The Chancellor's Budget season is upon us and "winter is coming" says Alex Massie.

1. Government debt costs hitting crisis levels

“If debt interest payments are running at more than 100 billion pounds a year, that is by definition 50 or 60 billion pounds a year that can't be spent elsewhere.” (Alex Massie)

2. Labour’s tax promises already collapsing

“It becomes absolutely unambiguously clear that the Labour Party's pledge to the voters in the general election last year in relation to not raising taxes on working people is simply not going to hold.” (Bernard Ponsonby)

3. Property tax and home sales under threat

“One is an annual levy basically on the value of houses above a certain threshold, possibly as low as five hundred thousand pounds… The other proposal floated… is that the government might impose capital gains tax on the sale of family homes.” (Alex Massie)

4. Pension age rising to 70 and triple lock scrapped

“For people who are in the workplace at the moment, they can probably look towards a state pension age of about 70. In terms of the long-term sustainability of this, if you want to keep it at the same proportion of GDP, then it is inevitable that the triple lock will have to go.” - Bernard Ponsonby, 20:18)

5. Scottish independence economics look dire

“You would be starting with a deficit which you would have to service, which would be even bigger than that which the remaining countries of the UK would have to service and therefore you would be borrowing probably at punitive levels of interest rates or… into big tax increases or the kind of public expenditure cuts which would make you a very unpopular government on day one.” -Bernard Ponsonby

Focussing on UK, Scottish and Global politics, if you like other great political podcasts like The Rest is Politics, The News Agents, Newscast, Questions Time, Holyrood Sources, Planet Holyrood, The Stooshie, The Steamie, Scotcast, Americast etc etc then The Ponsonby and Massie Podcast could be a great show to add to your list of favourites.

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