Richard Musgrave

Likes: family, cricket, racing, rugby, free markets & free people

[Simon Cooke @SimonMagus]

"end trickle down economics"

Whenever you hear someone say this you know everything else they say about the economy is nonsense.

[Andrew Lawrence @andrewlawrence]

By far the shittest production of 'The Wizard of Oz' ever attempted.

[Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ]

Broken Britain. In May alone, in one month, the UK borrowed £23.3 billion, spanked £12 billion just paying off the interest on its national debt, and spent another £30 billion on benefits.

[Iain Martin @iainmartin1]

Not in hock to the bond markets, latest

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

So you’ve gone from 8%, no caveats, to a range of 2% to 8% — which is quite a range!!
My own view is that Brexit has had an economic cost, certainly in the short-run, though probably at the lower end of your range.
However even that judgement is muddied by the short-run being complicated by the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the absurd and costly pursuit, under Labour and the Tories, of net zero, which has given us the highest industrial energy costs in the world and hollowed out what was left of our heavy industries.
So it’s complicated.
But when politicians like you, Ed Davey and others baldly claimed Brexit is costing us £90bn a year (which is what 8% would mean), y’all need to be called out.

[Richard Musgrave @RichMusgrave]

@TorbenSchust @Sam_Dumitriu Correct - ground zero, start from scratch

[Sam Dumitriu @Sam_Dumitriu]

Is Natural England allergic to accountability?

One of the biggests problems with the modern British state is the sheer lack of accountability.

Almost every day officials make decisions that they would struggle to defend on their merits. Yet, there is no decision maker that can be held accountable.

Natural England is the best example. Whether it is blocking a new town (to save a jumping spider), delaying a nuclear plant (to save a few salmon), or potentially culling 90% of Dartmoor's semi-wild hill ponies, they never take responsibility for the inevitable consequences of their actions.

They hide behind process and they attribute every perverse outcome to people trying to build (or farm).

What they neglect to mention is that their rules make these choices inevitable. Take the infamous bat tunnel.

HS2's £100m bat tunnel was the only, of 17 mitigations, that met Natural England's requirements. The choice was a bat tunnel, completely changing the route, or cancelling the project.

Natural England say they're just doing their jobs and following the law. But, if so, then the law's an ass and needs to change.

We need to make sure decision makers are accountable and have the legitimacy to make the right choice.

https://t.co/aWylaDcz26

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

Wow. Can we all stop paying our taxes when things are tight?
Is that how it works?

[Adam Hibbert @adhib]

The £2.25bn, 13,000 employee Environment Agency has no resource available to act when illegal landfill sites are reported to it, but does have time to threaten volunteers who act to clean up its mess...

https://t.co/pqwguMNFJF

[Chris Steward @chrisdsteward]

Luke Charters supported every single action of Keir Starmer and the government until Andy Burnham emerged

[Torben Schust @TorbenSchust]

@NaturalEngland The only thing that should be culled is Natural England and its fellow crony quangos

[Richard Musgrave @RichMusgrave]

@gcunning12 Whiggie Geo, a grand old lad who I remember pointing in the mid - late 80s (and I have a feeling he might have run in the ‘83 Gold Cup)

[Richard Musgrave @RichMusgrave]

There’s a little bit of Gough about Sonny Baker 🏏

[max tempers @maxtempers]

Astonishing fact: Only 4% of all small boat arrivals have ever been removed from the UK; of those, 71% were Albanian.

Strip out Albania, and the UK has deported just 1 in 100 illegal small boat arrivals since 2018. This is how good your odds are if you make the trip.

[Madeline Grant @Madz_Grant]

@bphillipsonMP It’s cute that you expect sympathy over some hurty words when your actions have disrupted numerous children’s educations, made thousands of teachers and staff redundant and caused longstanding institutions to close - while achieving none of your stated aims for state schools

[alexmassie @alexmassie]

Scene, Downing Street:
‘How can we make ourselves even more unpopular?’
‘Well, prime minister, we could allow Natural England to proceed with their plan to shoot 90% of the ponies on Dartmoor’
‘Yes, that might do it.’

[Will Macpherson @willis_macp]

England team for 2nd Test

Gay, Duckett, Bethell, Root (c), Brook, Smith (wk), Cox, Archer, Fisher, Tongue, Baker

Four changes, two debuts (Cox and Baker)

Could be another: James Rew on standby for Jamie Smith, whose wife is expecting

No spinner

[Charlotte Gill @CharlotteCGill]

But Erasmus 2.0 is going to be amazing, guys

[Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸 @DouglasCarswell]

80% supported Covid lockdowns too. The job of leaders is to lead

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

If Elon Musk’s one trillion could do so much good, then why haven’t all our multiple trillions in tax solved all the world’s problems before now?