James Farquharson 🇬🇧

Conservative.

[James Clark 📈📉¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @mr_james_c]

This is why the Left has switched to *relative* poverty and "inequality". Neither of which can be resolved, so they'll always have something to complain about.

Genius.

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Scratch beneath Burnham’s soothing energy rhetoric and you find the same old answer: someone else will pay, usually people with assets, investments or rental income.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s preferred route is higher taxes on entrepreneurs and landlords, neatly packaging fiscal reality as “fairness” while avoiding the admission that the average worker will pay indirectly through weaker growth and higher rents.

In practice, this locks the government into a dependence on taxing capital flows and property income to prop up basic consumer prices – a fragile model in a country already struggling to attract and retain investment.

Tie that to defence commitments and you have a state whose ability to fund its core functions rests on squeezing the very sectors that are meant to drive growth and fund those functions in the first place.

Burnham talks about security and stability, but he is quietly building a fiscal architecture that cannibalises tomorrow’s prosperity to pay for today’s discounts.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

BBC is my ‘go to’ media for football scores and nothing else.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

@BritishYusuf @ClaireCoutinho @wallaceme Gas and nuclear is the system we need. Everything else makes life harder.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

I feel the same. Tony Benn once said that politicians were either signposts or weathervanes. Widdecombe, whatever you thought of her views, was definitely the former.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

Rt. Hon. Wishful Thinking has been in charge of Britain’s energy system since 2008.

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

I have been contacted by more whistleblowers within our grid operator.

They allege the electricity grid is not being run securely, which increases the risk of blackouts, with a particularly severe event on 23rd June.

This information is also allegedly being hidden from the public.

This morning NESO refused to deny that Corporate Affairs staff had interfered in operational decisions to avoid reputational damage.

These whistleblowers are coming to me because they are worried that the grid is becoming unmanageable and they do not have faith that their concerns are being taken seriously.

I have written to the CEO of NESO asking them to bring in an independent external investigator to interview control room engineers so that we can find out the truth about what happened on the evening of 23rd June.

[Southern Accents @AccentsSouthern]

Right wing propaganda… but it’s literally just a random commercial from the 80’s.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

‘In the words of Thomas Sowell, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” https://t.co/bsX3EAlYeP

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

Members of any church must adhere to its principles.

Propose a clearer way to ensure candidates will support Conservative policies and won’t do their own thing, imagining they’re right but nearly killing the party in the process?

Our Association’s exec thinks what Kemi has said is excellent.

[Anglo Futurism Capital LP 🇬🇧🐿️ @RollingHedge]

This whole silly/amusing Gary debate has reminded us all that the left’s theory of wealth is never anything other than: “MOAR TAX”. Just tax everyone into some lowest common denominator equilibrium (equally poor). Which has never worked anywhere, ever. We have 200 years of data on this.

I am bored of the endless calls to shrink the top and call it “fairness”. We’ve literally run that experiment for 30 years or more and the reality is that the pie stops growing and the poor stay poor, just with more company. The economy is now optimised for the bottom quintile - in the sense that it doesn’t pay to work at various points within the income distribution; the economy is optimised for transfers, not for earning. The incentives are all 180° wrong.

Quite seriously, if our incentives structure isn’t totally re engineered towards a growth mindset then we risk a fiscal crisis (potentially around autumn or spring budgets), followed by an IMF bailout sooner than anyone is pricing in. I see no volte face, sadly.

We already know, very publicly per Pat McFadden’s and Torsten Bell’s own admissions, the Labour Party wonks are on an endless mission to find new way to tax people - partly through their own dogma and partly because both main parties have let TME and state largesse become totally unsustainable. Borrowing isn’t the issue. Spending is. What on. What it creates. We have had 18 years of flat productivity and we spend £1.4 TRILLION a year to get it.

I am firmly of the opinion that the left/right frame is (ackshually) no longer useful. Well past its sell-by date. So here’s my suggestion, no tribalism was hurt in the making of what follows:

Make the poorest wealthier. Actually wealthier. GDP per capita should be the main metric by which we judge the health of the economy.

And we achieve this not through increasing the tax burden (higher in relative peacetime to when we fought Hitler), and taking more from the people who actually contribute disproportionally to the economy (my fellow 1%ers pay 30% ish of all tax, broad shoulders indeed). Instead we should consider this novel concept called “GROWTH”. I know, astonishingly radical right?

