Gail Downey: UK correspondent on the UK hospitality sector warning jobs will be cut following UK budget

Over in the UK, top restaurant and pub bosses have warned businesses will close and jobs will be cut following last month's Budget.

The sector is facing higher taxes as part of required National Insurance contributions - and many have warned these increases are unsustainable.

UK correspondent Gail Downey says the sector has already undergone a financial rough patch as it struggles to recover from Covid-19.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gail Downey, UK correspondent with US. Now, hi, Gail, Hi there,
Why is a gale that the hospitality seeks are so
worried about these tax hikes?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Well, I guess the thing is that what they're saying
is hospitality restaurants, bars, cafes. They've had a difficult time
during COVID obviously and the recovery after that, and so
they're worried because actually the National Insurance Tax, which is
an additional tax that we pay over here on top
of our normal tax, is going up. And also not

(00:35):
only that, but businesses are going to have to pay
the tax on employees earning five thousand pounds a year
rather than before it had been nine thousand pounds of years.
So basically more people are going to be brought into
the tax bracket. They say they're going to be disproportionately
impacted because of course going to pubs, cafes, restaurants is

(00:56):
a luxury really at this time of cost of living,
and that's what worries them.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yes, I've got a fair argument. If they've already had
a tough they're just going to keep on having a tough.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Way.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Listen, what's going to happen to these guys who've been
arrested in Amsterdam.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
All we know at the moment is that they've been detained.
So it's dozens of pro Palestinian demonstrators and what they
did was they defied a ban on public protests in
the Dutch capital. And the ban follows unrest last week,
whether about sixty two arrests, and it was just after
a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Israeli football team

(01:31):
and IAX Amsterdam obviously a Dutch football team. Yesterday, hundreds
of pro Palestinian demonstrators. They gathered in Damn Square, which
is a mainsquare in Amsterdam, calling for an end to
the conflict in Gaza, and they were very unhappy with
the ban on public protests, so the police went in.
They've now detained dozens of protesters. Meanwhile, the Israeli government

(01:55):
has advised its citizens too, in their words, categorically of
Israelis sports and cultural events while abroad, and one of
the things they've focused on specifically is a football match
between France and Israel, which is in Paris this coming Thursday.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, what is it that Jamie Oliver has said in
this book that is inappropriate. That's caused them to.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Pull up right well. I will quote the chief executive
of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Commission,
Sharon Davis. What she says is the story mainly is
set in England, but part of it goes to Alice Springs,
where it tells the tale of a First Nations girl
living in foster care in an Indigenous community who's kidnapped

(02:40):
by the villain of the book. That's the villain of
the whole book. And what Sharon Davis has said is
that this chapter, which is called to Steal a Child,
that it implies that First Nation's families are easily swayed
by money and neglect the safety of their children. She
says it perpetuates a racist stereotime hype that has been

(03:01):
used to justify child removals for more than one hundred years,
and that the portrayal is not only offensive but also
reinforces damaging biases. Jamie Oliver has come back. He's currently
in Australia promoting his latest cookbook. By the Way, he
said he was devastated to have cause defense and he
apologized wholeheartedly. The book has now been withdrawn from sale.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Feels like it's kind of it's like fundamental to the
book though, So that's there, right, the book's not going
to come back.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
It doesn't seem like it. Yeah, absolutely, I mean I
haven't read I have to confess I haven't read the book,
so I don't know. I'm only telling you what the
criticisms are. But yeah, it looks like it's not going
to come back. That's it. Off the shelves, off the
online that's it.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
It doesn't feel like a small chaint. A thank you,
Gal always appreciateds Gale downy UK Correspondence. For more from
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