Given it’s self-assessment season, here’s a fun one. The bean counters over at HMRC spent 2025 beefing up their Diversity and Equality team throughout the year. Obviously at the expense of the taxpayer…
From January to September last year, HMRC spent an eye-watering £1,521,902 on total salary costs for its DEI team. The monthly costs to employ DEI staff have been ticking up, starting at £167,537 in January to £187,188 in September. Co-conspirators can use their imagination as to what they actually do. It’s probably not picking up the customer service helpline…
The government hands out £25 “Simply Thanks” awards to civil servants as an acknowledgement of their great work. In HMRC’s DEI team alone, 20 were given out between January and September. Nine of those awards were given out a month after staff planned an event titled “The Guilt of Being British” during working hours…
Former Treasury minister and adviser to Burnham in the Makerfield campaign Lord Jim O’Neill, who has turned down a role in his government, said Burnham’s first statement Commons was:
“The last thing investors wanted to hear… gilt yields have risen by a 0.25% in one day, which is a lot. We’ve not had that since Liz Truss days… If your country is under the focus of ‘can they come up with a sensible fiscal strategy’ on a day when the markets think ‘well no, you’re not showing any sign of it’ you’re going to have a tough day…if it stays like this your mortgage rate is going up.”