HMRC has decided to punish 'nice pubs.'
They have ordered valuation officials to levy higher business rates on pubs that are in “attractive locations”, play an important role in the community, or are based in “character properties”. Pubs with playgrounds or those which serve a so-called "premium priced menu" will also be landed with higher taxes.
This is an extraordinarily disreputable approach to valuation but only to be expected once the independent Valuation Office was shoved under the control of HMRC by dim-witted Labour Minister James Murray. HMRC are as usual obsessed with extracting the maximum amount of cash from families & businesses
Delighted to announce that this years chosen charity for the Maddison Invitational golf day is Dementia Club UK. A North London based charity helping families and individuals who suffer from Alzheimer’s. All in memory of my late Grandad Brian who suffered with the disease for 15 years. Let’s raise some funds and have a cracking day 🤍
Rachel Reeves: "We promised to cut inflation – and we have” 🤔
Reality...
1⃣ Labour inherited an inflation rate of 2% then saddled businesses with a load of extra costs, lifting the CPI measure to 3.8% last autumn
2⃣ inflation has since fallen back but is still 2.8%, while all Labour has done to help is transfer some household costs to general taxation; this is hardly "fixing the foundation", and inflation is set to jump again over the summer
#gaslighting
Britain is at peak tax … so the government has decided to tax us MORE!
a £ 1 BILLION extra tax grab on family holidays! because HOW DARE You have a holiday!… 20% VAT charged on airport charges, to use their runways and terminals.
They hate you 🔥
Kemi Badenoch just ripped into Keir Starmer at PMQs, exposing how he is prioritising Russian oil over the North Sea, she went on to accuse him of getting ‘further into the bunker’ before rightly declaring the Labour Party as Britain’s number one problem.
Fantastic!
Starmer cheered by Labour staffers when announcing nationalisation of British Steel. What he didn’t mention was that its been under the government’s control since April 2025, since when:
Taxpayers ponied up almost £400 million in the nine months to January 2026 (9 months).
The ongoing cost is around £1.3 million per day.
State subsidy to reach ~£615 million by June 2026 — and exceed £1.5 billion by 2028 if the current subsidy rate continues.
@Nigel_Farage Bradford has just delivered one of the most dramatic political verdicts in its modern history. Reform went from zero councillors to the largest single party on the council in a single night. Labour lost its leader, its regeneration chief and sixteen years of dominance. The message from Bradford's communities could not have been clearer.
Bradford is also one of the cities most closely associated with organised child sexual exploitation. The inquiry into grooming gang activity in Bradford has never received the national attention its scale demanded. The failures were documented. The victims were real. The accountability never came.
@reformparty_uk and the @Conservatives now hold the balance of power in Bradford. They hold it because the communities who suffered those failures handed it to them. That mandate carries an obligation.
If Reform is serious about grooming gang accountability, Bradford is where that seriousness must now be demonstrated. Not in Westminster press releases. Not in national campaign rhetoric. In Bradford council chambers, on the Bradford council agenda, with Bradford's victims finally placed at the centre of a process that has avoided them for too long.
The Conservatives, who also outperformed expectations, have every reason to join that demand. Together you have the platform, the seats and above all the moral authority granted by Thursday's result to force this question onto the record in a way that sixteen years of @UKLabour control never allowed.
The voters of Bradford did not deliver this result so that the familiar evasions continue under new management. They delivered it because they want the truth about what happened to their children, who knew, who failed to act and why the minutes of key meetings disappeared.
Reform. Conservatives. Bradford is watching. So is the country. Use the mandate.
Keir Starmer, 6th May 2022:
“This is a big turning point for us. We’ve sent a message to the PM. Britain deserves better.”
So when the Tories lost 485 council seats and 11 councils, Boris should resign.
When Labour lose 1,493 council seats and 38 councils, Starmer won’t. 🥴
Don't often agree with Diane, but she's spot-on here. Falling for this self congratulatory, self-righteous delusion has led Labour Gov into smug superiority and sold a lie to the PLP that their huge majority is an untouchable shield. Not message of electorate in 2024 at all
The OBR drew this chart.
