fern

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: Keir Starmer went straight to the pub after resigning as Prime Minister earlier

📸 The Sun

[mikey @mikey_747]

I’m fucking crying hahahahahahahaha

[Henry Hill @HCH_Hill]

Congratulations to Reform UK for finding the guys who did this.

[Ben Guerin @bjhguerin]

Pubs in England & Wales are facing a massive hike in business rates in April 🍻 💸 📈

75%+ of venues are looking at increases in their rateable value, some by 500%+

the government's signalled a potential u-turn... but nothing's confirmed yet.

so i built https://t.co/nSPT1YtVFX with official VOA data for 43,000 pubs, which looks at just how fucked they each are

find your local.
see what they're up against.
buy a pint.

[Amindi @AM1ND1]

not the world being my oyster 😂

[Hiroshi Suzuki @AmbJapanUK]

I ❤️ Welsh cake !

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: The entire Lib Dem manifesto

Main pledges:

- Give everyone a new right to see a GP within seven days, or 24 hours if it’s urgent, with the extra doctors needed to "make it happen" and by introducing a universal 24/7 GP booking system

- Strengthen democratic rights and participation by scrapping the Conservatives’ voter ID scheme and giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote

- Introduce proportional representation for electing MPs, and local councillors in England, and cap donations to political parties

- Reform the House of Lords with a "proper" democratic mandate

- Hold big companies to account by giving them a duty to protect the environment, including banning water companies from dumping raw sewage into rivers, lakes and coastal areas

- Immediately fix the "broken" relationship with Europe, forge a new partnership built on cooperation, not confrontation, and move to conclude a new comprehensive agreement that removes as many barriers to trade as possible

- Invest in renewable power and home insulation to drive a strong economic recovery, bring down energy bills and create clean, secure, well-paid new jobs

- Reversing Conservative tax cuts for the big banks, restoring Bank Surcharge and Bank Levy revenues to 2016 levels in real terms

- Increasing the Digital Services Tax on social media firms and other tech giants from 2% to 6%

- Fairly reforming capital gains tax to close loopholes "exploited" by the super wealthy

- Establish national and local citizens’ assemblies to give people real involvement in the decisions needed to tackle climate change

- Restore the requirement that every new car and small van sold from 2030 is zeroemission, investing in active travel and public transport, and electrify Britain’s railways

- Meeting the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by at least 68% from 1990 levels by 2030

- Establish mental health hubs for young people in every community and introducing regular mental health check-ups at key points in people’s lives when they are most vulnerable to mental ill-health

- Introducing a 4% tax on the share buyback schemes of FTSE-100 listed companies, to "incentivise" productive investment, job creation and economic growth

- Fix the "broken" Statutory Sick Pay system by:

• Making it available to the more than one million workers earning less than £123 a week, most of whom are women

• Aligning the rate with the National Minimum Wage

• Making payments available from the first day of missing work rather than the fourth

• Supporting small employers with Statutory Sick Pay costs, consulting with them on the "best way" to do this

- Introduce free personal care based on the model introduced by the Liberal Democrats in government in Scotland in 2002, so that provision is based on need, not ability to pay

- Create a social care workforce plan, establish a Royal College of Care Workers to improve recognition and career progression, and introduce a higher Carer’s Minimum Wage

- Establish a cross-party commission to forge a long-term agreement on sustainable funding for social care

- Develop a digital strategy to enable care users to live tech-enabled lives

- Minister for Tackling Loneliness

Education:

- Put a dedicated mental health professional in every school

- ⁠Increase funding per pupil above the rate of inflation and end crumbling schools and repair backlog

- ⁠Introduce tutoring guarantee for every disadvantaged pupil

- ⁠Invest in high quality EY education, 3-5 extra hours for disadvantaged students and tripling of EYPP to £1000 a year

- ⁠Create new lifelong skills grant giving all adults 5K to spend on education and training, aim to increase to 10K in the future

Families, Children and Young People:

- Extend free school meals to all children in poverty, with an ambition to extend them to all primary school children when the public finances allow

- Appoint a Cabinet Minister for Children and Young People

- Give parents genuine flexibility and choice in the crucial early months by doubling Statutory Maternity and Shared Parental Pay to £350 a week and introducing an extra use-it-or-lose-it month for fathers and partners, paid at 90% of earnings

- Make all parental pay and leave day-one rights, and extend them to self-employed parents

- Expand opportunities for young people to study, teach and volunteer abroad by returning to the Erasmus Plus programme as an associated country

Teaching Recruitment Crisis:

- always taught by a subject specialist

- ⁠reform School teachers review body to make it properly independent of govt

- ⁠funding teacher training properly

- ⁠introduce a clear and high quality plan of professional development for teachers

- ⁠standing commission cross party to broaden curriculum

- ⁠improve vocational education quality

- ⁠strengthen careers advice

- ⁠expand provision of extra curricular, new free entitlement for disadvantaged children

Pensions and Safety Net:

