over the past year, he has raised taxes by £40 billion and has also had a benefit from a faster than expected economic recovery due to the vaccine. but rather than give some of those tax rises back from earlier in the year, he has decided to bank them and also raise some more. that is not so much to do with the pandemic, it is more to do with the pandemic, it is more to do with the fact there are demographic pressures. the ageing population requires more spending on health and social care that it means all this windfall benefit he s got from the better than expected recovery won t get through to households. in fact if you look at the last ten years, we have had the worst decade in living standards. and the director of the afs was telling me that is going to go on. it looks like the next five years will be very little increase in earnings, very little increase in living standards. you know, those of us of a certain age can remember a time when earningsjust kind of went up year on year