Talk Radio across the UK, online, on DAB and on your smart speaker, the Independent Republic of Mike Graham, on Talk Radio.

Good morning and welcome to the Independent Republic of Mike Graham right here on Talk Radio, the world headquarters of common sense.

We've been elevated, yes. It used to just be the home of common sense and that's the world headquarters.

So there, we agreed this morning by an entire catalogue of failure that we're supposed to be surprised about, right?

And as ever, I'll be setting out the stall here at the Independent Republic with the truth about what it all really means.

Apparently, the first proper inquiry into the COVID crisis has come up with several major problems.

One, care home residents died needlessly and the elderly were just an afterthought.

Two, thousands of deaths could have been prevented.

Three, the test and trace system was nothing short of useless and chaotic.

And four, ministers were blinded by groupthink amongst the

scientific advisors. In short, all the things that we said here for months at talk radio

that have now turned out to be true. Is anybody really surprised by this? Meanwhile, we are now

being told the tax rate in our incomes to pay for social care, which kicks in next April,

is it going to be enough to pay for anything other than the NHS in its short-term problems? We'll knock me down with a feather. Now the Institute for Fiscal Studies says

more taxes will have to be brought in. Marvelous, isn't it? And from his luxury villa in Marbea,

which probably doesn't need much heating at the moment, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared

that he's going to bail out energy-intensive industries with state loans. That's more taxpayers' money to me and you,

because the price of energy is apparently going through the roof.

Nobody can do anything about it.

03444-49-1,000.

Help us navigate our way through all this.

I'm joined this morning by John Rental,

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