Chris Fox
5K posts
The Government's Holiday Tax Bill could add more than £100 to the cost of a family two-week holiday, during a cost-of-living crisis. “For some people, it will mean they can’t afford the holiday,” @allen_m_simpson, our Chief Executive, told ITV News.
Celtic were awarded a penalty following this incident x.com/jeremydokubelg…
Husbands with second, third and even fourth wives living in the UK have had their benefits allowance increased by the Department for Work and Pensions. dailysceptic.org/2026/05/10/hus…
Full disclosure, for the majority of my career I’ve been an operator, and I know what it feels like to go to bed hoping tomorrow’s cash flow will enable you to pay tomorrow’s bills. My heart goes out to anyone experiencing the sleepless nights that come with running a business and being responsible for the livelihoods of their teams, and their families. This weekend held one ambition, dinner out at a restaurant that had been on the radar for a while. A restaurant that opened in 2016, and one that was only months away from celebrating its tenth anniversary. Ten years is a huge achievement for any business, let alone one operating under some of the highest cost burdens in Europe. Then, just two days before the booking, the restaurant closed with immediate effect. The rising costs associated with running a business in 2026 were, in the owner’s own words, the “cause of death”. Whilst patrons, myself included, are obviously saddened by the news, for the owners this is the end of a dream. For the team, it means livelihoods lost at a time when UK unemployment is at its highest level in years, with approximately 1.78 million people currently unemployed across the country. The owners are now filing for bankruptcy, their dream, shattered. As tragic, and arguably avoidable, as this story is, it is by no means unique. Across the UK, hospitality businesses are closing at an alarming rate, which pushes up our obscene unemployment rates each and every day. Last week’s local election results delivered an unambiguous message from voters, reflecting growing frustration around the rising cost of living, taxation, and economic uncertainty facing both individuals and businesses alike. Now, against this backdrop, a backdrop of a profession that feels its voice simply is not being heard despite being one of the UK’s greatest economic and social assets, we wait to see where government takes us next. It is a fact that hospitality is a force for good. It is an economic driver, a creator of opportunity, and one of the few professions where any person, from any background, can grow, develop, and thrive. When hospitality succeeds, communities succeed. When hospitality is supported, the wider economy benefits too. The organisation I lead has more members than some countries have populations, so I speak with authority when I say that even in difficult times, I remain optimistic about the resilience, determination, and spirit of our hospitality family. This profession of ours has faced enormous challenges before, and yet it continues to innovate, adapt, and inspire. As long as we are left able to do so. Hospitality matters, deeply, and it deserves not only to survive, but to thrive. #Hospitality #HospitalityFamily #HospitalityMatters #ChesterHospitality
Our party has suffered a historic defeat. Many good Labour colleagues have lost their seats despite working hard for those they represented. We have lost good Labour administrations and lost the chance for more. What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance. The Labour Party must now live up to our name: we must be the party of working people. We’ve heard the same on the doorstep as we’ve seen in the polls - the cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties. People have turned to populists and nationalists because we have not done enough to fix it. Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago. People feel hopeless - that the cost of living crisis will never end, and now they see oil and gas companies use global instability to post record profits. Once again, ordinary people are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make. It’s no wonder that across the UK, working people feel the system is rigged against them. Things can be so much better than this. Countries including Spain and Canada have shown that economies can grow and people can thrive when governments stay true to labour and social democratic values and put people first. We need to learn from that. In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home. In my patch and across the north, we lost working people whose wages are too low and costs too high. In Scotland and Wales, people do not currently see Labour as the answer. We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people. The Peter Mandelson scandal showed a toxic culture of cronyism. Decisions like cutting winter fuel allowance just weren’t what people expected from a Labour government. For too long, successive governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top without a plan to ensure the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly. The result is an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in too few hands. This level of inequality, alongside squeezed living standards, is the outcome of a model built on deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics. But we have the chance to fix this. 1/2
