A pricier brew is just one of many unintended consequences for ‘working people’ of Labour’s short-sighted tax hike

Bitter blow

REMEMBER Labour MPs cheering Rachel Reeves to the rafters as her Budget lopped a PENNY off a £5 pint?

Even that tiny act of generosity looks set to be cancelled out tenfold by the rise in employers’ National Insurance.

A pricier brew is just one of many unintended consequences for “working people” of that short-sighted tax hike.

The Government might genuinely have believed it was only hammering big employers.

Except they will recoup their costs via lower pay rises and fewer staff.

And those employers include GPs’ surgeries, care homes and nurseries.

We ALL suffer from their costs soaring.

The defence that workers were spared because there was no specific extra tax on their pay no longer holds water.

When Labour slaps its planned on concert tickets to fund smaller venues, who do they think pays that?

Again, it’s working people, charged ever more eye-watering sums for a night out.

Merely going to a gig is becoming a luxury they cannot afford.

The boss of Fullers brewery says Labour’s tax rises weren’t thought through.

It’s increasingly hard to disagree.

‘Hate’ fiasco

POLICE cannot spare manpower to investigate burglaries — yet they can send two cops to harangue a journalist at her home over a punchy tweet sent a year earlier.

What appalling over-reach.

What grim irony, too, that it should happen on Remembrance Sunday as the nation honoured those who fell defending free speech and democracy.

Incredibly, the Essex coppers apparently refused to tell respected columnist Allison Pearson either what she was alleged to have said or who complained.

That is sinister and outrageous. She has a right to know what she is accused of.

Cops claim they are probing a remark likely, illegally, to “cause racial hatred”.

Really? Or did Ms Pearson simply say something someone, somewhere found “offensive”?

She says the officers told her she was reported for a “non-crime hate incident”.

Which is it?

Police must come clean, or stand accused of an Orwellian assault on free speech.

A new ear-a

HE has his critics, but Gary Lineker knows footie and is a natural in front of a camera.

Which are the only attributes the BBC should consider when it comes to his best replacement.

Match of the Day fans tune in for the action and a little expert analysis.

They aren’t remotely concerned with a ­presenter’s gender, celebrity or Instagram following.

Such idiotic woke obsessions have already made the BBC’s Football Focus a laughing stock.

One own-goal is bad enough. Another would be catastrophic.