Labour are going to crash the economy/jobs market.

We've had increasingly left wing governance in Scotland for the past 20 years, and they've run us into the ground. Idealistic policies that, in the end, help no one. They've chipped away at incentive, chipped it to the bare bones.
In Scotland, if you endeavour to a better standard of living you're obliged to shoulder an increasingly bigger tax burden to fund an extra 20 quid for the chronically unemployed better services (our services are shit, and getting shittier).

Truss was an absolute bomb scare. It's interesting though that, on these chats, no one references the turn around Sunak orchestrated. Sunak was (every day of the week) a better punt for PM than Starmer.

So you want to get rid of him based on his performance and competence? You have valid reasons for ending his contract. You're not planning on dismissing him unfairly, or firing him to employ someone else on lower pay. What's the problem? - you performance manage them and if they don't shape up you can fire them.

They're even proposing a consultation on a statutory probation period.

I absolutely agree with you OP. I've said it many times over the last few days - I'm absolutely sick to death of being portrayed as some kind of fat cat whose riches are because of my exploited underlings, simply because I employ a couple of young people part time.

This shower of total shit don't have a clue that anything out there exists other than the public sector and so called "big business". They appear have no idea that a very large number of people in this country make their living as sole trading microbusinesses, who work extremely hard and turn a modest profit. Certainly whose income is less than it would be if their worked for the local council or the NHS, for example.. Yesterday I had to work alone because a last minute job came up I couldn't afford to turn down though I had no staff - she was having a day's paid holiday. I don't begrudge her it, but I don't get paid holiday (or sick pay). If they want me to pay more NI on her behalf, fine. I'll make less profit, so they'll make less income tax from me, I'll have less money to spend in other businesses so I reduce their profit, and I'll pay less VAT on the things I buy.

I will have less to save into my private pension, you know that private pension I'm told is absolutely essential as they increase the age of my state pension again and again, and oh, we'll tax that too. Because you know, black hole. Not our fault.

They appear to be classing everything that has always been VAT free as "a loophole". They are ignoring the fact that as well as paying VAT, VAT registered businesses are also able to claim VAT, therefore there are a large number of wealthy private schools who have had capital investment in the last ten years who will be backdating their claims. Will they start charging VAT on nursery and childcare provision now? University fees? These are all education settings. Are they "loopholes" as well?

This policy was dangled in front of the electorate as a vote winner when they ignored the obvious implications, and now they are too stubborn to backtrack.

Fucking morons. They are doing a brilliant job of making this country swing hard to the right, and then we'll end up with morons of the opposite persuasion in charge, and I'm not talking about the Conservative party.

The hospitals and school and all public services must just run by themselves then. Odd as I always thought the corporate private sector paid for that, and our extortionate taxes.

Yes we are absolutely doomed. Labour have started so badly and it’s only downhill from here my friend. Buckle up. They have no idea what they are doing.

YANBU. I hired someone earlier this year. He did a good interview but it’s become very clear to me despite all the training and support we have given him that he’s not up to the job and now I’m worried that it’s going to be difficult to terminate his employment. If I’m stuck with him it means I will have no option but to find another job and leave and he will be someone else’s problem. Just today they have announced that mortgage lenders are increasing mortgage rates. Employer nation insurance contributions now look like they are going to go up. Shops and businesses will be closing. And it’s only been 100 days.

They had 14 years to prepare for this moment. I’m guessing they will still be blaming the Tories in 5 years time come the next election.

Quote fail. Meant to quote @Williamborris

Indeed, come and join us on the jobhunter thread on the work forum if you like! There are a few of us bemoaning our fate - I have never struggled like I have now. If nothing else it helps to realise that it's not you - it's the market. Quite a few of us in the same boat wondering just how it has come to this.

Some.people (usually wealthy ones) have always complained and resisted when workers rights have been strengthened. There was a huge outcry when the national minimum wage was introduced saying businesses would collapse and it would be Armageddon. That didn't happen. Instead the National wage became policy for all political parties.

Heaven forbid anyone should think of the people other than corporate greed. Must be such a shock to the grasping.

Our micro business won’t be hiring any staff. Fortunately we can run it like that passive income.

@ForPearlViper I agree. Our political system is completely dysfunctional and encourages exactly this type of adversarial nonsense, political point scoring and complete lack of any rationality or evidence-based long-term policy that requires cross-party working and a jointly agreed long-term plan for things like education, health, infrastructure, industrial strategy, trade.

