Brian Taylor

Views here are all of my own making

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

Priti Patel and the VIP Lane - ⏬

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

New Chair of the cross party Anti Corruption Group in Westminster
Someone to follow Joe Powell MP @josephpowell
👍🏼

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

Keir Starmer on the thugs causing trouble on the streets this week

“Our thoughts are with the families at the heart of this unimaginable pain.
Let me be clear: the tiny, mindless minority in our society who provoked violent disorder on our streets will be made to face the full force of the law.”

💯

[Doug Parr @doug_parr]

Shell & BP have made £31.2bn profits over the last year

If you were saving £40 per month, you'd have to have started around the time the dinosaurs were killed off to save that much

https://t.co/7AvVPPDRCR

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

“Shell’s half-year profits climb to £10.9bn after focusing on fossil fuels”
https://t.co/eFOs0W6ywL

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

A disgraceful scene last night of thugs creating fear in a town already grieving.

53 police officers injured

The people of Southport have worked tirelessly since to clean up the streets & to restore the pride and respect they have in their town.

Thank you for your phone calls today on @LBC, particularly to those who rang in from Southport to tell the story of what had happened and the terror it had brought to many residents whose fences were ripped up and set fire to, with walls kicked down for blocks to throw at the police.

The vast majority of people in Britain are good, kind and decent people. We must never forget that.

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

🚨The judges said Braverman acted unlawfully by completely ignoring Parliament’s intention when creating the original law. But the Conservative Government appealed against the ruling just before calling the General Election. So now the @UKLabour Government has to decide whether to continue the appeal in support of this Tory power grab which would set an extremely dangerous precedent. Or they could defend democracy and the rule of law, drop the appeal and scrap these unlawful powers. Our parliamentary democracy exists to make sure a government can’t just do whatever it wants. That must be respected. The only way to do that is if Home Secretary @YvetteCooperMP drops this unjust appeal

[Robert Peston @Peston]

The £6.4bn home office overspend on “asylum and illegal migration” - what yesterday’s official Treasury calls “resource DEL pressure” - is an enormous sum. For a policy like putting asylum seekers in hotels it is off-the-charts huge - and in funding it Rachel Reeves is taking precious winter-fuel cash from pensioners and cancelling an important reform of social care, among other painful cuts. It is all very well and obvious politics for Rachel Reeves to blame her predecessor Jeremy Hunt. But under our system, civil servants are under an obligation to either prevent this kind of debacle or to secure in writing from relevant ministers that they personally own the debacle. In this case you would expect the permanent secretaries at the Home Office and Treasury to have been abreast of the massive overspend and to have liaised with each other on it, as a precursor to obtaining from the then chancellor Hunt and then home secretary Cleverly a written “direction” that the overspend was sanctioned by them. If Reeves is serious about improving controls of the efficiency of public spending, she surely needs to launch an investigation into why this financial oversight at the Home Office and Treasury seems to have failed miserably, and make public what she learns. If Reeves is serious about re-empowering impartial officials to prevent reckless behaviour by ministers, as she claims has been her central mission since the financial chaos caused by the Truss/Kwarteng mini budget, she also needs to hold those officials to account when they seemingly fail to exercise those important responsibilities. In terms of rebuilding trust in government, a quality in short supply as the last election demonstrated, it is a mistake to fudge and cover up these failures. To be clear this is not to absolve the then Conservative ministers for their roll in this overspend. But it is to say that we have a Whitehall machine that is supposed to rein them in when the integrity of the public finances is in jeopardy, and something seems to have gone seriously wrong with it

[Adrian Ramsay MP @AdrianRamsay]

Restricting winter fuel payments to pensioners is one of the 'tough decisions' the Labour Government says it is being forced to make.

@Age_UK warns that it will affect as many as 2 million pensioners who badly need the money to stay warm this winter.

Why is it that these 'tough decisions' always land on the more vulnerable, and not on those with the broadest shoulders?

There are other - obvious - decisions the Government could and should make, starting with a modest tax on the wealth of the very richest in our society.

The Chancellor rejected this idea out of hand when I asked her to consider it yesterday, but unless this Government finds the courage to tax wealth fairly, it will never deliver the real hope and real change the public is craving.

[RiverActionUK @RiverActionUK]

Fancy a swim in the #Thames, anyone? 🤢

@thameswater recently called us "alarmists" & said the water is safe. So @jaowallace went to test it out.. 👇

#TakingOneForTheTeam @fluidion @Earthwatch_Eur

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Jeremy Hunt humiliates himself

Ed Balls, "The money wasn't there"

Jeremy Hunt blames the Junior Doctor pay settlement for the black hole

Ed Balls, "£6.5 billion to spend on asylum hotel costs, you made that agreement with the Home Office but didn't make public to parliament"

Jeremy Hunt says it would not have cost £6.5 billion because the Conservatives would have asylum seekers to Rwanda

Ed Balls, "You don't have any flights going to Rwanda"

Jeremy Hunt, "Yes, I know, they were about to go to Rwanda"

Full on car crash after that

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

56% of shareholders think their shares are worthless.

Credit rating agencies Moodys & S&P downgraded debt pile to 'Junk' status so why in God's name is @thameswater still in business?

Because @ofwat is propping it up to save its own failed reputation.

https://t.co/GDMUu9LJuu

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

EXCL from ⁦@PippaCrerar⁩

Kemi Badenoch accused of ‘bullying and traumatising’ staff

Another Tory accused of bullying?

Hmmmm https://t.co/7E5mzQilR0

[Jenny Jones @GreenJennyJones]

Take Thames Water into Public Ownership!!

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

THIS!!!

"Unless we just say no, no more."

Hold that thought. I'll be coming back to you with more on that in exactly 12 days time.

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

"U.K.'s Universities Superannuation Scheme expresses 'deep regret' over Thames Water losses."

Water companies are carrying £64 billion in debt.
@USSpensions aren't the only ones about to get a haircut.

I suspect they going to get very little sympathy.

https://t.co/6IwUP8Oatx

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

“Water bosses responsible for repeated illegal sewage dumping will face criminal charges, and I’ll ban the payment of their multimillion-pound bonuses until they clean up their toxic filth”
@SteveReedMP 👏

https://t.co/GroQs9hUoy

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

"Thames Water in breach of licence after debt downgrade."

Based on @USSpensions' valuation @thameswater's shareholders have now written off £2,756,787,580 of their investment.

Now you know why @moodysratings are saying don't touch it.

https://t.co/AsD3w3vcuF

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

Come on @BBCNews @BBCBreakfast @SkyNews. If you are going to talk about teachers pay also mention

🚨Average teachers’ pay is now a whopping 9% lower in real terms today than in 2010

🚨Cuts in pay are even larger for more experienced workers in the profession

🚨Teachers are taking on 2nd jobs, skipping meals & using food banks

🚨 Some support staff & teachers have been forced to access benefits like Universal Credit to cope

🚨& to cap it all off Teachers work more unpaid overtime than any other profession

LETS NOT FORGET WHATS IMPORTANT IN THIS DISCUSSION

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Why is a newspaper owned by the billionaire Fourth Lord Rothermere, who inherited his fortune from the Third Lord Rothermere, who inherited it from the Second Lord Rothermere, who inherited it from the First Lord Rothermere, so bitterly opposed to a wealth tax?