all right alexander let's talk about the uk economy and the budget that has been passed by

sir kier stomer what uh what are your first thoughts on his budget well i mean this has been

heavily trailed over the last couple of weeks and basically ever since the election, I should

say that the Labour Party gave everybody to think during the election and before that they were

not planning to increase taxes to any great extent. And the election came. They immediately said that they've discovered a

20 billion pound hole in the British budget that needed to be closed. And a lot of people

were rightly cynical about that because everybody knew about this 20 billion pound hole even before

during the election itself as everybody it was discussed in the media so i mean this is not any

great revelation and then we got weeks of preparation there was going to be big big tax increases

and that there was going to be a period of austerity and all of that.

And we got the budget yesterday. And in some respects, in many respects, it was exactly as we'd been

led to expect. This was a huge budget increase. 40 billion pounds. That's, I think,

just over around $60 billion, not quite that much. But anyway, it was a very, very big

tax increase for an economy the size of Britons. And loaded very heavily, by the way, on employers.

So employers, businesses are going to have to play significantly higher taxes

if they hire more workers.

I mean, we have a very complicated tax system in Britain, but basically we have

something called national insurance, which contrary to its name is basically simply a tax.

Everybody has to pay, is obliged to pay national insurance contributions as part of their tax, as part of their wage or salary or income packets.

And for every worker, the employer also has to pay contributions in national insurance contributions.

So it's effectively, it's a tax on workers. If any company employs workers,

it plays a tax on them. So bigger companies, companies which have more than four workers,

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