Stats Jamie

The new 20mph limit in Wales has caused uproar, with a petition to revoke the limit having over 447 thousand signatures, including around 422 thousand from within Wales. The number of people in Wales who have signed the petition is not far off the total number of people who voted for Welsh Labour to be elected into power.

Bus journeys across the country are being impacted, with journeys taking longer. This has resulted in some buses having to cancel the end of their journeys and turn around as they have run out of time. Bus services are also being cut across Wales, so this has a double impact as they cannot increase the number of buses to account for the increased journey times.

If the Welsh Government wants to make things safer, they should focus on building more bypass roads away from pedestrians rather than cutting speed limits. Rishi Sunak has realised that this policy is making people angry, which is why he is putting pressure on England not to follow suit.

This current parliament sitting has seen the highest increases in tax take since the war, as the public now pays back all the ‘free’ money paid out during the pandemic. £70 billion was spent on furlough, which went on longer than it needed to. The official estimates range from between £310 billion and £412 billion spent by the UK Government on the Covid response.

When Boris Johnson was elected in 2019, 33% of national income was collected in tax, and this is expected to be 37% by the time of the next election. This equates to £100 billion extra in tax take than if tax levels remained the same. Margaret Thatcher once said that there is no good thinking someone else will pay, that someone else is you. All the ‘handouts’ are being taken back in tax.

In 2022, we saw a £150 billion increase in energy bills across the UK, a huge wealth transfer with some of that money paid for by the Government. Just last week, we had Sunak increase the ‘subsidy’ for getting a heat pump – again, more taxpayers’ money being spent.

We are seeing lots of people being dragged into higher rates of tax because they are having wage increases, but the tax bands are not rising in line with the increases. The best people to decide how to spend the money they earn are the people who earn the money themselves.