Lord Bethell

Former Health minister. Member of the House of Lords. Health Nation.

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

Sensible. Let’s hope those no backsliding on this position.

[Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak]

The Chancellor says Brits should not be on the hook for 'things that happened hundreds of years ago' @johnhealey tells us 'considering a formal apology does not mean accepting that British people now should now accept the financial liability for any part in things that happened hundreds of years ago in which they had no role' 👇

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

Millions of American families have seen the devastating toll of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Under President Trump, HHS is shifting the national strategy toward prevention, earlier detection, and faster development of better diagnostics and treatments.

[Patrick Stewart @SirPatStew]

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to:
Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund   
https://t.co/luC5CdcWDy
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Caregiver Resources    
https://t.co/zvNptfyuNd

Photo Credit: Tommy Garcia

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

Gutsy performance.
Respect.

[Sky News @SkyNews]

'The minister has very bravely offered to go through some of the charts from the budget'

@dantomlinsonmp joins @EdConwaySky at the screen to talk through the numbers behind today's announcement

https://t.co/UbdOIQ4Qqg

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

This is nuts.
50% parliamentarians clearly ADHD.
Should they qualify for disabled discounts?
🙄

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: People with ADHD can now get a third off train tickets under Government changes to the disabled railcard to include people with neurodivergence

[Professor Chris Whitty @CMO_England]

Aiming to addict children and young people under 18 to nicotine of any kind will set them up for lifelong health harms and is completely unacceptable.

New regulations coming in today will make it harder for those trying to profit from doing this.

https://t.co/Xiaq3qgfnV

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

@Power_Jen @AaronBastani

[Ryan King @makingmsimple]

UK new minimum wage: £27,456 per year.

Higher-rate tax bracket: £50,270.

1.8x difference.

In 1997 there was a 5x difference.

Mind boggling.

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

Yup.

[Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford]

BREAKING

The OBR says the tax raid on landlords - increasing property income tax rates by another 2% - will:

1) Make it less likely that people become landlords, ‘reducing long term rental supply’ and leading to a ‘steady long-term rise in rents’

2) See landlords simply pass on costs to tenants, increasing rents

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

@MrHarryCole Seen on Route 5. Central Valley is clearly rooting for @SteveHiltonx.

[robert shrimsley @robertshrimsley]

OBR chart on real household disposable income growth over the decades. Just wow

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

@lukedepulford @KMbappe Sad.

[Steve Hilton @SteveHiltonx]

The DSA is coming. And I'm your only line of defense.

[Miriam Cates @miriam_cates]

Why should a pensioner on a £13K income be exempt from income tax when a person of working age is not? Those of working age do not receive free travel or all sorts of other discounts to which pensioners are entitled. We do not exempt people from tax based on how many dependents they have, or how much housing in their area costs, so why exempt individuals based on age?

[Newt Gingrich @newtgingrich]

Ukrainians keep showing enormous courage in defending their country against Putin’s immoral and indeed evil efforts to conquer a neighbor. They have resisted now for four years and eight months and we should do all we can to help them.

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

It's still not very many people.
Just wait until our children's generation when we have 100,000's a year added to the 100yo+ club.

[Hugh Pym @BBCHughPym]

The number aged 100 or over in the UK has nearly doubled over last 20 years to 16,400. ONS also said 760 aged 105 or over last year, nearly a third higher than the previous year. 
ONS says this increase is result of surge in births after First World War peaking in 1920.

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

@LiamHalligan is right.
This is the alpha and omega of our national priorities.
Nothing else matters.

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

Official figures out this morning report that last month, the UK government borrowed £24.5 billion.

But the fineprint shows that almost £11 billion of that extra borrowing went on debt interest payments.

That's more than £400 per household on debt service costs, in September alone.

So far during this financial year, from April to September, the government's debt interest payments amount to £61 billion.

Now, this number will barely feature in UK newspapers and across our airwaves. It may be mentioned in passing in out-of-the-way business sections, or on the odd business bulletin.

But this huge debt interest bill won't register with the vast majority of our political and media class, or impact the national debate.

Let me explain why that's so wrong and so dangerous ...

£61 billion is a massive amount of money.

