[spireitematt]

None of it adds up though. By increasing National Insurance contributions they are hoping to raise £36 billion over 3 years and then when we hit 2024 (election year) the contributions will go back to 12%. The £36 billion, £5.4 billion of that will go into social care but where is the other £30.6 billion going? The whole point of National Insurance is it's meant to be for pensions and the NHS etc and because it isn't ring fenced when it should be then they could use the money for something else. It is time now the NHS was stopped being used as political football and became independent and a cross party committee sat down and worked it out, it badly needs reform as does the welfare state.

Been in for 11 years and they've made a mess with Brexit and the Covid pandemic. It's come out that exports from Britain to Germany are down by 11% and that we are not Germany's top 10 trading partner anymore like we were for 50 years but imports from Germany are up by 2.6% so we are importing more from Germany then we are exporting to Germany which will hurt small and medium sized businesses, this is before we even have a trade deal with the EU, then there is the Irish border to sort out as well. A lot of people seem to think that Brexit is done and dusted but it isn't far from it and they are going to get a big shock come 31st December when the transition period with the EU comes to an end and we don't have a trade deal. A lot of the World has shortages due to the Covid pandemic etc but we can't blame everything on Covid, a lot of it has to do with Brexit and piss poor planning from the Tories. They put on the side of the big red bus that we would save £350m a week and we could put that into the NHS but where is it? It turns out that we are losing £800m a week and it's cost £200 billion in total.

A lot of voters only seem to care now that the National Insurance increase will affect them but they weren't angry about austerity, children going hungry, they weren't angry about the Covid deaths or when the Government lied to us several times. It was the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude, as long as they were doing ok and that it didn't affect them then they didn't care about anyone else and it's an extremely selfish attitude and outlook to have. I didn't vote for Brexit even though I have eurosceptic views about the EU and the reason I didn't vote for it because I didn't trust Johnson and what they were saying and will never trust a Tory, I knew that they weren't going to give £350m a week to the NHS but some people fell for it.