This week..
Cavalier govt is not looking to the future
Regarding your article ‘Industry cautious about PM’s 95 per cent mortgage plans’ (Oct 5).
I am really wondering about this government’s accounting skills.
Our national debt, at more than £2tn, is now higher than our GDP.
Then we have the scheduled expenditure for HS2, predicted to be well in excess of £73bn. And then we have the wind turbines.
Boris Johnson wants to commit £50bn to build one wind generator every weekday for 10 years.
Furthermore we have the unknown costs of Brexit and how much more will be needed to further combat Covid-19.
And now he wants the government to stand as a guarantor for 95 per cent mortgages. I shudder to think what this will cost.
Then further into the future we will have a pretty hefty slug of student debt, which won’t be repaid and will fall onto the exchequer.
I have left out all the other large items of expenditure. Of course we will need at least two new atomic power stations once the government stops prevaricating. These cost in the region of £20bn each.
The numbers are mind numbing and this government is just spraying money around with little or no thought to the future.
Heaven knows what our tax burden will be like in three or four years’ time and what inflation will look like.
But then it seems likely that this won’t be the current government’s problem – so no wonder they are cavalier.
Harry Katz
HA7 Consulting
Advice solution
Following you article ‘Advice “marketplace” solution pitched to FCA’ (Oct 8).
This is a good idea. Most people don’t need ongoing advice, which would involve paying an annual fee.
Nice annuity income for the adviser but often not needed by the investor.
I am a finance professional, having spent my career in asset management and so manage my own self-invested personal pension, and I work on this basis.
For example, pensions are of Byzantine complexity and I am not a pensions expert up to date with the latest twist invented by whichever chancellor happens to be in post.
So when I want to make a small change I consult someone I know to be really expert and I’m happy to pay a couple of hundred quid for advice that is going to prevent me falling into some arcane tax trap.
If more people who had been offered buyouts from defined benefit schemes had simply given their age, state of health and basic details of the DB scheme they were in, most of them would have been told ‘don’t take the actuaries’ shilling: stick where you are’.
Name and address supplied
Crypto ban
Regarding your article ‘FCA bans crypto derivatives to save investors £53m a year’ (Oct 6).
