The one thing to know about Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak is to read the small print in his announcements, not just the headline figures.
This weekend he was already caught out recycling budget cash as new money when in fact the funding had already been committed.
The chancellor’s boastful claim that a 59p rise in the National Living Wage makes the Tories the real party of the working class is a classic distraction from the damage which Sunak has already inflicted on low-paid workers.
The Treasury claims the hourly rise will mean a full-time worker on the living wage will get a pay rise of more than £1000 per year.
But that is so obviously not true.
When the recent Universal Credit cut, looming tax rises, and rising inflation are taken into account the £1000 will be worth almost half the gross sum.
What’s left will be swallowed up by the cost of living crisis that the Tories are doing nothing to address.
The chancellor and his party are trying to dress up what is a meagre increase and pretending it’s going to make a difference.
Left in the hands of the Tories, the cost of the Covid recovery, like the cost of the banking crisis, will be borne on the backs of the poor with continued austerity and disproportionate taxes.
At the same time, banks are given a tax break and their pals and party donors are led up the VIP lane for lucrative government contracts.
Don’t be fooled by Sunak’s smoke and mirrors.
Voice from pulpit
The Daily Record has been campaigning for drug policy reform for years – but we’d scarcely have believed the rapid turnaround in attitudes in recent times.
Our bold and radical front page in August, 2019 pleaded the case for decriminalising drug possession.
We could scarcely have believed that in two short years we’d be writing about the support from all political parties, barring, of course, the Tories.
We now witness the incoming Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Rev Iain Greenshields, using news of his appointment to put the spotlight on decriminalisation.
Rev Greenshields knows his stuff, having worked for years in Scottish prisons, where the problems of addiction are plain to see.
He could have chosen any topic to announce himself as a powerful voice in Scottish society.
It is to his great credit that he has chosen to focus on this genuine emergency as an area where the whole country should unite.
