Pepper

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@SenSanders Maybe stop the waste and fraud first

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@JeremyClarkson @GiftCee As someone who is only still here due to an over 50 PSA test it can only be incompetence, malevolence or deep dissatisfaction with us over 50 blokes.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@afneil The cognitive dissonance amongst proponents of Scottish independence is extraordinary. Brexit very bad but Scoxit is very good, despite impacting vastly more goods & services. This seems more like a religious belief than sound economic thinking.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@ClarkeMicah Being from ‘uddersfield pronunciation was never my forte but yes most definitely remember the cullender.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@Miss_Snuffy That’s extraordinary!!! Many congratulations to all your students and staff 👏👏👏

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@sharrond62 Love him, he’s really great to follow. Wonderful man, Japan 🇯🇵 top of my bucket list to visit thanks to him.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@sharrond62 @andywigmore Totally agree Sharon, @TrevorPTweets is brilliant and will be sorely missed. Wish him well though I’m sure he’ll be a huge hit immediately.

[Adam Smith Institute @ASI]

Since you mentioned the 1980s, @andyburnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved:

• Top rate of income tax: 83% → 40%
• Savings income taxed at up to 98% in 1979 — surcharge abolished
• Basic rate: 33% → 25%
• Inflation: 21.9% peak (1980) → 2.4% (1986)
• Days lost to strikes: 29.5 million (1979) → 1.9 million (1990)
• Real take-home pay for the average earner: up by a third

• Right to Buy: over a million council tenants became homeowners
• Home ownership: 55% → 67%
• Individual shareholders: 3 million → 11 million — one in four adults

• Foreign holidays: roughly doubled
• Homes with a telephone: two-thirds → nearly nine in ten
• Pensioners’ average incomes: up around 30% in real terms
• Infant mortality: down almost 40%

• Real GDP: up by almost a third
• GDP per head outgrew France, Germany and Italy in the 1980s
• Manufacturing productivity: slowest growth in the G7 in the 1970s → fastest in the 1980s
• Self-employed: 1.9 million → 3.5 million
• Nissan to Sunderland, Toyota to Derby, Honda to Swindon
• Britain became a net oil exporter
• London restored as the world’s financial capital in 1986

• Budget surpluses three years running — Britain repaid debt, 1987–90
• National debt: 47% of GDP → 28%
• State spending: ~45% of GDP → ~39%
• The civil service: 732,000 → 565,000

• Corporation tax: 52% → 35%; the small firms’ rate: 42% → 25%
• Personal tax allowances: up more than 25% in real terms
• Higher rates of income tax: nine → one
• Death duties: fourteen rates → one
• Exchange controls scrapped after 40 years

• 40+ nationalised businesses privatised — 600,000 employees moved to the private sector
• The 33 big state industries: took ~£500m from taxpayers in 1980 → paid £8.4bn to the Exchequer by 1987
• British Steel: world-record loss-maker (1980/81) → £733m profit (1989/90)
• BT, 1984: the largest share offer the world had ever seen
• “Tell Sid” broke the record again in 1986
• British Airways: nationalised loss-maker → profitable, private, “the world’s favourite airline”
• The Channel Tunnel launched and entirely privately financed

Over to you.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@KarlTurnerMP I sincerely hope so. Labour MPs said the last guy was so bad he needed replacing, not a single one of the 400+ existing cohort was up to the job therefore requiring a special election. He better be.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@rorysutherland So very true Rory. I was fortunate enough to meet Tony Benn & another sincere politician, Ken Clarke. We need more signposts and less weather veins.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@AlinejadMasih You’re a brave, brave lady. Maximum respect!

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@AlisonMoyet What a beautiful post, that really is a huge credit to you. Respect and thanks 🙏

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@SimonHarrisMBD An Absolute Gentleman and wonderful role model 🫡

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@FennellJW Not a great analogy as we then went on to be beaten by the French 🇫🇷 (Normans)

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@PatMcAfeeShow Famous for more than waffles today!

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@stoolpresidente They are famous for more than waffles today! 🇧🇪

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@sporadica @RoisinMichaux Ouch 🔥

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@cenkuygur You really haven’t quite understood Tournament football ⚽️ mate. Perhaps try again in another 250 years.

[Pepper @PRHetherington]

@MacAlgoTrader We call them rules, remember them?