Lorri 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🦉🚜

Proud Mum & Nana. Happily retired. Scouting volunteer. Love my garden, food, music, Sheffield, cycling, wildlife & nature. Family Community Country 🩵

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

The UK government has, since April, spent no less than £61 billion - that’s £61,000,000,000 - on debt interest payments.

That’s equivalent to our entire annual defence budget - on just half a year’s worth of debt service costs, not paying back a penny of our national debt.

For £61bn you could build 40 state-of-the-art hospitals.

Or employ 100,000 nurses for a decade

Or fund free-at-the-point-of-use social care, across the entire UK, for three years.

Watch this short “When The Facts Change” video for more on the UK’s soaring debt interest bill - the biggest national scandal our mainstream media continues to ignore.

[Voting Right | Uniting The Right UK @UniteRightUK]

🎉ANNOUNCEMENT🎉

Every candidate we backed yesterday finished top on the right.

Four won, three of them gains.

Six more next Thursday.

Sign up and get the pick for your area:

https://t.co/0gHyNuQCdp

[Lorri 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🦉🚜 @lorripops]

@thenowherephoto My condolences to you and your family Adrian 🤍

[Andrew Bowie MP @AndrewBowie_MP]

🚨Sneaked out by OFGEM this morning, a warning for the first time EVER they cannot guarantee that demand will be met on a peak day in winter.

Let’s be clear what that means. They cannot guarantee that homes will be warm, lights come on or industry function on a peak day this winter.

And why? Because of an accelerated decline in domestic gas supply from the North Sea.

So what is the solution? For British bill payers to pay more, to IMPORT more from Europe (specifically Belgium) to keep the lights on in Britain.

Britain. A country with vast supplies of gas, untapped, deliberately due to Labour policy now going cap in hand to Europe and paying vast sums to import foreign gas.

It is utterly outrageous. You couldn’t make it up.

https://t.co/saKKnc8gOq

[Lorri 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🦉🚜 @lorripops]

@SandyofSuffolk We get three meals (for two of us) out of it 🙂

[Lorri 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🦉🚜 @lorripops]

@CallumLyon We spend £80 - 90 a week at our local supermarket but it’s not all food (no alcohol & rarely meat), and there are two of us. It’s gone up £30+ a week since Covid 😕

[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"

[The Food Manufacturing Guy @TipOfTheBanana]

Most decaf coffee is made with methylene chloride. It's the solvent that used to be in paint stripper.

The green beans are steamed, then washed in methylene chloride, which pulls out the caffeine and not much else. The beans are steamed again to drive off the solvent and then roasted at over 400F. FDA allows up to 10 parts per million. When a lab tested 24 decaf brands in 2020 it found the solvent in 10 of them at about 0.05 to 0.1 ppm, around 100 times below the limit. The industry calls this the European method.

There are 3 other ways to do it. Ethyl acetate, a solvent that can be made from sugarcane, which the trade calls the natural method. Carbon dioxide under pressure. And the Swiss Water process, which uses hot water and carbon filters and no solvent at all. Peet's says all of its decaf is water process. Starbucks has told reporters most of its decaf is the direct contact method, meaning solvent.

EPA banned most uses of methylene chloride in 2024, but food is FDA's job, so decaf wasn't part of it. A petition to pull it from food has sat at FDA since December 2023. FDA reopened comments on it in May and hasn't decided. If the bag says Swiss Water or water process, no solvent touched it. If the bag says nothing, you don't know.

[Voting Right | Uniting The Right UK @UniteRightUK]

Council by-elections this Thursday.

Don't split the right.

Our pick for each, with the reason:

https://t.co/ohx47fTa15

[Kent Nielsen Denmark @Kentfrihedniels]

20 dead calves in less than 3 months – the Danish state press remains silent!

Today marks 7 months since the first calf caretaker reported sick and dead calves due to the waste product from Bovaer – NOPA 3-Nitrooxypropionic acid. She experienced 20 dead calves in less than 3 months of Bovaer use. Nothing negative happened to calves that did not receive Bovaer milk.