- Tackle child poverty by removing the two-child limit and the benefit cap

- Set a target of ending deep poverty within a decade, and establish an independent commission to recommend further annual increases in Universal Credit to ensure that support covers life’s essentials, such as food and bills

- Support pensioners by protecting the triple lock so that pensions always rise in line with inflation, wages or 2.5% – whichever is highest

- Ensure that women born in the 1950s are finally treated fairly and properly compensated

- Scrapping the bedroom tax

- Ending the young parent "penalty" for under-25s by restoring the full rate of Universal Credit for all parents regardless of age

Crime and Policing:

- Restoring proper community policing, where officers are visible, trusted and focused on preventing and solving crimes – especially rape and other violent crime

- Creating a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by the police and properly investigated

- Investing in the criminal justice system to tackle the backlog of court cases and ensure swift justice

- Breaking the cycle of reoffending by improving rehabilitation in prisons and on release, and strengthening the supervision of offenders in the community.

- Ensuring survivors of violence against women and girls are properly supported in the criminal justice process, including through mandatory training for police and prosecutors in understanding the impact of trauma on survivors

Natural Environment:

- End the sewage scandal by transforming water companies into public benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end, and replacing Ofwat with a tough new regulator with new powers to prevent sewage dumps

- Set meaningful and binding targets to stop the decline of our natural environment and ‘double nature’ by 2050: doubling the size of the Protected Area Network, doubling the area of most important wildlife habitats, doubling the abundance of species and doubling woodland cover by 2050

- Plant at least 60 million trees a year, helping to restore woodland habitats, increase the use of sustainable wood in construction, and reach net zero

- Pass a Clean Air Act, based on World Health Organization guidelines, enforced by a new Air Quality Agency

- Strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection and provide more funding to the Environment Agency and Natural England to help protect our environment and enforce environmental laws

Food and Farming

- Introduce a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ensure food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve health and nutrition

- Accelerate the rollout of the new Environmental Land Management schemes, properly funding it with an extra £1 billion a year to support profitable, sustainable and nature-friendly farming

- Maintain high health, environmental and animal welfare standards in food production and guarantee that all future trade deals will meet them too, ensuring that Britain’s farmers and food manufacturers are not put at an unfair disadvantage

- Give Britain’s farmers the ability to trade with our European neighbours with minimal need for checks by negotiating comprehensive veterinary and plant health agreements

- Support farmers properly in restoring woodland, peatland and waterways, creating new natural flood protections and managing land to encourage species recovery and carbon storage, while producing food for the table

Housing:

- Increasing building of new homes to 380,000 a year across the UK, including 150,000 social homes a year, through new garden cities and community-led development of cities and towns

- Delivering a fair deal for renters by immediately banning no-fault evictions, making three-year tenancies the default, and creating a national register of licensed landlords

- Giving local authorities, including National Park Authorities, the powers to end Right to Buy in their areas

- Ending rough sleeping within the next Parliament and immediately scrapping the archaic Vagrancy Act

- Abolishing residential leaseholds and capping ground rents to a nominal fee, so that everyone has control over their property

Communities and Local Government

- Tackle the funding crisis facing local authorities, including by providing multi-year settlements, boosting the supply of social housing, and forging a long-term, cross-party agreement on social care

- Give communities more control over the number of second homes and short-term lets in their areas. • Ensure local authorities have the powers and resources they need to tackle the climate and nature emergencies

- Ensure that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business, including in rural and remote communities, and support local bespoke solutions so that no property is left out

- End the top-down reorganisation of councils and the imposition of elected mayors on communities who do not want them

- Work with communities to tackle the alarming rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia

Transport:

- Make it cheaper and easier for drivers to switch to electric vehicles by rapidly rolling out far more charging points, reintroducing the plug-in car grant, and restoring the requirement that every new car and small van sold from 2030 is zero-emission

- Freeze rail fares and simplify ticketing on public transport to ensure regular users are paying fair and affordable prices

- Significantly extend the electrification of Britain’s rail network, improve stations, greatly improve disabled access, reopen smaller stations and deliver Northern Powerhouse rail

- Boost bus services by giving local authorities more powers to franchise services and simplifying funding, so that bus routes can be restored or new routes added where there is local need, especially in rural areas

- Transform how people travel by creating new cycling and walking networks with a new nationwide active travel strategy

- Give more of the roads budget to local councils to maintain existing roads, pavements and cycleways, including repairing potholes

- Invest in research and development to make the UK the world leader in zero-carbon flight, and take steps to reduce demand for flying

Culture, Media and Sport:

- Protect the BBC, S4C, BBC Alba and Channel 4 as independent, publicly owned, public service broadcasters

- Promote creative skills, address the barriers to finance faced by small businesses, and support modern and flexible patent, copyright and licensing rules

- Negotiate free and simple short-term travel arrangements for UK artists to perform in the EU, and European artists to perform in the UK

- Boost participation in sports and physical activity by investing in leisure centres, swimming pools and other grassroots facilities and supporting community sports clubs

