A video on social media shows Rishi Sunak bragging to Conservative Party Members in Tunbridge how he managed to change the funding formula’s to make sure areas “like this” (Tunbridge – affluent, Conservative), are getting the funding they “deserve”, because the Treasury inherited funding formula’s from Labour that “shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas” and that needed to be “undone”. “I started the work of undoing that”, he goes on to proudly say.
The video proves conclusively that the Conservatives are not interested in “levelling up” and they never were. The fact is that austerity measures imposed by the Conservative Government have sucked billions of pounds out of local economies in “deprived urban areas” (like Bolton, where I live), and that’s why town centres have become such wastelands. Benefits cuts of 75%, and local Government subsidies cut by £60 million a year destroyed local communities. And the result was an ever increasing National Debt. Chancellor George Osborne vowed to eliminate the UK’s deficit by 2015/2016, but this was abandoned in 2017 when the deficit rose to £46 billion, by which time the damage had been done.
Ofgem changes energy price cap changes to every three months (was every six months)
The New Statesman video is here