Yellow line is what the state takes.
Green line is what the state spends.
The gap will be filled by stealing from you, your children and their children.
By 2074, UK debt hits 270% of GDP. The state's own watchdog admits it in writing.
Yesterday the bond market read the chart.
UK 30 year gilt: 5.76%. Highest since 1998. UK 10 year: 5.08%.
The market knows what comes next. When yields rise too far, the Bank of England will step in.
They will print. They will buy. They will debase. They will steal from your children's future and their children.
Just like 2022. Just like covid. Just like 2008.
Savers smoked. Pensioners smoked. Gilt holders smoked.
The pound will lose another generation of purchasing power in months, not years.
You have been betrayed.
And this is only the beginning.
Graham Linehan should never have been dragged through the courts in the first place.
The real scandal is a system that wastes time on litigious nonsense driven by professional activists while serious crime goes unpunished.
We need to kill cancel culture. Free speech cannot survive if the process becomes the punishment.
This is why I asked Toby Young to review the laws that are stifling free speech so the next Conservative government can put an end to this wasting of our resources.
The politics of a country in decline. Not a single word about wealth creation, without which none of this nonsense can be financed. It’s deeply pathetic. If people fall for this left-wing populist drivel we’ve ceased to be a serious country.
3,800 jobs are to go from Premier Inn owner Whitbread, which has decided get rid of its chain of branded restaurants & sell & leaseback £1.5 bn of its hotels, after being hit by higher property taxes.
The decisions were taken because of “significant cost increases in the form of business rates & national insurance,” said CEO Dominic Paul.
"Compared to other countries around the world, business rate taxes are punitively high, & that affects companies’ ability to invest & grow,” he said.
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“I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
— Thomas Sowell
Labour MPs have now done more to protect Keir Starmer than they’ve done to protect British farmers, veterans, pensioners, taxpayers, women and girls or Chagos.
They deserve the Labour bloodbath on May 7th.
🚨 Right, Labour is full steam ahead now on introducing an insane tax policy in Jan 2027.
This is an emissions tax (called CBAM) on 6 key imports (to start with) including steel, aluminium and FERTILISER.
The calculation of the tax is based on the carbon intensity of production and remember fertiliser is incredibly energy intensive to produce. Meaning fertiliser could carry as much as 50% added import costs.
Now, the stupid government assumed we would then increase our own production of fertiliser BUT it is incredibly expensive to produce here because of our own net zero emissions restrictions and the cost of energy. Which is why we import it in the first place!
All this means that many farmers won’t be able to afford to buy fertiliser at all and those who can will have to vastly increase prices just to cover costs. That means potentially huge increases in food prices and shortages.
At exactly the time when the government should be removing barriers for farmers they are doubling down. It’s insane 🚨
Oh look another quiet tweak to legislation by Statutory Instrument under the carbon tax framework. Sneaky.
the Government has just pulled aviation and shipping fully into the UK’s carbon budgets with no vote.
Forcing these sectors which include shipping, supply chains, imports and all flights inside a fixed carbon cap will increase prices if emissions don’t fall fast enough. Which they can’t.
Meaning the government taking even more tax into general taxation (they don’t use carbon taxes to change the climate you know)
And they have done it during a fuel crisis which has already increased prices and the government’s tax income.
Tax tax tax … taxed to the death of all industry.
They think we are stupid. The Iran war will become the excuse for every failed Labour policy so let’s just fix Rachel’s post from this morning. War is NOT responsible for …
▪️Employer National Insurance increases raising hiring costs
▪️Frozen tax thresholds dragging more people into higher tax bands
▪️Minimum wage rises increasing business operating costs
▪️Higher public sector pay settlements adding fiscal pressure
▪️Regulatory and net zero compliance costs passed into bills
▪️Business costs feeding through into higher consumer prices
▪️”Stealth tax” effect from inflation + frozen allowances
▪️Increased borrowing pushing up long-term tax risk
She could easily bring prices down and has chosen not to 🤡