Immigration and Asylum:

- End the Conservatives’ "Hostile Environment" and invest instead in officers, training and technology to tackle smuggling, trafficking and modern slavery

- Transfer policy-making over work visas and overseas students out of the Home Office and into other departments

- Scrap the Conservatives’ Illegal Migration Act and their Rwanda scheme, uphold the Refugee Convention, and provide safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees, helping to prevent dangerous Channel crossings

- Tackle the asylum backlog by establishing a dedicated unit to improve the speed and quality of asylum decision-making, introducing a service standard of three months for all but the most complex asylum claims to be processed, and speeding up returns of those without a right to stay

- Lift the ban on asylum seekers working if they have been waiting for a decision for more than three months, enabling them to support themselves, integrate in their communities and contribute to the economy

- Work closely with Europol and the French authorities to stop the smuggling and trafficking gangs behind dangerous Channel crossings.

Rights and Equality:

- Champion the Human Rights Act and resist any attempts to weaken or repeal it

- Develop and implement a comprehensive Race Equality Strategy to address deep inequalities, including in education, health, criminal justice and the economy

- Make misogyny a hate crime and give police and prosecutors the resources and training they need to prevent and prosecute all hate crimes while supporting survivors

- Give everyone a new right to flexible working and every disabled person the right to work from home if they want to, unless there are significant business reasons why it is not possible

- Respect and defend the rights of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, including trans and non-binary people

- Ban all forms of conversion therapies and practices

- Scrap the Conservatives’ draconian anti-protest laws, restoring preexisting protections for both peaceful assembly and public safety, and immediately halt the use of live facial recognition surveillance by the police and private companies

Political Reform:

- Ensure no politician can take you for granted, by introducing proportional representation by the Single Transferable Vote for electing MPs, and local councillors in England

- Strengthen democratic rights and participation by scrapping the Conservatives’ voter ID scheme and giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote

- Hold Government Ministers to account for "corruption and sleaze" by enshrining the Ministerial Code in legislation

- Reform the House of Lords with a proper democratic mandate

- Transfer greater powers away from Westminster and Whitehall, introduce a written constitution for a federal United Kingdom with strong voices for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and oppose a second Scottish independence referendum and independence

- Take big money out of politics by capping donations to political parties

Defence:

- Reversing the Conservative Government’s cut to the Army, with a longerterm ambition of increasing regular troop numbers back to over 100,000

- Maintaining the UK’s support for NATO, and accordingly increasing defence spending in every year of the Parliament, with an ambition to spend at least 2.5% of GDP on defence

- Securing a fair deal for service personnel and veterans

- Maintaining the UK’s nuclear deterrent with four submarines providing continuous at-sea deterrence, while pursuing multilateral global disarmament

- Controlling arms exports to countries with poor human rights records

International:

- Work to counter the global rise in authoritarianism by championing the liberal, rules-based international order and supporting international institutions such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth, NATO and the International Criminal Court

- Fix the UK’s broken relationship with Europe, forge a new partnership built on cooperation, not confrontation, and move to conclude a new comprehensive agreement which removes as many barriers to trade as possible

- Stand with the people of Ukraine and provide them with the support that they need in the face of Putin’s illegal invasion. • Restore the UK’s reputation as an international development superpower, by returning spending to 0.7% of national income and re-establishing an independent international development department

- Advocate for an immediate bilateral ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict to resolve the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, get the hostages out, and provide the space to reach a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians

[Cllr Dr Alex Powell @APowellLaw]

This is absolutely ridiculous and shows a very clear breach of impartiality. Why is a political party with 0 members and 2 councillors getting a leader profile when one with nearly coming on 70,000 members and over 800 councillors is not?

Please do complain.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Rishi Sunak - The Movie🇺🇸

[Ang. @AngThaDean]

An AI image being the one people feel most comfortable sharing is so telling of how disconnected we have become from our humanity…

[chao @chaod3r]

Nobody gets slizard nor fly like a G6 anymore I fear

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

The Michelle Mone story in full

[fern @fernhennessyy]

Petition: Call an immediate general election https://t.co/OkhbwSidKR

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Krishnan Guru-Murthy, "When did they announce we're all going to have seven bins?"

George Eustice, "The government hasn't"

KGM, "Sunak claims he cancelled government plans. Is he just making stuff up?

GE, "I can forgive a bit of rhetoric"

KGM, "So it was nonsense?"

[@[email protected] Green Env soc #degrowth @michaelkerton]

@GreenJennyJones @GreenJennyJones Here is a convenient list of #torysewageparty voters.

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

Do you think 16-year-olds should be forced to do national service?

You may want to weigh in on this Express poll.

Link below takes you straight to the poll itself, so you don't have to wade through all the ads. (Ignore the request for an email address.)
https://t.co/v2W3iqgWz4

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

After years of official claims to the contrary, strong new evidence suggests the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a Chinese lab. According to multiple sources, the researchers who led gain-of-function research, which increases infectiousness, were the first to be infected.