Sally Allen: Promises of cash for major public projects appear to be worthless

Well, what a mess we are all in now.
It is not surprising that some of us, me included, sometimes think that we are living in some ghastly parallel universe ruled by thieves and villains. A bit Mad Max really. I am daily gob-smacked at the naivety, stupidity, recklessness and down right dishonesty of those who are supposed to be running our country.
We, of course, are not alone in this ghastly scenario, most of the world seems to be in the same state and in some cases, even worse.
I don’t want to depress you all more than you are already but it is unavoidable to ponder that we will all be in a dire and financially devastating situation for at least the next five years. Our new leader always seems to look in a state of panic like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I bet he now wishes he hadn’t been so keen to take the reins.
The only person who seems to have a smile every day as she thrusts yet another killer blow into the country’s finances is Rachel Reeves. She appears to be having a ball with her aggressive cash grab and clearly considers herself to have the answer to all our woes, and yet it seems to me that she is increasing them ten-fold by the minute.
Her manic attack reminds me of the demented Cruella de Vil chasing 101 Dalmatian puppies, only this time we are the puppies! And all this because Rishi called an election too soon!
In my view, the most pressing and serious problem for our already depressed town is the shocking reality of the likelihood of losing the money to complete the building of our hospital. The repercussions will be huge and no doubt in some cases, God-forbid, fatal. I know that our former MP tried his best and believed that all the promises of financial handouts and support were gold-plated, but sadly this was naïve. All the money we were promised by the last government is now unlikely to turn-up because it was just that, a promise and a headline.
I learnt the very hard way that the deal is never done until the money is in your bank account. A salient lesson of mine, when I paid an expensive price for naivety and trust in business was in the 1990s. After securing sponsorship for Jeffrey Archer’s theatre in the West End, which was incidentally the first time a sponsorship had been achieved for the naming rights of a building, I thought I would try some more of the same.
So, flush with my success, I approached the Australian owner of some theatres in the West End and offered to secure a multi-million-pound deal for him. He agreed and we signed a contract on my receiving ten per cent commission. I subsequently secured an international brand and so, fast forward to the signing of the contract with the sponsor.
All went well until after the signatures were dry and he asked to have a private word with me. He took out our contract and tore it up in front of me. He then told me that now he had the money (millions!), he wouldn’t need me anymore. Quite a shock, as you can imagine.
I obviously protested, but as he accurately told me, he was the richest man in the world at the time and so, what on earth could I do to claim the money he owed me for doing the deal for him. In a word ‘zilch’.
Sometimes life is just very unfair, because clearly, he was right. Try as you might, and I do, you just can’t win a battle against such power. Nobody has a done deal until the money is in the bank. I sincerely hope that there are not too many more such promises that the Labour government will now renege on but I feel that there will be plenty.
In the first few weeks of taking power, Starmer and his Labour government have presided over numerous riots and cut old-age pensioners' winter fuel allowance. Not a great start.
The unrest in the country is evident to all and Starmer is lurching from one Cobra meeting to the next. We can all blame the last Government for spending all our money during Covid, but I am not sure that they had many alternatives. At the time, they weren’t sure what they were dealing with. Sweden is held up as the gold standard now because it didn’t close down during the pandemic and also had fewer deaths. Easy to say now. I refer you to a quote from Robin Sharma: “The real trick in life is to turn hindsight into foresight that reveals insight.”
It is rumoured that all our taxes are going to be hiked to the max and deposit interest has already been cut. We are heading for the most eye-watering taxes and public service cuts since Sir Stafford Cripps’ rigid austerity programme as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1947–50).
I don’t pretend that I know or understand what the hell is going on or what the answers are. I thought that we were supposed to have turned a corner and inflation was under control just as Sunak was leaving office. I understand that there is a massive hole in the finances but too much austerity too soon is going to make things even worse. And whatever happened to the promises NOT to raise taxes?
House building initiatives are obviously good. Building infrastructure and housing always helps kick start economies but the time structures and numbers seem to be too quick and high to make them realistic. So, it will mean yet more pain along the way.
In Torbay it appears that councillors Dave Thomas and Chris Lewis are facing a very big challenge in being given the target of building a thousand new homes every year for the next 20 years. All laudable until you are charged with having to find the land and the cash to actually do it. Not an easy task, although when I met with them the other day, they both appeared to be up for the challenge. We all need some luck going forward and we all need to support each other. In the meantime, remember Churchill’s famous edict: ‘KBO’ (keep buggering on)!