches until 2026, Wokingham is ruled out straight away. Of course, the rules may change - they have already been modified to allow hubs in some towns where Nationwide is present.
But I am sure Wokingham’s high street, dominated by a collection of fine independent traders, would be so much the richer for the presence of a hub. Although financial markets are getting twitchy about Reeves’s Budget and the grand spending plans she has in mind to put the economy into overdrive, it hasn’t stopped Goldman Sachs from taking a positive view on the course of UK interest rates. It believes that by November next year, the Bank of England will have cut them from their current 5 per cent to 2.
75 per cent. Although financial markets are getting twitchy about Rachel Reeves’s (pictured) Budget and the grand spending plans she has in mind to put the economy into overdrive, it hasn’t stopped Goldman Sachs from taking a positive view on the course of UK interest rates Of course, with inflation having fallen to 1.7 per cent, there is every possibility that interest rates are now on a downward trajectory.
But there are far too many potential hiccups out there to believe that by this time next year, bank base rates will be sitting at 2.75 per cent. The hiccups include rising oil prices, heightened geopolitical tensions and fractures in the global supply chain.
Add to that, of course, the growing realisation that Reeves’s high-taxing, high-spending Budget is nothing but bad news. If interest rates get to 2.75 per cent by this time next year, I will eat my hat.
I will also put my hand in my pocket and donate £275 to the charity Prostate Cancer UK. Share or comment on this article: Spiteful attacks on pensioners. A bashing for business.
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