I'm John Batchel with my good colleague, Simon Constable.

He writes for the Wall Street Journal, Barons, and other distinguished publications.

He's in the south of France, observing the news from Great Britain,

where, surprising to everyone, there was a bump in inflation that was not expected to 3.6%.

This is said by the Financial Times headlines to preclude any changes in the tax code or any cut of the rates from the Bank of England that were proposed by Rachel Reeves.

In other words, the taxes are going up.

There's going to be no mortgage break whatsoever.

And by the way, you parents who pay 20% extra for public schools,

that is private schools in Britain,

are going to get no relief whatsoever.

Now, Simon, labor has been troubled for some time. They don't control inflation,

but according to the Financial Times report, this rise in inflation is a product of labor's

policy to raise your national tax, your equivalent of Social Security, to raise that to a higher rate and to

discourage people hiring. How so, Simon? What happened?

I said this is an absolutely fascinating thing, and I saw the flaws in it the moment I heard it

mentioned. So there is something like FICA, which you all know about in America.

It's a social security charges that you have.

And we have it in the UK called National Insurance, but it's the same idea.

The government, the labor government, the new one, said, oh, we will increase the employers'

contribution to national insurance by quite a significant amount based on what it was

before. And of course, those companies have gone through and said, well, okay, well, maybe we won't

hire as many people. And also we'll try and pass on this extra cost to our customers. So the

...