I CAN remember the Conservatives, under Cameron and Osborne, promising to scrap inheritance tax.

Then if I recall correctly, they changed their minds and said it would be only payable on estates over £2 million, then that came down to £1 million.

What did we get this week? “There are to be no changes to the inheritance tax thresholds”, as if that was good news.

They are to make it easier to have mortgages, by using our money, to back those via lenders.

That, as I wrote last time, only keeps up house prices, not brings them down.

I wanted carers, who gave up a working career, to be exempt from IHT. But that came to nothing.

We are to have Freeports around the UK because we are out of the EU.

How is that going to be fair? Any areas not within the Freeport locations won’t have the same advantages.

Who is going to fund those? It won’t be businesses. Most are struggling to stay afloat. It won’t now be foreign investment.

The chancellor accepts that our level of debt will take decades or generations, to get back to a level we can cope with.

In the meantime we have all those wonderful unpaid for schemes from the Prime Minister of how he will make Britain great again. He does not care – it isn’t his money he is wasting.

I get the feeling this government have forgotten there is a world beyond our own coastline.

The EU is now our immediate rival. The rest of the world are our competitors.

London is no longer the financial capital of the world, nor has it been for a very long time. It is not even now (so I believe) the capital for Europe.

On top of all that, the coronavirus/Covid-19 restrictions, once lifted, could lead to it spreading again. The vaccination process is not guaranteed. We won’t know for sure it is working, until well into next year.

We have been given predicted dates for lifting the restrictions but furlough and other support schemes are to remain in place until end of September.

Then we will be again into autumn, the flu season.

Did we OAPs get anything out of the Budget? The cost of living is going up, and yet we do not have any increase to cover the necessary essentials.

Income tax levels should have been changed and create a high one that is 50p on earnings over say, £5 million.

Richard F. Grant

Burley