This week is the first full week of the new tax year, bringing in a 2% cut in national insurance contributions for working aged people, whilst pensioners see an 8.5% increase, to £221.20 per week. But also, this week, Labour have started to talk about their plans for the NHS.
In under a month’s time, we have elections. Not the expected general election scheduled for some time before the end of January next year, but Kidderminster Town Council, and the Police and Crime Commissioner for our local police force, West Mercia.
I wasn’t in Parliament for last week’s debate on Gaza, but it certainly looked chaotic. The descent into ugly arguing about seemingly arcane procedures is never a good look. But the rules of engagement for Parliament underpin our democracy.
Former US president Bill Clinton famously said, “it’s the economy, stupid”. He was right. The key thing to people’s sense of confidence and well-being is the state of the economy around them.
Last week, we had a couple of economic announcements that are important.
Back in 2010, when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, newly elected MP, a church group contacted me asking for help. The husband of a local woman was due to be deported back to a newly joined eastern European EU member state. “Why?”, I enquired.
A few months after I was first elected, back in 2010, I met with a town planner. He had been asked to come and look at Kidderminster and he was astonished by what he saw. How, he asked, could a town turn its back on its waterways? How could a ring road not be a ring?
I always like seeing my chums from Wyre Forest Extinction Rebellion. A group came by a couple of weeks ago and we had a long meeting, discussing North Sea exploration licenses. They swung by a week later for a bit of a protest, but I wasn’t there.
The new year opens to the sound of picket lines. Starting on Wednesday this week, junior doctors are striking for 6 days, targeted to cause the most amount of disruption at the most difficult time of the year for the NHS.
