Financial literacy is a prerequisite for the best leadership jobs AMC manages, maybe not a Harvard MBA but at least the ability to construct and abide by a budget. And yet … do we see matching economics rationality in the policies and debates of national politicians and pundits? The pivotal pupil premium is determined by the sledge-hammer ratio of pupils on free lunches while Jeremy Corbyn now wants all primary school children to have free breakfasts. This makes as much sense as giving Mrs Millard a winter heating allowance! There is real inequity now in the funding of rural and urban schools with typical metrosexual blindness to the idea that the countryside also houses poverty. At a slightly less banal level, and with spending pressures from the NHS, social care and defence growing relentlessly, there is the increasingly pertinent question of tax rates and the need to reverse the downward trend to both corporate and personal levels. The hard fact is that funded public expenditure will need to grow if we are to keep our social cohesion and civilised standards. Normally the political cycle makes it almost impossible for prime ministers to take truly radical steps. Theresa May, however, has an extraordinary opportunity with the near-certainty of a further eight years in office. I never thought I would come to this conclusion, but let’s pay more tax and spend the money wisely. There is “such a thing as society”! Theresa May, the vicar’s daughter and grammar school girl knows this. And just in case you have forgotten your David Copperfield “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and sixpence, result misery”. Be warned!
Anthony Millard
Executive Chairman and Director
