Jan Norcliffe

Loves: my family, friends, kindness. Hates: unfairness, Brexshit, litter. Yeah, really, really hate litter (and Brexshit).

[Matthew Stadlen @MatthewStadlen]

Absolutely horrifying that you were ever a police officer. And as for your free speech grift, are you seriously so dopey that you can’t work out the self-defeating irony of your post? You’re whingeing about freedom of speech being curtailed at the very same time as calling the Prime Minister a “c*nt”? Embarrassing.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. I know @realDonaldTrump and family did.

250 years ago we declared independence from a king who ran the colonies as a family business. In just 18 months the Trumps have made King George look like an amateur.

A $620 million Pentagon loan, the largest in the program’s history, to a company Don Jr.’s firm bought into three months before.

An Air Force drone contract to a startup the princelings took public through a golf course company they own a piece of.

The Army’s largest drone motor order ever, to a company where Don Jr. sits on the board and holds millions in stock.

A $24 million Pentagon robotics contract to the company that employs Eric as Chief Strategy Advisor.

A stake in the largest undeveloped tungsten deposit on earth, in Kazakhstan, backed by $1.6 billion in US government support.

Jared’s fund seeded with $2 billion from the Saudi crown prince, now $6.2 billion, 99% of it foreign money from Gulf governments. Over $110 million in fees collected from the Saudis alone. He negotiates American foreign policy with the governments that pay him.

$2.3 billion from crypto ventures their father regulates. More than a million people bought in and lost $2.3 billion. The money didn’t grow. It simply moved from the subjects pockets to the crown’s coffers.

And the next one is already drafted. A proposed ATF rule that will allow guns to be shipped straight to your front door. The government’s own estimate is 3.3 million home gun deliveries a year. Don Jr. sits on the board of the online gun megastore built to cash in. He holds 300,000 shares.

And that’s only the fraction they’ve allowed us to see. Not one subpoena served. Not one search executed. Why hide anything when you own the investigators?

Me? They searched a laptop for six years. Federal prosecutors. Grand juries. Subpoena power. Congressional hearings. They found nothing. I made about $200k a year selling paintings when my Dad was President, and they made my paintings part of an impeachment inquiry.

For six years they’ve asked Where’s Hunter? What about the laptop?

Wrong questions. The right one is 250 years old. Does America belong to a family?

They’ve given their answer. Long live the King.

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

lol

Let's add them in.

CGT raised £13.3 billion in 2024-25 (House of Commons Library). HMRC data shows 41% of CGT receipts come from individuals making gains of £5 million or more. So let's be generous and attribute all £13.3 billion to the top 1%.

The corporation tax raised £97.5 billion (HMRC). Corporation tax is legally levied on companies. Its economic incidence is debated; the IFS has shown it falls partly on shareholders, partly on workers through lower wages, and partly on consumers through higher prices.

Even the most shareholder-focused view does not attribute it entirely to the top 1% of income taxpayers, because pension funds and institutional investors hold large share portfolios on behalf of ordinary workers. But let's ignore all of that and attribute every penny to the top 1% as well.

The most generous possible calculation:

£85.4 billion (top 1% income tax) + £13.3 billion (all CGT) + £97.5 billion (all corporation tax) = £196.2 billion.

Total HMRC receipts 2024-25: £858.9 billion.

£196.2 billion / £858.9 billion = 22.8%.

Still not "a third". Even adding all inheritance tax (£8.2 billion) and all stamp taxes (~£22 billion), which would require attributing taxes paid by ordinary homebuyers to the top 1%, the total reaches 26%. Still not a third.

The arithmetic can't reach "a third of the taxes" no matter how generously you attribute every tax to the wealthiest.

On "proportion of income": that is how the ONS, the IFS, and the OECD measure tax burden. It is the standard methodology used in the government's own annual publication, "The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income". The figures cited (VAT at 12.8% vs 7.3% of disposable income by household quintile; council tax at 8% vs 2% of gross income) are ONS data. If measuring tax burden relative to ability to pay is a methodological trick rather than basic economics, the disagreement is not with me. It is with the ONS.

Cope.

https://t.co/eGyyQRDhzR

https://t.co/nqIQ2dZEUm

https://t.co/wL1nI8fKxY

[Pippa Crerar @PippaCrerar]

Time and again, when Nigel Farage’s political funding is put under the spotlight, his response has been to claim that dark forces are at work to prevent him getting to the top of politics – rather than acknowledging that his approach to declaring donations and interests has been cavalier at best...

Farage claims that “no one cares” – particularly not Reform voters, who are simply fed up with the status quo. However, some others in Reform are not so sure, with worries that their leader may be losing his ability to shrug off scandal in the same way that Boris Johnson began to lose his lustre after the Partygate furore.

Regardless of whether rules have actually been breached, the impression that Farage is a man of the people who can sympathise with the cost of living struggles of millions is undermined by his willingness to let others pay his bills.

On point analysis by @rowenamason

https://t.co/ACHAE1riLd

[terry christian @terrychristian]

Into the ground

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

“Palantir are on the run. How do I know this? Because they've been in Parliament this week having a long session of two hours trying to persuade politicians that they were good for the NHS. They're not—they've sold a vision... about how they could unite all the systems on the NHS and give a single dashboard... this isn't possible.”

​On Thursday 2nd July in Parliament, we caught up with Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley to discuss the mounting resistance to the US tech giant Palantir inside Westminster.

