Fartho

@hallamshiregolf best left handed Australian 2011 - present ⛳️🤣

[Danfski 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🦉 🟦⬜️🟦⬜️🦉🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @TreaclePieUk]

Even now, seeing different angles of this chuffer!!

Mint

#swfc

[Ben @benswfc15]

120+3 with German commentary #swfc

[Fartho @fartho71]

@BladesBall

[James Denison @jrkdenison]

Many have noted that Labour are cutting VAT on theme parks while imposing VAT on independent school fees.

Here is the fundamental reason why Labour's position is unjustifiable, to put it mildly. 🧵

[Fartho @fartho71]

EFL Playoffs at 40 on Sky….a good watch this…..for some anyway! 🐷😢 #swfc

[David Storch @storchyowl]

Dear @swfc fans… best fans in the whole wide world,

It’s been a whole 2 weeks ( not 2 months ) since we kicked off our stewardship of this great club.

Thanks for your outpouring of support / response to our release of season ticket sales. Credit to David Bruce & co for putting in the thought and designing a fan centric offering.

Hopefully you’ve seen work began at Hillsborough, firstly around improving fan safety. Once completed, more to follow… much!

Designing plan for training grounds, 1 ) in preparation for upcoming season; 2) with future in mind. Our mission is to give our 1st team and others in our playing family the best in facilities, for proper training and recovery. More to follow!

David B & co very focused on building the squad to carry us through next season and beyond… this is our top #1 priority and will receive outsized attention.
And even with restrictions placed on us for the next two seasons due to prior owners behavior, @michaelestorch, Tom and I have unwavering confidence in David and his football brain trust to make all of us @swfc fans proud. We strive to put a great team on the pitch!

Even while back in the States, please know our entire focus and energy is squarely on making Sheffield Wednesday the best all around club and fan experience we can. We will continue to strive for excellence in everything we do!

We will give it our all… for you! This is your club!

David

[Fartho @fartho71]

@MCCOfficial v @hallamshiregolf once again an absolutely outstanding day big thanks @CharlesMobbs @RootMatt for organising also big up to my playing partner @alister38079 clutch putt on 18 for a half 💪

[Katie Lam @Katie_Lam_MP]

This is completely mad.

Britain has no history of polygamy. It's been illegal to enter into a polygamous marriage in England since 1604.

When people come to this country, they should abide by our norms. Allowing them not to and then giving them taxpayer money for it is mental.

[Cat Brown 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🚜🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇮🇪 @MrsBr0wn_82]

🚨 Labour’s private school VAT raid is pushing over 65,000 children out of independent education
1 in 10 pupils.

The Adam Smith Institute says this is 3x worse than the government predicted, with 115 schools already closed.

These kids aren’t disappearing they’re flooding into already oversubscribed state schools. Bigger classes, longer waiting lists, overstretched teachers, and crumbling buildings. Standards will fall for every child.

Taxpayers face an extra £500m+ bill a year, while the policy likely loses money overall.
Ideological vandalism that punishes aspiration.

Britain’s children deserve better.

#EducationFail #StateSchoolCrisis
#LabourFail
#VATRaid

[Bob For A Full Brexit @boblister_poole]

Labour’s private school tax is class war dressed up as policy! It was reported last week that Labour’s VAT raid on private schools has cost the Scottish economy £60m and 900 jobs in its first year of operation! https://t.co/TDtBaQeXCO

[Nick Almond @DrNickA]

https://t.co/Iu13m0ScYH

[Ana Boulter @anaboultertv]

This shower of shit was their flagship manifesto. Not only has it cost the treasury and the working person, it has cost 11,000 children. CHILDREN. At the hands of two MOTHERS. Let that sink in. Two MOTHERS did this. And what’s more, they KNEW the outcome from the start, @LauraTrottMP @NeilDotObrien @CamillaTominey @afneil @LNallalingham @dshensmith @KemiBadenoch @RupertLowe10

[Michelle Dewberry @MichelleDewbs]

I went to a state school.

I used to be against private schools. I used to think they were toffs & people who thought they were better than us.

Then I matured.

I now realise that in the main, the people who send their kids to one are just normal folk who have decided to prioritise best education for their children and often make significant sacrifice to do so. Alongside this, they also help fund the state education system, which they don’t use.

Whatever problems state schools face, it certainly isn’t as a result of private schools. If anything, kids going private eases pressure on the state system.

The closure of these schools are utterly tragic for the kids affected.

The policy attempts to damage the private system are an act of societal self-harm.

Anyone who celebrates it, is frankly, a fool.

https://t.co/p3w0ZSxL6j

[Fartho @fartho71]

🤷‍♂️as foretold - absolute idiots in charge

[Andrew James @FreeNationTalk]

VAT on private school fees was sold as a policy on two grounds.

1) Taxpayers were “subsidising” private education of the wealthy.

2) The policy would raise £1.5 billion a year and fund 6,500 new teachers.

These were both lies, and have been proven to be so.

The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) suggests that the net cost to the economy of this crazy policy could reach as much as £1.58 billion.

