Fear Karma, Keir Starmer: The Budget Blues
Trust me, I’m old.
It’s 31 October 2024.
Here’s what’s gonna happen over the next few months and years as a result of yesterday’s Labour budget.
First, the bean counters at the big store groups’ll have a look at the increased costs at play. Supermarkets especially. They’ll check out under performing stores. And close them. Quietly, one at a time, so as not to rock the political boat. After all, they’re in business, not politics. And guess where those stores will be. In poorer areas, where profits are lower, further reduced by unchecked crime. Nothing personal, it’s just business. You’ll have to shop somewhere else.
If you can afford the bus.
And elsewhere, ordinary folk with less in their pockets (increased minimum wage + increased tax = less) flock to Lidl. Waitrose (which I have never really understood) becomes ever more a destination for those seeking seasonal celebration and special occasion (much as Fortnam & Mason is to tourists and lovers) and quietly retreats from view. And Tesco, Sainsbury and the like, where they still exist, will depend more and more on self-service terminals, or demand debit card details as a condition of access, swiping your virtual card through the ether as you leave, banishing cash and employment from the door. And as you leave, to survive, you’ll be mugged in the car park by folk who daily migrate from where supermarkets once were.
And after the slurry’s been washed from Big Ben, the farmers voice having been ignored again, the big boys’ll buy ’em to add to their sheet of assets they own where they don’t allow meat. Instead they’ll plant solar and wind, G M wheat, and our kids won’t find foodstuffs in the things that they eat.
And up rents leap as landlords vanish, deterred from the market by tax and rules or, where they have them already, remortgage their assets (not sell which they’d rather) and cash out that way. And up goes the rent to keep up with the interest which they can ‘cos there’s nowhere to rent anyway.
And people rejoice that the rich are paying as prices rise to fill the gaping hole in the budgets of all those that have tried to serve. And the little guy, the nation of shopkeepers, for whom sleep is unknown, chooses life over landlord, bankruptcy over bank, and closes his business ‘cos life is too short.
And his staff on the dole join the job centre queue with people they don’t recognise and sounds they can’t say (the bright sparks having long gone, with hope and the future, ‘cos the flightest of foot can ignore what you say) so the tax man demands from the counter of beans
‘More for the people who have not the means’
And the bean counter says
‘Sure, give me a day, I just need to look at the costs at play’.
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