Howard Bywaters

Gentlemen, when the barrage lifts!

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

I’m calling BS on these 120 millionaires calling to be taxed more.

Look closely at who signed. A retired footballer whose been paid millions by taxpayers. A retired trader who’s net worth is well under $5M. Retired musicians, film directors and some heirs. People who finished building years ago - half of them aren’t worth the $10M threshold they think needs the wealth tax. Their wealth sits in liquid portfolios. The tax they propose either doesn’t apply to them or they have liquidity to pay it.

Now picture a founder with a £50m biotech firm. Her wealth isn't in a bank account. It's based on a speculative VC round. To pay 2% she has to rip £800k a year out of her business or sell it down piece by piece until someone else owns it.

Or imagine the restauranteur whose chain is finally having a profitable year after a decade of losses. A PE deal to expand gives him a paper worth of £60M and he now has to find £1M a year, every year personally if he wants to grow. 

Imagine the property developer couple who made a lifetime of delayed gratification and good decisions. Their portfolio makes £4M profit which is barely enough to cover the £2M in wealth taxes per year after they draw it from their company and pay the corporation tax - 100% essentially goes to tax.

The signatories aren't offering to pay a tax. They're volunteering someone else to. Someone who is still building, investing, growing, hiring.

HMRC already accepts voluntary payments. Any of these self-aggrandising millionaires could send extra money tomorrow. ALL of them benefited from lower tax rates and should pay the difference if they want to make a start. None of them will. They don't want to give more. They want a law that forces others to.

The wealth tax they propose won't work. It will backfire.

We don't need to guess. In 1990, twelve OECD countries had a wealth tax. Today it's three.

Sweden scrapped theirs. Germany suspended theirs. France tried it for decades, watched tens of thousands of wealthy families leave, collected a fraction of what was promised, and Macron repealed it because the country was losing more than it raised.

The £24bn projection assumes nobody changes their behaviour. Nobody has ever designed a tax where nobody changes their behaviour. Liquid wealth leaves. Illiquid wealth, the businesses and farms and employers, stays behind and gets squeezed.

The tax doesn't catch the guy with the yacht. It catches the guy with the factory.

It will end up hitting normal people.

Every tax "on the very richest" drifts downwards. Income tax started in 1799 as a temporary 3% levy on the richest 3% to fight Napoleon. Now workers are paying a 45% marginal rate. Inheritance tax was designed for stately homes and now catches three-bed semis in Surrey. VAT launched at 8%. It's now 20%.

When the wealth tax raises a fraction of what was promised, and it will, no Chancellor repeals it. They lower the threshold. £10m becomes £5m becomes £2m becomes your parents' house.

Here's what I'd say to the 120…

If you want your capital serving Britain, I'm with you. The best way is to back founders. Fund the startups and scale-ups on great terms like they do in the USA. Help build companies that scale here instead of selling early to America. Growing businesses already pour money into the Treasury through corporation tax, employer's NI and PAYE on every job they create. Back success and productivity. Stop rewarding fiscal deficits with good money after bad.

That's harder than signing a letter. You don’t get to look like a socialist super-hero. It's also the only version of "proud to pay" that's ever made a country richer.

Don't pretend to ask the government to tax you… or people twice as rich as you.

Invest in real growth and success.

[Andy @SAFCsource]

Some things are more important than football. RIP. #SAFC

[Keith Downie @SkySports_Keith]

🚨 BREAKING: Granit Xhaka has TURNED DOWN a move to Chelsea to remain at Sunderland.
🇨🇭 The Swiss & Sunderland captain has reaffirmed of desire to remain with #SAFC and lead them into Europe.
❌ Sunderland always said he was unavailable for transfer despite Chelsea’s move and his relationship with Xabi Alonso.
👍🏽 The 33-year-old’s relationship with the Sunderland fans played a big part in his decision.

[James Morgan @downatfineleg]

I’d drop Brook after that inns. Probably the least professional knock I’ve ever seen from an England player. Batted like he couldn’t give a shit at the very time he should’ve been trying to underline his captaincy credentials. He’s either breathtakingly arrogant or really thick.

