New figures from the Office for National Statistics today show that public service productivity continues to fail to recover from its pandemic-era crash and has actually fallen by 1.1% in Q2 2023 compared to the year before. Inputs grew faster than outputs by 0.6%. CEBR notes that “without productivity growth, the economy cannot prosper – a continuation of this trend would mean that taxes will rise while public services will collapse for lack of funding in a death spiral”. Robbing individuals and the productive private sector to fund failing public services is a recipe for doom loops…

Now that taxes are so high our overlords at HMRC can afford to put their feet up – they had the fewest staff out of the entire civil service in the office last week, with only 41% turning up. Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed…