Just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse along comes a record leap in the cost of living.
The soaring inflation, confirmed yesterday, of 5.1%, is the highest for a decade.
Put simply, it means that the £1 pot of jam you bought last month is going to cost £1.05p this month.
Except that it is not just jam prices that have risen.
Food, petrol and energy costs have all gone through the roof and consumers are going to take a big hit in their pockets running up to Christmas and into next year.
A global shutdown and pandemic have caused some of these soaring costs but the Tory government has done nothing to help the situation.
Brexit, which cost the UK economy £12billion in lost trade last October alone, also tore out a skilled and willing European workforce from the country.
Boris Johnson promised that wages would rise to meet the demand for vacancies but he has inflated his promises as much as prices have increased.
Real terms wage cuts, not rises, loom for many in the new year.
On top of that, Rishi Sunak and Johnson have increased taxes by hiking national insurance to pay for social care in England so that the rich do not have to sell their houses in old age.
The impact of price rises in petrol, food and clothes have all become greater because of the Tories’ incompetent handling of the economy.
Tories must stop looking other way
It is very likely that Drug Consumption Rooms will be coming to the UK, whether Boris Johnson and his crime and policing minister Kit Malthouse like it or not.
Scotland’s Lord Advocate has given the green light and several police commissioners in England and Wales are known to be highly sympathetic to the facilities which would tackle increasing drug deaths.
Given the record number of fatalities in England and Wales, you might think it sensible for the Westminster Tories to engage with those seeking to drag the United Kingdom into the 21st century on drugs policy.
But this government doesn’t do sensible.
And Kit Malthouse looks as if he is increasingly detached from reality as he yet again refuses to even visit a DCR to explore what benefits to society it might bring.
With lives being lost every day, he cannot justify simply looking the other way.