It's equivalent to the UK's entire annual defence budget – the money we're paying, increasingly to foreign creditors, simply to service our national debt for six months, not to pay any of it back.

£61 billion is equivalent to the money you'd raise over a year from adding a whopping 7 pence to the basic rate of income tax.

For £61 billion, you could build around 40 large, state-of-the-art hospitals, or employ more than 100 thousand extra nurses for ten years.

£61 billion would pay for free-at-the-point of use social care for everyone who needs it in the UK, for an entire year – three times over.

Again, this is the debt interest bill on Britain's spiralling national debt – now more than 3 trillion pounds – over the last six months alone.

The UK's public finances are close to meltdown – yet so many MPs and journalists continue blithely to view ever more public spending and borrowing as the answer to every problem.

Those who highlight the dangers post by our hugely precarious national accounts are dismissed as cranks, ideologues or worse.

But basic arithmetic has no ideology.

And there is nothing "progressive" or "kind" or "right-on" about driving the UK ever closer to the fiscal cliff edge, provoking a crisis that will make the "austerity" years of the 2010s feel like a picnic, a crisis in which poorer households will suffer the most.

Yes, Britain's national debt is lower than that of France. But because our borrowing has been rising so sharply, and because we're so prone to inflation, our debt service costs are much higher.

The UK is spending a disgraceful 3.6pc of GDP on public debt interest, while France spends less than 2.5pc.

Endless airtime and column inches are devoted to spurious conversations about a billion or two of additional "fiscal headroom" we may or may not have in three years' time.

And, of course, any "extra headroom" is immediately pledged in new spending – which means yet more borrowing.

These conversations are a waste of time – and, in fact, are deeply counterproductive. Three-year fiscal forecasts, even one- and two-year forecasts, routinely turn out to be askew by tens of billions of pounds.

I'm not saying we don't need fiscal rules - we do, but we need more immediate rules, which actually bite, acting as a meaningful constraint on out-of-control borrowing and spending.

Instead, political and media sages present the nation with spuriously precise discussions about fictional fiscal outcomes way into the future – using rules which are deliberately designed to kick arithmetic realities into the long grass ....

An increasingly expensive, over-bearing, out of control state is not the answer to Britain problems.

But unless we change course, it will certainly be our downfall.

Please like/share if you think what I'm saying is important – and if fiscal realities should feature more prominently in our national debate.

And for more sharp, plain-speaking economic analysis subscribe to:

"When The Facts Change - economic and politics in a fast-moving world, with Liam Halligan"

[Lord Bethell @JimBethell]

Isn’t this how we got into the polluted rivers problem in the first place?

[Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot]

EXC - The government to make unprecedented intervention in setting of water bills
- with ministers setting direction in the price review process for the first time

https://t.co/LJ8agYw7fe

[Department of Health and Social Care @DHSCgovuk]

We’ve smashed our target for commercial clinical trials to be set up in under 150 days, from submission for approval to the first patient.

It means more patients are getting cutting-edge, potentially life-saving treatments faster.

Find out more:
https://t.co/wO7kTj7QFz

[The Alliance for Longevity Initiatives (A4LI) @theA4LI]

Diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS can develop over many years, with protein misfolding and clumping contributing to damage in the brain and nervous system. By the time symptoms appear, significant damage may already have occurred. Understanding how these changes begin could open new opportunities to detect and treat disease earlier.

@ARPA_H's new BIOGAMI program is tackling this challenge, investing up to $152 million over four years to understand how proteins become dysfunctional and develop ways to intervene. Six research teams, including those at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Johns Hopkins, MIT, and UC Berkeley, will combine protein science and computational tools to develop new approaches to early detection and treatment. While the initial focus is neurodegenerative disease, the findings could eventually have applications in cancer, diabetes, and other conditions.

📖 Read more here: https://t.co/KpPo8CavFA

At A4LI, we're encouraged to see ARPA-H invest in understanding the underlying biology of disease. The earlier we can identify and address the processes that contribute to age-related conditions, the more opportunities researchers may have to change how these diseases are treated. We'll continue following BIOGAMI's progress and highlighting the work underway at ARPA-H to advance biomedical innovation.