Our PM lives in a different world

[Marmablade]

Article on BBC News today reporting Rishi Sunak reassuring people to hold their nerve and get through high interest rates.

This is the man who paid £325,826 in capital gains tax and £120,604 in UK income tax on a total of £1.9m in the last tax year.

Of that £1.9m, £156,163 came from his parliamentary salary, £173,398 come from investment and savings income and about £1.641m from capital gains - profit made on the sale of assets.

How can a man with an income of £1.9m a year possibly understand what the average person is feeling right now?? Holding our nerve won't pay the mortgage this month.

BBC News - Rishi Sunak urges people to hold their nerve on interest rates
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66012301

There are a lot of people "in charge" who have no idea at all about ordinary people and how we live. Not just Tories, but the other political parties as well (Sir Keir isn't short of money) The trouble is - what can we, the ordinary people, ever do about it?

Set up an alternative political party?

Ah. Rishi Sunak man of the people again. Takes a dream holiday whilst the country worries about how it's going to afford to eat over the summer and heat over the winter.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/02/rishi-sunak-heads-to-california-for-special-trip-with-family

We can vote them out when it’s time, and in the meantime write to our MPs to express our dissatisfaction.

I can't believe I am going to say this but he and his family can take a holiday! Crikey I get a UC top up, I'm a single parent and have recently returned from two weeks in the sun. Focus on the actual bad stuff the idiot is doing, taking his family on holiday is not one of them

www.instagram.com/p/CvZ-vhLMZdb/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

FFS focus on how he does the job, not on how much money he has in the bank.

The problem is how much money he has in the bank affects how he does his job.

He can afford high food, utilities and lending costs. He has wiggle in his budget.

The rest of us don't and are paying the prices for his decision making. Prices he can afford because he has money in the bank.

@MadamWhiteleigh okay... he's doing a SHITE job

https://metro.co.uk/2023/08/02/rishi-sunak-tells-man-with-2800-mortgage-bills-to-talk-to-the-bank-19233413/?

The man cannot afford the increases that have been foisted on him. Of course he should talk to his bank but they are going to want their money back. Or the house.

He's a tool, in booth senses of the word. Politics is just sport for the well informed at this point. I have given up, I could vote for labour I suppose, doubt they would do anything different, before anyone says it no I will not be voting tory either. Spoiling the ballot I guess, for what scant good it would do.

@IheardYouButDontWantToAnswer

"(Sir Keir isn't short of money) "

No he isn't. He has plenty of money that he earned. Is that a problem to you?

I know the aliens are coming and he’s at Disneyland

I think the significant point from the stats that you quote is that the Prime Minister seems to think it is perfectly fine for him to pay a smaller proportion of his income in tax than a teacher or nurse.

I wonder why there is no money for the government to pay for anything?

The whole point of the Tories is to keep the wealth of the country in the hands of the few and being in Government is just a way of facilitating that. Why people who don't belong to that demographic vote to disadvantage themselves so that the ultra privileged can stay rolling in unearned and untaxed wealth is beyond baffling. A credible socialist (champagne or not) party alternative would help but we don't have one.

you seem to have missed the point? The OP is attacking the PM on the grounds that he is wealthy so cannot understand the plight of those who are not. In that context it seems relevant to point out that LOTO is in the same position.

I think he has no idea that most people earn money and that is all they have. No extra sources of income from family wealth. He has no idea that interest rates rising or pay not increasing with inflation can devastate people.

Come on mate. You don’t think that. You can’t be that daft.

This.

Another one who apparently thinks that you can do PPE at Oxford, work at Goldman Sachs, hold more than one role in HMT and still have less understanding of interest rates than a goldfish.
this would all be very funny if these people didn’t have the vote.

Having met quite a number of people who have done PPE at Oxford I think it perfectly possible they have little idea how much of the world works.

Harsh but he’s more honest than Bojo and cleverer than Truss. Low bar and all.

More honest than Bojo?

Marginal at best.

Don't forget that Sunak was also fined for breaking covid laws at the same time as Johnson, and sat next to Johnson as the latter said to parliament on many occassions that no laws were broken in Downing Street. I struggle to believe that Sunak did not know that the law had been broken. If he was honest he would have resigned the first time Johnson lied to parliament.

Keir Starmer had a pretty regular upbringing and has earnt his money. Not inheritance, not by marrying a super-rich heiress.

Many politicians are in the 99%. Sunak is very, very wealthy and hasn't got a clue.

Well all I can say is we need to fire the entire civil service and start again. All those highly paid officials and according to MN, Not only has Mr Sunak managed to grow up in the UK (from actually quite an ordinary middle class background) understanding less than almost anyone alive over the age of 18 about the uk economy, there is no one in Whitehall who has explained it to him. Fire the bastard lot of them.