Just like the good people at @lfg_uk I am also looking for growth in Britain, and coming up short at every turn. But it doesn’t need to be this way.

We could have:

1/ Cheapest energy in Europe, not the dearest (we’re currently top of the IEA table, it’s a standing tax on every household) by building a fleet of nuclear power stations.

2/ Let workers keep more of what they earn (some UC claimants lose 70p+ in every extra £1, worse than any banker’s marginal rate)

3/ Reform capital markets so British savings fund British jobs instead of everyone else’s.

4/ Build. Houses, grid/transmission, reactors. Planning constraint alone added ~35% to house prices (LSE)

5/ Keep the guardrails. Torch the red tape that exists to protect incumbents.

None of this takes a penny from anyone. A rising tide beats a redistributed puddle.

Bentham would agree I’m sure. Gary not so much - but thankfully he’s been discredited now; first (some time ago) by the market-literate community, then by academics and economists, then the plain old fashioned community of the relatively numerate, and now by Tax final boss Dan Neidle (who as a “massive predatory capitalist” wants 37 new taxes introduced, lol you fucking morons) and The Guardian.

We can finally ignore Gary and by extension - Burnham and fringe lunatic Polanski.

Bin.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

@TheFootyFeed @jfwduffield Weymouth, up the Terras! (A run of bad luck sees us now competing in the Evostick Southern South League South West, or something.)

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

When a church becomes overly-broad its walls can no longer support the span of its roof, which duly collapses.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

Shallow point, but he looks so much like a stoner I’d be surprised if he isn’t.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

Kemi's no longer accused of being a DEI hire. She's still sometimes accused of being Michael Gove's sock puppet, which is ridiculous, she's clearly her own person. Angry types say she's ethnically Nigerian, and spell out her full name as if it's a killer blow. Yes she is, and?

[Michael A. Arouet @MichaelAArouet]

Wealth tax explained:

1. Laura loves to cook, she risks all her life savings and opens a small restaurant: Laura‘s Kitchen

2. Laura works really hard, evenings, weekends, no vacations

3. The local community loves Laura‘s Kitchen, it’s a success, the restaurant gets larger, Laura hires 30 people from the neighborhood

4. Laura makes 1,5 Million € in profit, she pays 40% in income tax: 600,000€

5. The left „tax the rich“ party wins the elections, and introduces a wealth tax

6. Laura‘s Kitchen gets valued by the tax authorities at 25 Million €. Laura must pay 5% wealth tax: 1,25 Million €

7. The income tax of 600,000€ plus 1,25 Million € in wealth tax is more than the 1,5 Million € Laura makes

8. Laura cannot afford to pay more taxes than she makes, she closes Laura’s Kitchen

9. Laura loses her life savings despite years of hard work, 30 people lose their jobs, the state receives zero taxes

10. The local community goes to McDonalds again

11. The local left “tax the rich“ party members blame „capitalism“ for that on social media

12. Everyone gets poorer due to higher unemployment and lower tax revenues

Why is this so difficult for the left to understand?

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

Listening to Rupert Lowe on Joe Rogan it’s perfectly clear he’s a classic individualist eurosceptic Tory.

Your common or garden Conservative backbencher would have shared his exact opinions through the 1980s and 90s.

The ethnonationalist collectivist right that swirls around Restore online have completely different worldviews to him.

[Britain Unbound @BritainUnbound]

Wow.

Ipsos published polling yesterday, where over 1000 people were asked "what is the most important issue facing Britain today?"

For the option of "Common Market/Brexit/EU/Europe/ Euro", only SIX PEOPLE selected it.

6 people. Out of over 1000.

0.6%. An irrelevance.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

I'm English and always support Scotland whenever they play a non-British team in any endeavour, sporting or otherwise. Why are they like this?

[Scottish Banter @1scottishbanter]

Why we are contractually obliged to support Norway this Saturday 🇳🇴🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Since we don't have a choice in the matter, we’ve prepared this official guide to ensure every Scot is fully informed of our historical, genetic, and meteorological obligations before kick-off.

Failure to comply may result in Norway asking for their Christmas tree back, and frankly we cannot afford our own.

[James Farquharson 🇬🇧 @JamesFarqu]

@reporterboy Some recognition deserved for Conservative councillors and members who, even further back, while standing in the wreckage of 2024, predicted that the party could recover and Reform could stall so stayed with it.