James Williams

Proud Dad, lover of music, sport, Swansea City & Welsh rugby. Often found in “The Smoke”, on the beach or somewhere in between.

[The Growth Commission @TheGrowthComm]

💥OUR TAKE ON THE DRAFT UK-EU RESET💥
👎 Govt's growth claims ‘based on flawed assumptions & bogus calculations’
👎 We estimate a net long-run loss of £73bn to the UK economy
👎‘Digital partnership’ & imposition of AI Act on NI a further drag on growth
https://t.co/pbqT4W4ucq

[ClarksonsFarm @ClarksonsFarm1]

At what point do we stop focusing on who needs to pay more tax and start asking where all of our tax money is going.

[Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA 🗽 @SteveBakerFRSA]

He’s right.

[Marian L Tupy @Marian_L_Tupy]

1/ When a Treasury Minister explicitly states, "I don't think employers are working people," it isn't a careless gaffe. It is a mask-slip. It reveals a deeply entrenched, 19th-century ideological rot at the heart of modern governance. Let’s break down why this is so dangerous. 🧵

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

This may be the most damning statement ever uttered by a Labour minister. It's so revealing of the attitude of a government that thinks that employers are a class that don't work for their profits but somehow exploit others for them - rather than understanding the nature of small and medium-sized businesses and how bloody hard most employers work to create wealth and employment.

[Burnside @BurnsideWasTosh]

Could have supported children dying of cancer. Instead they helped import gays refugees.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

The private sector creates the wealth. The government spends it. The Labour government forgot which one comes first. Every public-sector wage, every benefit, every hospital, every local government salary, every government infrastructure project is paid for by people who take a risk, hire someone, make something, sell something and turn a profit. That is not ideology. That is basic economic arithmetic.

Labour came into power talking about growth and partnership with business. But the Labour government simply do not understand the economic engine room of the private sector. They treat the people who generate the money as a cash machine.

Look at what the Labour government actually did:
They put a tax on jobs. Employer National Insurance went from 13.8% to 15%, and the threshold collapsed from £9,100 to £5,000. That is not a levy on “the rich.” That is a levy on hiring a receptionist, a warehouse worker, an apprentice. Employer NICs then jumped 28% in a year and overtook corporation tax as the biggest tax paid by business. Companies paid almost £345 billion in tax in 2025–26 - up by 12.7%. That money comes out of wages that were not raised, jobs that were not created and investment that was postponed.

The Labour government raised the price of success. They choked off growth. Capital gains tax went up. Business Asset Disposal Relief was watered down. Dividend tax went up. Farmers and family businesses were punished with inheritance tax.

Smalll business founders were told, in effect: take the risk and when you finally sell the thing you built, we will treat the exit more like a success punishment payment to the government. That is not “fairness.” That is a government eating the seed corn of an economy.

They layered cost on cost. Higher minimum wages with no offsetting productivity. Heavier employment regulation. Business rates that still punish the high street. Energy costs that leave manufacturers uncompetitive. Then more government briefings about the next raid — more capital gains tax, more wealth taxes, more “the rich must pay.” More uncertainty for businesses. Uncertainty is a tax of its own.

And then the Labour government act surprised when private-sector activity slumps, businesses close, hiring stalls, and the CBI has to warn the government not to hit businesses again. You cannot squeeze the wealth-creating part of the economy and then demand it produces more growth, more jobs and more tax receipts. That is not redistribution. It is a wrecking ball strategy.

You do not create more jobs by making it more expensive to employ anyone. You do not get more houses by driving builders and investors away. You do not produce more food by punishing those who grow the food. You do not get a richer country by treating profit and employee growth as something that should be plundered by the government.

The wealth of a nation is built by people who could have chosen an easier life and did not. Punish that class long enough and you do not get equality. You get stagnation, fewer jobs and an economically illiterate government still hungry for money that is no longer being made because of their failure to support our British businesses.

If Britain wants better public services, it needs a private sector that is expanding, not one that is being financially punished for the privilege of still being here.

[Benonwine @benonwine]

Wow Georgina from London doesn’t hold back on Ash’s show, and my god I don’t think she could have said that ANY better.

People have had ENOUGH!!

She has just said EXACTLY what we are all thinking. 👏👏👍🇬🇧

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Well said Simon Jordan - who points out some inconvenient truths on illegal migration. And no, his commentary isn’t racist. He’s simply saying in blunt terms what millions of people are saying up and down the country. And no, they aren’t racist either.

[Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ]

Breaking.

The UK paid £11.9 BILLION last year in universal credit welfare payments to households with foreign nationals.

Up from £9.5 billion in 2024 & £7.5 billion in 2023.

And 65% of the payments went to jobless claimants.

We are being fleeced.

Source: @migrationCtrl

[Andrew Langley @saintdiamond1]

The Bank of England is no longer an independent body of any credibility. The same institution that created an effective coup by sabotaging a budget to bring down a government, has today, hidden debt into the long grass to make their Labour mates feel good, whilst playing scandalously fast and loose with inflation, ahead of their parties conference and a tricky by-election.
I’m normally a moderate. But this is a scandal.

[Kelvin MacKenzie @kelvmackenzie]

The outrage from Labour at Reform pocketing £72million from a couple of crypto guys makes me laugh.
Do you know how much trade unions have paid to Burnham’s mob between 2006-2025?
£200million in donations and affiliation fees. Yes £200million.
For that money they run the country when there’s a Labour administration.
And you wonder why we have a new Employment Rights Act where you can now have sick pay from Day One ( the number of week one sickness has rocketed) and maternity rights from Day One which means new employees are turning up having just been hired to announce they will shortly be away for a year.
Almost impossible to fire the most criminal of employees without giving them a payoff because they know dimwitted employment tribunal judges are on their side.
Our nation is bankrupt because it’s at the beck and call of the unions and there £200million.
Never forget it.

[Second Tier podcast @secondtierpod]

Watch this. Start to finish.

In love with Swansea City, my god.

[Championship Terrace Talk @ChampionshpTalk]

Swansea were absolutely brilliant today.
Barca colours and performance to match. Dark horses starting to leave the stable. #swans

[James Williams @HatchetHazza]

@JohnWilliams004 Looks like ‘gennith? Uppa Swans.

[John Williams @JohnWilliams004]

TOTAL FOOTBALL 👊🦢

[Mike Bones @mrmikebones]

The Roots & Ice Cube’s “Straight Outta Compton” from that Jimmy Fallon rehearsal is one of the greatest live hip-hop moments ever. Just a warmup and they still went nuclear. Kirk taking Eazy’s verse might be the highlight.

[Adam Brooks AKA EssexPR 🇬🇧 @EssexPR]

The benefits system was set up as a safety net for the genuinely hard up. The disabled, those that had accidents or serious illness.

It was not set up for what it has morphed into. A ‘free for all’ for anyone with a victim complex, the lazy, or those that don’t want to work.
It’s become a source of income for foreigners from all over the world.

STRIP THOSE OF THEM AND PAY MORE TO THOSE THAT GENUINELY NEED IT.
I WANT THE GENUINE CASES TO GET MORE.

[Andrew Griffith MP @griffitha]

I’ve long warned that Labour’s attacks on wealth creators and entrepreneurs would cost Britain.

Now the Sunday Times Rich List gives us the results: it’s a bloodbath. 1 in 3 left the UK.

Here's why top taxpayers and philanthropists are fleeing like it's the 1970s again. 🧵👇