Soaring inflation, rising energy costs and rocketing food prices have been with us for months but it is only now, suddenly, that the Tory government has seen fit to act.
Can it be coincidence that their sudden concern for the lives of ordinary voters has come at the exact moment Boris Johnson is trying to save his skin?
Of course it isn’t. It is a cynical ploy.
The shower of generosity from the Chancellor is a quite deliberate effort to distract from the drunken antics of Johnson’s boozy lockdown parties in Downing Street. Of course, voters will not forget the lies and the rule breaking.
Labour have shouted for a windfall tax more than 250 times since energy prices went up. The Tories argued against.
Now they pull a windfall tax and cash payments out of the hat when they desperately need a “dead cat” on the table.
We will be back here in a few months because the Chancellor and the Tory party have little interest in tackling the true causes of poverty and inequality.
That much is obvious in the small print of the offer. Sure, low-income households, pensioners and the disabled will benefit from a windfall tax on the big oil companies.
But with the other hand, Sunak is offering tax breaks worth billions to the big corporations. Between them, Shell and BP are making £40billion of global profits this year. A real windfall tax would raise much more than the £5billion Sunak is taking in from the North Sea.
Wages in the UK have scarcely risen for a decade but the price of essential goods, like energy and food supplies that are in the hands of large powerful companies, have risen exponentially in a wave of profiteering. Tax breaks for the rich and giant corporations have to end.
Only a fairer society and economy will sort out the grinding poverty so many of our citizens endure.
And the Tories – despite yesterday’s smoke and mirrors – are simply not capable of delivering that.
Time for an update
Scotland's creaking and outdated legal establishment has been due an upgrade for decades.
For that reason, the boss of the Faculty of Advocates, Roddy Dunlop, is to be commended for ordering a review of the organisation he leads.
He appears sincere in his pursuit of meaningful change for women in the Faculty and in demanding QCs show all females in society the respect they deserve.
But it should not have taken the recent Gordon Jackson and Brian McConnachie cases to be the catalysts of change.
The Faculty must drag itself from 1532, when it was founded, into the post #Metoo world – which will not tolerate sexist attitudes.
Our justice system must change – or it will simply lose the confidence of the people it is supposed to serve.
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