[Paddy Power @paddypower]

A timely reminder that Sunderland have more players at the World Cup than Real Madrid.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The Mandy Files — 2. May 2025
Another zinger from Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden to Mandelson:
‘Every meeting I have is “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”. They’re asking the wrong questions.’
Wow! Just wow!!

[Henry Winter @henrywinter]

Sunderland’s starting XI in their joyous, season-ending 2-1 victory over listless Chelsea cost the same as £106m Enzo Fernandez. This is no slight on a world champion, an elite attacking midfielder, full of craft and craftiness, if moody at times. This is simply a celebration of Sunderland’s exceptional recruitment, finding gems who can see - and seize - the opportunity at the Stadium of Light.

This is also a celebration of Regis Le Bris’ remarkable team-building, blending and bonding qualities which have guided a side promoted via the play-offs into seventh and Europe. For those of us who thought Sunderland would go straight back down, apologies and enjoy Europe. You deserve it. A well-run football operation deserves it. That backing from stands to boardroom deserves it. Football also deserves it: a reminder that the status quo can be challenged with shrewd planning and investment and hard work.

Of Le Bris’ starting XI against Chelsea, eight joined on the eve of the season and one in the winter window: Roefs a reported £9m from Nijmegen; Mukiele £9.5m from PS-G; Reinaldo free from Atletico Madrid; Geertruida loan from RB Leipzig; Le Fee £19.3m, loan made permanent from Roma; Xhaka £13m from Bayer Leverkusen; Sadiki £15m from Union St-Gilloise; Angulo £17.5m from Anderlecht (in February); and seven-goal Brobbey £21.6m from Ajax. Two 2025 arrivals came off the bench: Diarra £30m from Strasbourg; and Isidor £5m loan made permanent from Zenit St-Petersburg (in February 2025).

Three of the 14 involved were already at the club. The starting pair of: Hume £200,000 from Linfield in 2022; and O’Nien undisclosed but reported as £200,000 to £300,000 from Wycombe Wanderers in 2018. And the sub: Rigg from Sunderland’s academy. (The £105.5m total does not include the undisclosed loan fees).

When Sunderland won 2-1 at the Bridge in October, Le Bris’ starting XI cost only £75m (and also had the important Ballard, £2m from Arsenal in 2022). Chelsea’s starting XI was £433m.

Four miles from the Bridge, on Park Lane this evening, the League Managers Association celebrates its members’ many achievements this season. Le Bris certainly deserves a mention. Mixing old and many new players, and getting new signings to settle quickly, requires real people skills. Le Bris and his staff clearly have them.

It’s also a reflection on Sunderland’s family club reputation that so many newcomers are welcomed and assimilated so quickly. Some will move on, some will be moved on but what a journey this is across England - and soon Europe. #SAFC

[Sunderland AFC @SunderlandAFC]

Thank you, Régis ❤️

[Sunderland AFC @SunderlandAFC]

EUROPA LEAGUE FOOTBALL IS COMING TO SUNDERLAND!

[Football Away Days @FBAwayDays]

Sunderland fans leaving Everton’s ground yesterday with their new chant about Newcastle…

“You laughed at us,
When we were shite,
We came back up,
And beat you twice

One nil at home,
Two one away,
All the Geordies ran away”

[Anglo Futurism Capital LP 🇬🇧🐿️ @RollingHedge]

Ok now let’s consider what a real CV for public office looks like, shall we?

Andrew Griffith (@griffitha) current Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs and Shadow Business and Trade Secretary, is the antithesis to Burnham and the structural inverse of the usual Tory caricature too…

No Eton, no Oxford, no inherited rolodex. Born 1971 in Bexleyheath, raised in Bromley, state comprehensive in Sidcup, Law at a redbrick (Nottingham) 1989-92, qualified FCA in 1996. Everything that follows was earned in the free open market economy.

