My typical month sees me feeling a little sorry for some of the small stories in life. Take the staff in Boots for example……having to ask EVERYONE if they’ve got an advantage card. You can see a little bit of Brenda’s soul disappear as she asks a 50 year old bald construction worker in a high-vis get-up if he’s got an advantage card when he just wants a bottle of Fanta.
But this month my heart, like most, has been struck with a far from small story and the scale of the atrocities in Ukraine. I’ve struggled to provide any adequate explanation or logic to my 7 year old daughter as to what on earth Putin is doing.
I listened on the school run to the story of a Ukrainian woman and her 7 year-old daughter sleeping rough for four nights in freezing temperatures to get to Calais only to be refused entry to the UK. How do I explain that to my own 7 year old? I just can’t explain our Government’s mindless response to it all.
Dominic Raab said “we have a reputation second to none across the world” for helping refugees. He then immediately said the “EU was better than the UK at helping refugees because they’re closer to Ukraine.”
Our Government then said that Ireland helping Ukraine is a security threat to the UK because Ukrainians (who apparently we’re welcoming) might come to the UK using a border scheme they designed.
Priti Patel refused to open safe lanes for refugees. Then BoJo told reporters we would set up safe lanes. So then Patel said she would set up “a new humanitarian route to enter Britain”……but then BoJo said we weren’t setting up humanitarian routes.
Then Priti Patel said the UK had set up a “very generous” visa processing scheme……based in Calais. So Ukrainian refugees with relatives in the UK started walking across Europe to Calais in the middle of winter. Then Number 10 admitted the Calais centre didn’t exist.
We then put up posters in Calais telling Ukrainians there would be “no visas delivered in Calais.” Priti Patel then backtracked and said “but we are planning one” and in the meantime “refugees should phone the free application hotline” instead. You guessed it……the hotline isn’t free and the number didn’t work from outside the UK.
So, to recap……refugees have to walk 2000km to Calais to apply for a visa we won’t give them, at a centre that doesn’t exist and before they enter the UK they have to call a number that only works if they’re already in the UK.
BoJo then announced details of the visas Ukrainians needed to enter the UK…….and the Home Office boasted of “the first visa scheme in the world” to help Ukraine. That’s because all the other countries scrapped visas and just took in terrified refugees.
A website was then created where we can register to house a refugee…..finally some human compassion and spirit could be created in the UK for those that need it. The website then crashed. When it did occasionally work, it was discovered you need to know the individual names of any refugees you wanted to help and the Government wouldn’t assist with that in any way.
Michael Gove had the solution though……he suggested the best way for Ukrainian refugees to let volunteers know their names was to “set up an Instagram account,” quickly learn English and “advertise”.
I genuinely wish I had made all of the above up but I am simply not creative enough to write such nonsense.
Compassion is not complex. Surely?
The Numbers
Whilst the human cost of the conflict in Ukraine is difficult to comprehend, the economic impact can be felt by most in the UK with evidence easy to find.
Russia and Ukraine are big food producers…..they account for 60% of the world’s sunflower oil and 30% of the world’s wheat. No surprise that the cost of both has increased by around 70% during March. Food prices in the UK will only go up as a consequence.
Russia’s economic might, in part, comes from fossil fuels. It is the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas and the second biggest exporter of crude oil…..worth over $160 billion a year. Russia is incredibly unimportant in the global economy……except for oil and gas in reality. It’s basically a big gas station and that funds Russia’s military (at a cost of $62 billion a year).
About 40% of the EU's electricity comes from power stations that burn fossil fuels and Russia is the biggest source of that oil and gas. The EU essentially funds the Russian military.
No surprise that oil jumped to $139 a barrel at one point, the highest level since 2008, while wholesale gas prices for next-day delivery more than doubled.
Ukraine has an abundance of rare-earth elements, extensively used in smartphones, computer hard disks, screens, LED lights and electronic displays. Ukraine produces 70% of the world’s neon gas needed for vehicle chips and this will hit the electric vehicle market.
