My Favourite Holiday

As part of my sorting out, I came across these tickets from my favourite holiday in Egypt with my sister A, starting in Cairo and doing the Pyramids and the fab Cairo Museum; then getting the sleeper train to Luxor; a few days there including a dawn balloon flight which went over Colossi of Memnon, a visit to the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Hatshepsut and Luxor temple; then doing a cruise down the Nile and back including a trip to the amazing Abu Simbel. It was such a great holiday that I decided to keep the ticket stubs as mementos. 

For my Record Only
I’ve been watching a few of the election debates and am getting fed up of the vagueness of a lot of promises, the misleading or absent statements on funding / cuts to public services and the false impression being given on what is achievable. The politicians should at least treat the public with respect and be honest with us and not treat us like children that can’t be told the truth. Just one example from one party, income tax will ‘absolutely not go up’ whereas the truth is it will in real terms as thresholds will remain frozen. We’re all feeling it so much as in the two years from Sept 21 to Sept 23 the CPI went up 17.43% and the RPI including housing costs went up 22.62%. The Govt has spent / borrowed c£500bn to support us all through Covid and the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war, taking total debt to £2,659.4bn in Feb 2024. This and interest rate rises means that the Govt in the tax year 24/5 is forecast to spend £89bn just on debt interest, which is 7.3% of total public spending. The equivalent spent during Covid was between £4,600 and £6,100 per person in the UK (per a House of Commons paper) and then each household got £400 in energy support. You don’t need to be great with finances / numbers to know that that realistically needs repaying by all of us over time in a greater overall tax take AND cuts to services. The only questions should be who will the tax increases fall on and which services will be cut - I’d like to know each Party’s honest and full answers on this. Growth IS the way out, but the benefits won’t be felt for years, so again I’d like to know what each Party’s full and realistic ‘cunning plan’ for achieving growth is, what initial investment is required, and what benefits will be achieved and when. I also get annoyed that the Govt is seen as solving all problems, what are CEOs of companies being paid the huge salaries and bonuses for? As for the problem areas like Health and Social Care, again what are the ‘cunning plans’ of each Party ( as well as the NHS executive) to deliver more within cost restraints. Rant over, maybe I should stop watching the coverage!!!