​Wrigley exposed how Palantir has been aggressively lobbying politicians with an impractical vision of an all-controlling data platform. Rather than locking our health service into flawed corporate software, Wrigley points to models like Greater Manchester that successfully integrated patient systems without compromising public trust or technical sovereignty. The NHS is seriously considering its exit point at the end of this year, and Wrigley is actively leading the charge to provide an immediate off-ramp.

​📍 London

📅 2 July 2026

​#Palantir #NHS #SaveOurNHS

Footage @ranjanbalakumaran

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

4/ That's also relevant: https://t.co/osZXyjMlCl

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

"The top 1% pay 29/30% of all UK income tax".

Income tax raised £302.8 billion in 2024-25. Total government receipts exceeded £1.13 trillion. Income tax is approximately 27% of total government revenue. Not even a third.

29% of £302.8 billion is approximately £87.8 billion. That is under 8% of total government revenue. The top 1%'s contribution looks large only because it is measured against one tax, the most progressive one, in isolation from everything else.

Now look at the taxes this framing excludes.

VAT raised £171 billion. Everyone pays it at the same 20% rate. The ONS found that, measured as a proportion of disposable income, VAT takes a significantly higher share from the poorest households than from the richest. In the most recent detailed breakdown, VAT accounted for 12.8% of disposable income for the bottom fifth and 7.3% for the top fifth. A cleaner and a hedge fund manager pay the same rate of VAT on everything they buy.

National Insurance raised £172.5 billion. It is capped: employees pay 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, then only 2% above that. Run the numbers. A worker on £30,000 pays an effective NI rate of 4.65%. A worker on £500,000 pays 2.40%. The lower earner pays nearly double the effective rate. This is regressive by design.

Council tax: the ONS found that the bottom fifth of households pay approximately 6% of gross income in council tax. The top fifth pay approximately 2%. Based on property valuations from 1991, unrevalued for over 30 years in England. Regressive.

Fuel duty: £24.4 billion. Flat rate. Same for everyone regardless of income.

Tobacco and alcohol duties: flat rate, disproportionately paid by lower-income households.

When all taxes are included, the system is far less progressive than income tax alone suggests. The poorest households pay a substantially higher proportion of their income in indirect and flat-rate taxes. For the richest households, VAT, council tax, and fuel duty are a rounding error on their income.

The framing "the top 1% pay 30% of tax" selects the quarter of the tax system where the rich contribute the most, ignores the three quarters where they contribute the least relative to income, and presents the result as the whole picture. It is not a fact. It is a framing device designed to make a political argument about who "deserves" to be politically heard and respected. That is why @GlassJet is right to call out this BOLLOCKS and where they lead.

Sources :

HMRC tax receipts 2024-25 (income tax £302.8bn, VAT £171bn, NI £172.5bn):
https://t.co/nqIQ2dZEUm

ONS Effects of Taxes and Benefits FYE 2024 (VAT as % of income by quintile, council tax by quintile):
https://t.co/wL1nI8fKxY

House of Commons Library tax statistics overview:
https://t.co/vG4LKObXpF

[Geoffrey Lean @GeoffreyLean]

Seventy percent of the rise in families’ energy bills over the last decade has been driven by commodity prices and inflation - underlying our dependence on volatile gas markets - not green measures, reports big energy company,

https://t.co/usejcXBToO

[Gavin Barwell @GavinBarwell]

It's not important at all - in fact, it's irrelevant. All that matters is whether what the Sunday Times reported is true or not. As far as I can tell, you are not denying any of it - which is why you have had to resort to playing the man

[Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 @Haggis_UK]

Michael Crick: "4 people in Farage's career have gone to jail for acts of dishonesty... what kind of world does Farage live in... cryptocurrency is great if you're a drug dealer or people trafficker... it's an absolute boon to the world's criminals... the whole thing stinks"

[Will Hutton @williamnhutton]

A sad day but few care, especially the British right obsessed by the ECHR and its faux threats to British sovereignty. Today we lost ITV to US media group Comcast and EasyJet to US private credit company, Castlelake. Britain is ever more a vassal economy in thrall to the USA.

[Don McGowan @donmcgowan]

So many people had this story for years before the Times picked it up.

@BylineTimes and @carolecadwalla were writing about George Cottrell over five years ago.

The difference is that the Murdochs have made an executive decision that they've finally had enough of Farage.

[Natasha Irons MP @NDIronsMP]

We become MPs at the same time. I had to declare my final wage from the job I held BEFORE becoming an MP because it was within 12 months of the election.

In what universe would one MP need to declare that and another not have to declare this?

[Dr Martin @MartinRemains]

Man of the PayPal.

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

The US loves to boast about how wealthy it is, but its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs.

US oligarchs are so insanely rich that they make average wealth seem very high.

But *median* wealth in the US is lower than in Slovenia & Portugal, and half of Italy's

[Brexitshambles @brexit_sham]

Interesting story, Gunster supplied electoral data worth millions to LeaveEU, yet none was declared. A judge agreed it wasn’t used during the regulated period, unaware the work had won Gunster “Campaign of the Year” with Farage giving the acceptance speech. Nor did he see this…

[Peter Jukes @peterjukes]

Farage was always master of the grift.

Remember 10 years ago when @carolecadwalla and I revealed his Leave EU team were in and out of the Russian Embassy in the run up to Brexit, looking for Kremlin gold and diamond deals?

Farage must have known, and approved.

Ten years ago

[The White Bear @ScotsWhiteBear]

To give you an idea of how British politics has degraded into deranged radical-right lunacy, just consider what the public reaction would have been had a politician in the 60s or 70s proposed the following: