Thomas Hammell

dontfollowmeamloast

[Upstate Federalist @upstatefederlst]

There is no other point in human history when 10,000 men stampeding across your border was not considered an invasion.

[Thomas Hammell @ThomasHammell]

@TheCinesthetic

[Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 @MikeBales]

Why does everyone force introverts to leave their comfort zone, but no one forces extroverts to shut the f*ck up for a while?

[Your Accountant @TJiMTS]

Andy Burnham, in two weeks of being PM, has perfectly illustrated the main problem in UK public finances.

Week 1: there's a cost of living crisis, so to help you we've taken £45 a year off your electricity bill and capped bus fares at £2.

Week 2: we don't have enough money to fund everything we want to do, so we're taking £630 a year out of your salary.

Same government, same month.

Credit where it's due first - taking VAT off electricity from October is real money, so is the £2 bus cap in January if you're on a bus twice a day. Immediate cost of living relief is genuinely needed by most people.

But I'm not sure how someone who couldn't manage without that £45 a year of relief is supposed to now manage with £630 a year less in their pocket?

The £630 is a 1.8% levy on income to fund a National Care Service costed at £18bn a year. On a £35,000 salary it's £630, on £50,000 it's £900.

It's charged as a percentage of your income.
It's collected out of your income.
It is not, apparently, income tax, because they're going to call it a levy.

It also only applies to taxpayers over 34... So you turn 35 and take a pay cut, at the exact age most people are stretched on a mortgage with childcare costing more than the mortgage.

But the UKs ACTUALLY problem? Spending is too high. And it's too high in ways that are fixable if anyone was willing to challenge the status quo rather than buy more votes with handouts.

This is where £1,383bn goes this year:

Health, £269.6bn
Pensions, £236.3bn
Welfare, £204.0bn
Education, £126.7bn
Debt interest, £104.6bn
Defence, £75.2bn
Everything else, £367.1bn

Health, £269.6bn: We need mandatory health insurance as an employment benefit and a hybrid model. Everyone hears "insurance" and pictures America, someone bleeding out over a copay, as if no other model exists on earth.

The Netherlands has mandatory private health insurance. Insurers are legally required to accept everyone. They cannot charge you more for being chronically ill. A risk equalisation pool moves money towards the insurers covering the sickest people. It's consistently ranked top three in Europe.

Welfare, £204.0bn: Income tax raises £330bn. So almost 2 of every 3 pounds of Income Tax taken from every working person in this country is spoken for by the welfare bill.

Welfare should be for people who cannot work. Disability, genuine incapacity, the people it was built to protect. It has drifted into a general income top-up, and the number that proves it is 4.2 million working age people now claiming at least one health related benefit, up a million since 2019.

Change how we determine eligibility, fix a lot of spending issues immediately.

Pensions, £236.3bn: The state pension is a Ponzi scheme, and I mean that technically rather than as an insult. There is no fund - the ONS says so plainly. Your National Insurance is not being put aside and invested for your State Pension, It just pays the payouts for last year's pensioners. Yours depends entirely on there being enough workers behind you.

Which, btw, there won't be. The ratio of pensioners to workers goes from 27% to 48% by 2050 (and these estimates are before we've seen the proper impact of AI/automation on jobs.

Australia already fixed this: 12% of earnings into a private fund with your name on it, mandatory, employer paid. It's your money, it compounds, it doesn't need a bigger generation behind you to work.

We could mandate the same tomorrow and let the state pension run down over the next 40 years, eventually saving £236bn a year.

You can't levy your way out of these problems. A 1.8% charge on everyone over 34 raises £18bn. It doesn't even cover the interest on our existing debt.

And in the meantime... If we're going to borrow anyway, why is none of it buying anything?

Norway found oil in 1969 and put the money in a fund... That fund is now worth $2.049 trillion. It holds a stake in roughly 1.5% of every listed company on the planet.

We found oil in the same decade and spent it.

The UK's National Wealth Fund is capitalised at £27.8bn. Norway's is about 73 times bigger.

So where is our position in AI, in data centres, in grid scale renewables, in batteries, in electric vehicles, in any of the things the next fifty years actually runs on? We borrow £133bn a year and almost none of it buys an asset.

Fix government spending immediately, increase government income over time (without milking people for every penny of 'levy' you can find), and quality of life will genuinely improve as people have more money in their pockets.

The UK has a spending problem, not a tax problem.

[Four Lads Had A Dream @4ladshadadream]

Brilliant picture by @bobtap29 today on Lawrence Shanklands captaincy announcement

[Based Scotsman @Based_Scotsman]

SNP & Swinney blaming Reform and Restore for the “far-right rise” is peak gaslighting.

You spent years putting migrants, asylum hotels, and woke school lectures ahead of actual Scottish people. You ignored housing queues, service strain, and voters who never asked for any of it. Then when Reform (and harder-edged Restore) start picking up the pieces, you clutch pearls and call them the problem.

Scotland didn’t vote for prioritising foreigners while locals wait years for a flat. Didn’t vote for treating natives like the villains in their own country. Didn’t vote for endless “welcoming nation” virtue-signalling while Scotland drowns in asylum costs and waiting lists.

You refused to listen. You doubled down. You excluded anyone who noticed. Now the backlash is somehow their fault?

No. It’s the direct result of SNP priorities. Own it.

[Mikey Photo... 'Titter ye not' @photomikeyhere]

If you tell the average @UKLabour MP that they increased the bus fare by 50% last year, then reduced by 33.3% this year, and it ended up at the same price, it'll melt their heads.

[Thomas Hammell @ThomasHammell]

@PolitlcsUK At least he gave it a good think

[Ranty Man @RanTeeThree]

Imagine you worked in a company and they announced "Bill from the compliance team is going to be head of sales, Charlotte from customer services will now be CFO, and Bronte from Marketing will now be head of production planning" that's what cabinet resuffles are like. Useless arsewipes appointed to jobs they have no fucking clue about.

[Alex Armstrong @Alexarmstrong]

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, Burnham has appointed:

- a Housing Secretary who “resigned” in disgrace from the same job because she couldn’t even pay the correct stamp duty on her 2nd house

- a previously sacked convicted fraudster who will be in charge of ethics in the Cabinet Office

- a Business Secretary that had to apologise to parliament over misleading CV statements

- a Chancellor who couldn’t count how many frigates we had in our fleet when he was defence secretary

- a Defence Secretary with no military experience (despite multiple ex-servicemen available)

So much for the “hope” vibes.

[Thomas Hammell @ThomasHammell]

@10DowningStreet @mhclg @AngelaRayner Shameful and shameless

[Callum Lyon @CallumLyon]

The UK has somehow convinced an entire generation that struggling financially while working full time with overtime is normal.

[GB Politics @GBPolitcs]

🚨NEW: At this time, the Met Police say they've found no evidence to support any of the 13 arrested being charged with any offences linked to the "far-right terror threat" to an Islamic festival in Suffolk

Keir Starmer & Andy Burnham spoke on the incident before an investigation

[Interesting World @_fluxfeeds]

This is Samuel Henderson, a young birder who's gone viral for his incredibly accurate bird call imitations.
His ability to recreate the sounds of different bird species is truly impressive.

📹lorisamuelsmom

[Pavvy G @pavyg]

Jannik Sinner should really still be banned from playing Tennis after he failed 2 drug tests, the fact that he only got a 3 month ban in between slams for me is the biggest scandal to have ever hit the sport and one that we won't ever forget.

[Craig Houston @CraigHouston_]

🚨Just in

This is a migrant tent camp just found in Glasgow Green in the heart of my city.

This is not acceptable.

[PBC174 @PBC174]

As a female we are told not to walk home alone. My town has a few migrant hotels.

Advice used to be to get a taxi. Last few taxis I have been in with pushy foreign muslim men driving.

How do we get home safely after a night out these days?

[GfB 📚 @Dr_Gavin_Brewis]

Royston last week, Cranhill tonight. Not a word from politicians.

The most striking thing about all of it is that, it's all working-class areas this is happening. The comfortable classes can take the moral high ground because they're unaffected.

A story old as time.

[Margot Stewart @UnrepentantYoon]

No Humza, our issue is with people who enter the country illegally, those who abuse the system, and criminals who harm innocent people. We should be able to have that discussion honestly without being labelled or shouted down.

[Boring Milner @BoringMilner]

Did you know? Rodrigo de Paul’s Dad is called Sean.