And all of the above means there is no way the UK can adjust quickly enough to the loss of supply from Ukraine and from Russia……so that adds to prices.
The easiest marker for this is the average price of petrol topping 168p a litre, a 25% increase in a matter of weeks. Higher fuel prices affect virtually every sector, business and industry as it increases costs of transporting goods. That means price inflation on products / services in the UK and this only ever leads to increases in interest rates.
Enter stage right…..the Bank of England increased the base interest rate to 0.75% as inflation hit 6.2% (a 30-year high). The increase in interest rate is the third rise in four months as the Bank of England tries to calm the rise in the cost of living.
Enter stage left…..Rishi Sunak delivered his much anticipated Spring Statement on the eve of the worst-timed tax increase in history — April’s rise in national insurance and the freezing of income tax allowances and thresholds. The main headlines were:
- Economic Growth reduced from 6.0% to 3.8% this year.
- Fuel duty was reduced for 12 months for only the second time in 20 years by 5p at a cost of £5 billion to the Government (fuel duty currently accounts for 57.95p per litre of petrol or diesel).
- VAT was reduced to 0% (from 5%) on all renewal energy installed in homes (solar panels, heat pumps, insulation).
- The National Insurance threshold is to increase to £12,570 at a cost of £6 billion to the Government.
- A promise was given to cut Income Tax from 20% to 19% before the next General Election (2024), which is the first fall in 16 years.
Rishi boasted of "the biggest cut in fuel tax in 70 years", taking petrol prices all the way back to where they were 4 days earlier! It was a very strange Spring Statement.
Whilst it was good to see the rise in the national insurance threshold, there was very little else to address the cost of living crisis beyond a small cut in fuel duty (this will save a typical car fill-up about £3.30). A promise to cut Income Tax by 1% in 2024 was, at best, odd. Certainly a whiff of political gamesmanship before the next General Election.
Talking of which……Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released from prison in Iran after 6 years and 5 different Foreign Secretary failures. The breakthrough came when the £400 million debt the UK owed Iran since the 1970’s (for an unfulfilled weapons deal) was repaid. Why now? I would love to think it was for human compassion but fear that our Government is flirting with Iran’s oil and natural gas reserves at a time that it looks to reduce Russia’s importance. All very sad.
Trump of the Month
In any other month the news of a knighthood for Gavin Williamson would have made Trump of The Month without fail.
Apparently the knighthood is for his “services to the nation” but I’m not convinced he’ll actually find Buckingham Palace. This is the same Gavin Williamson who was sacked by Theresa May over allegations of leaking information from a National Security Council meeting, then sacked by Boris Johnson after presiding over the exams and school closure fiascos during Covid times and telling Russia to “shut up and go away”.
Anyway, Russia didn’t……which brings us to Ukraine.
BoJo as diplomatic as ever on a fragile subject compared the struggle of Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion to people in the UK voting for Brexit. In a speech he said Britons, like Ukrainians, had the instinct "to choose freedom" and cited the 2016 vote to leave the EU as a "recent example".
Really? Nothing quite says “going to war” like voting in a referendum. Idiot.
Then The Trump caught a dose of the, well, errrrr……The Trumps. Unfortunately, The Trump still has access to microphones and he gave us his solution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Musing to donors that “we should take our F-22 planes, put the Chinese flag on them and bomb the sh*t out of Russia. And then we say, China did it, we didn't do it, China did it and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch." This, ladies and gentlemen, is the current red hot favourite to be the next President of America.
In every conceivable way, it is so wrong for this man to be thinking of running for President again.
Williamson, BoJo and The Trump would all be worthy contenders in any other normal month. But this month’s award has to go to Putin yet again.
Really? Because nothing quite says “cooperating normally” like killing innocent people.
Trump Lunacy Rating: 10 / 10
And Finally……
“It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
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