That is to say his professional trajectory is entirely inside the real world, the private sector business world:

1992-96: Trainee chartered accountant at PwC

Mid-late 1990s: Rothschild & Co, TMT advisory

1999: Joins Sky as a financial analyst (3m customers)

1999-2008: Senior finance roles at Sky

2008: Group CFO and executive director of Sky plc, youngest CFO in the FTSE 100

2012: Adds responsibility for Sky’s advertising business, oversees AdSmart launch

2014-19: Senior NED then interim Chairman of Just Eat plc, Sunday Times NED of the Year 2018

2016: Adds Group COO role at Sky alongside CFO

2018: Works the Fox/Comcast takeover battle

2019 (Jul): Leaves Sky after 20 years to become Johnson’s Chief Business Adviser at No. 10

2019 (Dec): Elected MP for Arundel and South Downs, 22,521 majority

2020: Net Zero Business Champion ahead of COP26

2022 (Feb-Sep): Head of the No. 10 Policy Unit

2022 (Sep-Oct): Financial Secretary to the Treasury under Truss

2022-24: Economic Secretary (City Minister) under Sunak

2024-present: Shadow Business and Trade

This is a Sidcup comprehensive kid who made FTSE 100 CFO at 37. No family money, no network handed down, no soft landing.

The route was articled accountancy, then Rothschild, then twenty years building Sky from a sceptics’ punt into one of the most valuable companies on the index. 3m to 30m customers, AdSmart, broadband and mobile entry, the Fox and Comcast endgame. P&L, board, capital markets, operating scale, all of it earned. The Just Eat chairmanship runs alongside, with the Hungryhouse CMA review and the https://t.co/XE8tyu4Vx0 merger on his watch.

The Treasury postings under Truss and Sunak handed him the City brief during Edinburgh Reforms, Solvency II and the ringfencing review. The current Shadow Business and Trade brief plays directly to the operator background.

On the question that matters, whether he has ever had to make a balance sheet balance, he is the precise antithesis of Burnham. Self-made operator first, politician second. The boys from the comprehensive who built the country, not the ones who annexed it on the way down from the Cotswolds.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Where Burnham has drawn every penny of his living from the taxpayer, Griffith has BEEN the taxpayer. Twenty years of FTSE 100 PAYE, NICs, and CGT on vesting equity puts his lifetime contribution to the exchequer comfortably into eight figures, plausibly £15-20m and counting.

Here’s what you could have won.

I want a meritocratic selected political class with real world experience formulating and executing policy in the national interest.

Is it so much to ask???

[Ben Graham @BenGrahamUK]

The Greens support open borders, until it affects their own neighbourhood. Then suddenly it’s a safety concern.

The least serious party in the history of British politics.

[UnderTheLight @UnderTheLight73]

Thanks to @PeterClewes2 for making me check this.

Brobbey is second for non penalty conversion rate out of all strikers to play 1000+ PL minutes this season.

25% conversion rate. 6 goals from 24 shots.

Still so young, has such a bright future as a number 9 here.

#SAFC

[GiveMeSport @GiveMeSport]

Sunderland had Dan Burn dancing during the derby 🤣🕺

[Liam Kennedy @LiamJKennedy23]

A picture worth a thousands words.

[Premier League USA @PLinUSA]

This rivalry belongs to Sunderland right now 🐈‍⬛

An 11-game unbeaten run is the longest by either side in this fixture’s history!

[Dougie Critchley @DougieCritchley]

Kristjaan Speakman deserves enormous credit for his work at Sunderland.

He arrived on the 4th December 2020, with Sunderland 7th in League 1 and leaves us 11th in the Premier League.

It wasn't always perfect, but some of the signings were brilliant.

So many highlights... but Ross Stewart and Trai Hume signed for under £350,000 each, Ballard for £2m, Bellingham for £1.5m, Mayenda for £700,000, persuading Enzo Le Fee to sign on loan last season and working alongside Florent Ghisolfi last summer.

Forever grateful for helping us get our club back! ❤️

[B/R Football @brfootball]

Dan Ballard sends Sunderland to Wembley with a goal in the 𝟏𝟐𝟐𝐧𝐝 minute against Coventry 😤

One win away from a return to the Premier League.

[Benny’s World Cup Football Tips @BennyBoyTips]

THESE ARE THE BEST LIMBS IVE EVER SEEN

DAN BALLARD HAS SCORED A LAST SECOND GOAL TO SEND SUNDERLAND TO WEMBLEY 😂

[Howard Bywaters @Howie_B93]

@josmith559 @mgoetzke @elonmusk The date on that screenshot shows the UK election was after WW2 finished. The pacific war didn’t start til December 1941 so Australia not under any kind of threat. The US mainland was never under any threat so elections not postponed. Maybe educate yourself before posting…