James Bird

Stand with 🇺🇦 . Midlander, West Brom Fan

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Yes. And I will 💅

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Labour entered government and
⬇️hiked employers National Insurance
⬇️hiked the minimum wage
⬇️loaded new regulations on businesses

The result? Employers stopped hiring young people.

@Conservatives will listen to business, back more apprenticeships and reduce tax and red tape.

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

Three teenagers escaped prison after gang-raping two schoolgirls.

The country is shocked and disgusted.

But it is explicit government policy to send fewer criminals under eighteen to prison.

I’ve written to David Lammy demanding he changes course.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

I have been sickened all day by the news of three boys who lured two schoolgirls, raped them, and filmed it on their phones while they laughed and egged each other on. When they finally stood before a judge this week, they were handed “rehabilitation orders” and walked out without serving a single day behind bars. Not in prison, not in custody or a young offender institution.

The judge said, “None of you need to go to prison”.

What message does that send to rapists? The crime could hardly be graver, yet the punishment was no punishment at all. It’s the collapse of consequences and the rot runs right through the justice system.

And this is only going to get worse because Labour are choosing to go soft on criminals:

❌ They have abolished short prison sentences.
❌ They have let tens of thousands of criminals out early.
❌ And now they want to raise the age of criminal responsibility, so that even MORE young offenders escape any consequence at all.

My position is common sense👇
PRISON WORKS.

✅It punishes those who do wrong, it keeps dangerous people off our streets and away from our children.
✅It tells every victim that the law is on their side.

A country that forgets this is a country where schoolgirls are raped and filmed for sport, and the boys who did it get to go home.

Conservatives stand against it and our policies on sentencing and prison are the ones that will deliver a stronger country.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Keir Starmer is handing Putin £1bn buying dirty Russian oil, while banning drilling of British oil in the North Sea.

This is madness, morally and economically. We should back Ukraine and back our oil and gas industry in Aberdeen and beyond. That’s what @Conservatives would do.

[Gordon Dimmack @GordonDimmack]

UK news: HS2 could cost up to £102.7bn and may not open until 2039 (BBC)

This is Chongqing railway station rebuild in China. It cost £16.5bn and took only around 3 1/2 years to complete.

Their high speed rail (350km/hr) cost just £5.9bn and took 6 years

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

You may not agree with me, but you will always know where you stand with me.

Today in Billericay, a heckler tried to shout me down as I spoke about the normalisation of hatred towards Jews. I did not back down, because it needs to be said. British Jews are being targeted and too many people are pretending this is the same experience of other minorities. This lady implied Muslims are being similarly targeted. This is simply not true.

Let's be honest about what is happening. Certain groups (in particular but not solely Islamic Extremists) are creating a climate of fear and intimidation that is normalising Jew hatred. I will never stand for that. Governments have spent too long hand-wringing, making excuses and hoping it would go away. It is time to call this what it is: a national emergency in our attitude, our urgency and our response.

I will always engage with people who disagree with me. That is politics. But there is a difference between argument and intimidation. Shouting does not make a bad case good. It's done to silence others. And it certainly does not change the truth.

The truth is that British Jews have been made to feel less safe in their own country. Our country. They are being singled out, threatened and harassed in ways that should shame everyone in public life. If we do not stand up now and stop this rise in antisemitism, then why bother saying "Never Again" at Holocaust Memorial Day? Because this is how it starts.

I am not prepared to play along with the pretence that this is normal, or manageable, or just another example of tension between groups. It really is not. It is targeted hatred and it is getting worse.

So my message is simple. Not here. Not in Britain. And not on our watch. We need to stop the hand-wringing and start doing the right thing. That means standing with British Jews openly, unapologetically and without fear.

[Maxi @AllForProgress_]

A British company called Skycutter, based in the East Midlands, just finished first out of the entire field in the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program. Score of 99.3 out of 100. The largest order goes to them: two and a half thousand units, an initial Pentagon contract of twenty million dollars, with an option to scale up to two hundred million.

Read that and really soak it in. It's something that rarely happens anymore. A small British startup beat the entire American defence-tech industrial complex on its own home turf, in a competition the Pentagon designed itself, against companies that get whatever they ask for from Washington on a Tuesday morning.

It looks likely to be followed by something that always happens - Skycutter are, by the looks of things, going to pack up their talent and their operations and move all of it to America.

Why? The MoD, they say, is too slow. The procurement cycle is too long. There is no clear pathway from "British company that builds something the world wants" to "British company that the British state buys from in serious quantity at serious speed." No byway through which you move from "A potentially world-toppling IP advantage" to "Complete and deserved domination of the global market."

So we are about to lose them. Not because they want to leave, but because the country that produced them cannot organise itself fast enough to keep them. The MoD's response, by the way, was to issue a statement saying it wants the UK to be "the best place in the world to start and grow a defence business."

It does not want to do this. Indeed it is difficult to convey, in polite English, how galling that sentence is when read alongside the news it is responding to.

You're a serious country? You'd fight for a company like Skycutter. You'd fight to take them if they weren't yours, and you'd fight like mad to keep them if they were.