In other words

1. Private schools were actually already subsidising state education.

2. Rather than filling the public purse with extra revenue this policy is sucking funds out of the public sector pot.

Once again, as with every major government policy, these people were elected on a raft of lies and invalidated assumptions.

[Andrew James @FreeNationTalk]

VAT on private school fees was sold as a policy on two grounds.

1) Taxpayers were “subsidising” private education of the wealthy.

2) The policy would raise £1.5 billion a year and fund 6,500 new teachers.

These were both lies, and have been proven to be so.

The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) suggests that the net cost to the economy of this crazy policy could reach as much as £1.58 billion.

In other words

1. Private schools were actually already subsidising state education.

2. Rather than filling the public purse with extra revenue this policy is sucking funds out of the public sector pot.

Once again, as with every major government policy, these people were elected on a raft of lies and invalidated assumptions.

[Jordan Walker @JayW132]

VAT on private school fees was pitched as a way to raise money for public services.

New report: it's projected to cost the public £181m by 2038.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

This one will require a stiff drink.

In the early 1990s, the government came up with a clever idea. Instead of borrowing money cheaply to build hospitals, schools, and roads, it would get the private sector to build them and then pay the private sector back over 25 to 30 years. The Private Finance Initiative. PFI.

The attraction was obvious. You got a shiny new hospital today. The bill didn't show up on the government's books. The cost was deferred into the future. Politicians got ribbon-cutting ceremonies without the awkward conversation about borrowing.

It was, in effect, the nation's credit card. Buy now, pay later. Except the interest rate was extraordinary.

The total capital value of everything built under PFI was around £50 billion. As of March 2024, there were 665 PFI contracts still running across the UK, with roughly £136 billion in remaining payments stretching out to the early 2050s. These are payments public bodies are contractually locked into. Hospitals, schools, councils, government departments. Paying for buildings that in many cases were constructed twenty or thirty years ago.

And the terms are extraordinary.

PFI contracts were structured so the private sector would not just build the facility but manage its services. Cleaning. Maintenance. Catering. Portering. These services are bundled into long-term contracts with built-in inflation increases that the public sector cannot renegotiate, cannot exit without paying massive penalties, and often cannot even fully scrutinise because of commercial confidentiality clauses.

In one case raised in Parliament, a hospital was charged £333 to change a lightbulb. That isn't an urban myth. It was cited in Hansard.

The NHS has been hit hardest.

According to parliamentary analysis, the capital cost of NHS PFI projects was around £13 billion. The total repayments are estimated at around £80 billion. And the peak of NHS PFI annual repayments isn't even here yet. It arrives in 2029. The bills are still going up.

In 2020-21, NHS trusts paid £457 million purely in interest charges on PFI contracts. Not services. Not maintenance. Interest. In the last five years, NHS trusts have handed over more than £1.8 billion in PFI interest alone. We Own It calculates that money would have covered the starting salaries of over 50,000 new doctors.

One NHS trust, Essex Partnership, has reportedly paid back 27 times what was originally borrowed. Some hospitals are spending more on PFI repayments than on medicines for patients. And remember, these repayments come out of the same NHS budget that's supposed to fund patient care, staff, and equipment.

Scotland got it just as badly. Audit Scotland reported that Scottish taxpayers will pay a cumulative £40 billion for PFI assets worth just £9 billion. North Ayrshire Council will have paid £440 million by 2038 for four schools that cost £83 million to build.

Now here's what makes this worse.

Many of these contracts are starting to expire. The buildings are being handed back to the public sector. And the NAO has warned of significant risks around the handback process, including cases where public bodies were dissatisfied with the condition of assets being returned to them. Decades of payments. And some of these buildings may come back needing significant further investment.

So what actually happened?

The government could have borrowed money at significantly lower rates to build these hospitals and schools itself. Sovereign borrowing has always been cheaper than private finance. Instead, it paid the private sector to borrow at a premium and passed the inflated cost on to the taxpayer. The private sector took the profit. The taxpayer took the risk. The buildings are now ageing. The debts are still being paid. And the services that were supposed to benefit are being squeezed partly because so much of their budget is locked into contractual obligations they cannot escape.

PFI wasn't investment. It was an accounting trick. A way for governments to build things without the borrowing showing up in the national debt figures. It made politicians look fiscally responsible while loading future generations with obligations they had no say in and no ability to renegotiate.

Both parties did this. The Conservatives created PFI in 1992. Labour massively expanded it after 1997. More than 700 projects were signed. The coalition eventually wound it down. The current government scrapped the latest version. But the contracts remain. The payments continue. And the damage is already done.

This is what it looks like when a country chooses to buy its infrastructure on hire purchase instead of investing properly. You lock in above-market rates for decades. You lose control of the assets. You tie the hands of future governments. And when the bill keeps coming due, you're told there's no money for doctors, teachers, or social care.

There was always money. It just went somewhere else.

[Fartho @fartho71]

@JeanHatchet

[Fartho @fartho71]

@EFL do the right thing….

#FairDealForWednesday #swfc

[David Storch @storchyowl]

Please see my statement attached #FairDealForWednesday