With the level of economic and political knowledge of the average UK citizen and our dysfunctional system where we never have a Government that behaves rationally and acts in the best interests of the country as a whole, the ongoing decline in our relative wealth and living standards is not remotely surprising and unlikely to be reversed. I mean, this is a place where just a few years ago we had people voting for Brexit while openly stating that they knew would make everyone much poorer and they were happy to do so anyway. Then they complain there's no money for public services. Likewise many of the ideologically driven Labour supporters haven't the faintest grasp of economics or international markets function and how policies impact real-world outcomes. While we have a large proportion of the population so ideologically driven that they will happily vote for insane policies without any analysis of the expected effects (and it's not like we have to forecast this, we can simply look at the large data sets from other countries to see the economic impact of different tax and economic and trade and public service structures in reality) there's little hope of any change for the better.

YABU. We don't know the rest of the budget yet.

Labour, by definition are the party of working people.

Employment is high, there are labour shortages and unemployment is low.

Perfect time to protect workers' rights.

DH has one. Although, presumably people that don’t have one can also offer opinions so I’m not sure why it’s relevant.

Was this aimed at me? If so you are way off the mark. I have nothing but disgust for both sets of incompetent idiots and none of my posts have anything to do with ideology, rather evidence-based economic policy making and have specifically stated that the entire problem is that we have ideologically driven incompetent people in charge in perpetuity as we oscillate from one nonsensical ideology to the other, neither of which address the long-term problems that have led to the significant decline in living standards in the UK and will continue to do so for as long as this continues, with the electorate making facile whataboutery comments justifying this incompetence by comparing the current incompetence to previous incompetence that was even worse that what we're seeing now (so far).

As I said, very depressing that everyone's bar is so low for what they expect our leaders to do, and that they are sucked into such pathetic ideologically driven nonsense that they cannot rationally look at the evidence and economic facts and what will actually work and instead insist on looking at everything through this false Labour/ Conservative lens. And not only that, but try to characterise the comments of others as being part of this and supporting the other incompetent idiots because they don't support the current incompetent idiots, even when I had specifically stated very clearly that they are both incompetent idiots.

The areas of policy that I stated need addressing have been addressed by neither so how you interpreted this as support for the Conservatives is beyond me. Not to mention that I also noted how damaging Brexit has been. But you carry on with your pseudo-left/ right war. And everything else will carry on exactly as it has been too, exactly because of attitudes like yours where people want to engage in an ideological nonsense debate instead of demanding politicians address the UK's economic problems.

Oh, and similar question to that put to the OP.

What's your direct experience of running a micro business?

Going to be a boom industry this year - if it wasn’t already.

What’s your opinion on Brexit ?

Of course they can get rid of them.
They just won't be able to arbitrarily decide to get rid of them on Monday morning.

Small business owner with employees so your target audience. I will adsorb these costs because it's the right thing to do. People should have the right to be well treated in the workplace.

Liz Truss et al did FAR more to destabilise my business than Labour are promising. I have far less respect for them. Liz can absolutley get in the bin.

Oh me too.

Did Kier Starmer eat your hamster too, OP?

Actually, I Iargely agree with you. My comment was a knee jerk reaction to the posters parroting the 'two tier Kier' idiocy the right wing tabloids are bleating at the moment.

I've read some extracts from the Sam Freeman book, Failed State - Why Nothing Works and How to Fix It and am waiting for it on order. I don't know if you've seen it?

My view is a lot of our problems arise from the combative two party system we have (which is becoming even more partisan) which makes any sensible long term planning impossible on the major issues we face. We need good collaborative, evidence based planning. If you watch the House of Commons set up with two opposing sides facing each other and and the schoolboy jeering we hear at PMQ you realise how far we are away from that. Public school debating societies have a lot to answer for.

Of course they will. In a small business with 3 employees, if one employee is useless and/or takes the piss with their sick days or general absences, they make up 25% of the work force. The other employees and owner have to pick up the slack, lose business and the business owner will still have to pay them sick pay (if they are ill) and can’t get rid of them (if they are just crap). Most small business owners don’t have that sort of money. A good business owner will always make sure his staff and any creditors are paid first and take his wage second - sometimes this isn’t even minimum wage depending on how well the business has done that month.