A serious country has someone in Whitehall whose entire fucking job is making sure the next Skycutter doesn't end up in Virginia.

We have, instead, a Defence Office for Small Business Growth. Which is the kind of name you give a thing that you created for no purpose other than taking the piss out of it.

[German Embassy London @GermanEmbassy]

Germany is celebrating the late Queen!

A special stamp marks what would have been Queen Elizabeth II’s 100th birthday on 21 April. It honours her legacy and work towards reconciliation between the UK and Germany.

[James Cleverly🇬🇧 @JamesCleverly]

Stuttering, hesitating, clearly being passed notes by his SPAD, this is a humiliating exchange.

He is supposed to be the Defence Secretary, not the Defensive Secretary.

He is supposed to present strength, not weakness.

[Housing, Communities & Local Government Committee @CommonsHCLG]

Lord @MichaelGove, former Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, told us that freeholders "have benefitted from a system whereby they get money for nothing", and he'd like to see an acceleration by Government to end ground rent.

[Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky]

👀The Electoral Commission give Democracy Volunteers access to polling stations at election time. Only they and the police can go inside. They’ve just issued this report about “family voting” in Gorton and Denton:

Democracy Volunteers deployed four accredited election observers across the Gorton and Denton Westminster Parliamentary By-election today. The team attended 22 of the 45 polling stations in the constituency, spending between 30 and 45 minutes in each.

The observers worked in pairs using the international standard for election observation - the four eyes principle. Each team assessed several aspects of the polling process, from accessibility to issues around the integrity of the vote.

Staff were welcoming to the team and we would like to thank them for their time in accommodating our work.

The team assessed two significant aspects of electoral integrity - family voting (where two voters either confer, collude or direct each other on voting) which breaches the secret ballot. The team also assessed the impact of the requirement for voters to show ID before they are issued with a ballot paper.

2023 saw the enactment of the Ballot Secrecy Act, which made the practice of family voting more clearly a breach of the secret ballot, making it more enforceable by staff in polling stations. Signage is now available to discourage the practice. Signage was only seen in 45% of the polling stations observed.

The observer team saw family voting in 15 of the 22 polling stations observed, some 32 cases in total, nine cases in one polling station alone. The team observed a sample of 545 voters casting their votes - meaning 12% of those voters observed either caused or were affected by family voting.

Commenting John Ault, Director of Democracy Volunteers said;

‘Today we have seen concerningly high levels of family voting in Gorton and Denton. Based on our assessment of today’s observations, we have seen the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10 year history of observing elections in the UK.’

‘We rarely issue a report on the night of an election, but the data we have collected today on family voting, when compared to other recent by-elections, is extremely high.’

‘In the other recent Westminster parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby we saw family voting in 12% of polling stations, affecting 1% of voters. In Gorton and Denton, we observed family voting in 68% of polling stations, affecting 12% of those voters observed.’

The team also observed cases of voters being turned away, however, in each case this was due to them not being a registered voter for Westminster elections, such as having EU citizenship, and only being allowed to vote in local elections.

The team also saw a number of voters taking photographs of their ballot papers and one voter being authorised to vote despite them already having been marked as voted earlier in the day.

Democracy Volunteers has informed elections staff at Manchester City Council about our findings today.

This Statement is now available on the Democracy Volunteers website HERE.
--

[Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes]

First Minister Misley Mandarin:

"This is our homeland. More to come in a few weeks. We are not visitors... God save the king. God save the United States of America."

Save Chagos!

[Mel Stride @MelJStride]

BREAKING

New @YouGov poll: Best party on the economy

Conservatives: 21%
Reform: 14%
Labour: 12%

Labour are taxing us into the ground. Reform peddle fantasy economics.

Only the @Conservatives are cutting through with a serious and credible plan to build a stronger economy.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

For more than 800 years, we have enjoyed the right to a jury trial. David Lammy wants to take this away because he doesn’t trust the British people.

Help @RobertJenrick and me fight him.

https://t.co/JgZfJIaWcg

[Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA 🗽 @SteveBakerFRSA]

Circulating …

[Rob Moore @robprogressive]

44.7% of the U.K population do not contribute any income tax 

Yet the top 0.1% earners pay 10% of the total taxes

The top 1% pay over 30% of the tax

The top 10% pay 69% of the total tax revenue 

£150k earner pays £53,460 in income tax but a £25,000 earner pays £2,486

You need 21x 25k earners to match the tax revenue of ONE 150k earner 

So no, we should NOT tax the rich more. They are ALREADY taxed more

No wonder all the millionaires are leaving the U.K. 

Oh, and how is this ‘fair’?

[Neil O'Brien @NeilDotObrien]

This was supposed to be the "cost of living" budget but it:
- Increases tax to record levels
- Increases inflation
- Increases interest rates
- Reduces household income
>SLOW HAND CLAP 👏👏👏👏

[Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes]

Green Party Deputy Leader @rachelmillward is jeered as a member of the public informs her that small boat migrants are not in fact all "surgeons and engineers."

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

Any Labour MP who thinks Rachel Reeves is doing a good job on the economy needs to get out and talk to people in the real world.