Since then, two other calf caretakers have reported the same problems. And the same solution: do not give calves Bovaer milk!

And the state press, which is otherwise quite capable of writing about and producing documentaries on animal welfare in pig production, has in 7 months not mentioned the sick and dead calves with a single word. Not a single word!

It is obvious that there have been major lies about the Bovaer poison and the reason for its introduction, and the claim that nothing went into the milk died in February 2025. The claim that the Bovaer poison is supposed to be safe and effective, is also stone cold dead.

NOPA 3-Nitrooxypropionic acid, the waste product from the Bovaer poison that ends up in food, is claimed – while it harms and kills calves – to be harmless for humans to consume.

EFSA is now reassessing the approval of the Bovaer poison, which otherwise rests on the Bovaer poison producer’s own experimental data. It is also from this producer that the claim that NOPA 3-Nitrooxypropionic acid is harmless comes.

Sick and dead calves due to NOPA 3-Nitrooxypropionic acid, while EFSA is reassessing the approval of the Bovaer poison, is mysteriously not something the state press finds that the Danish population should be informed about.

First article on the subject from the honorable Jens Mogensen @Jenbas1 , who with the independent media https://t.co/bYqJsTPmW8 has reported on the Bovaer poison scandal throughout. Article from March 20, 2026:
https://t.co/c98z6ifgbN

Only https://t.co/bYqJsTPmW8 and media from other countries write about the sick and dead Bovaer calves.

It has now happened in at least 7 countries and thus in 7 different languages!

Meanwhile the Danish left-leaning state press is just as silent, as the many dead calves.

NOPA – https://t.co/nc8UnTtJ3P

Bovaer modstand https://t.co/Bh0ZwZ8w38

Find us on Facebook and please Boycott Arla!

[David Storch @storchyowl]

At the @SheffChildrens auction last night before auctioning off the Sheffield Wednesday Lion the gentleman introducing expressed hope that the new owners of @swfc would support the Children’s Hospital which the prior owner hadn’t.

Please know that for as long as I remain the proud Chairman and owner of our amazing club, @swfc + me will be reliable patrons of @SheffChildrens. Their work is so important… I will always support their efforts as they work tirelessly to provide world class treatment and care today + long into the future for the kids + families who depend on them. I stand alongside @bazzabannan25 and his incredible support for @SheffChildrens.

@SheffChildrens is a very important part of the broader Sheffield community which has been kind to embrace @michaelestorch and me, plus our friend Tom Costin and the investors he brought along as we together with the telented and committed team @swfc work day and night to return the club to its historic glory. And make no mistake… we will!

When passing or entering our beloved Hillsborough, I invite each and everyone of you as you gaze at the beautiful artistry of Zoe Burger and her Sheffield Wednesday Lion and Lioness you stop for a moment and think of the kids + families who depend on the Hospital and the remarkable staff that works there, stop for a moment, say a prayer or two for successful outcomes everyday.

The work they do @SheffChildrens is so important… it is my honor to show my support by purchasing the Lions+ more. I do so with my own 10 grandchildren in mind .

I’d also like to recognize the incredible artistry of renowned artist Zoe Burger. Thank you Ms Burger.

#WAWAW

[Dr Clare Craig ✝️ @ClareCraigPath]

Folic acid must be avoided by millions and yet the government is adding it to our flour!

Sign the petition.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

This is Mohammed Yaseen, he was a member of the Al Qaeda group that beheaded Ken Bigley.

He arrived in Britain on a small boat, released from prison after just 6 months but can’t be deported due to his "human rights."

Costing us £85k per year & £500k for legal aid. Disgusting!

[GB Politics @GBPolitcs]

🚨NEW: An Islamic terrorist who was part of the Al Qaeda unit who beheaded British man Ken Bigley has been pictured free to walk the streets after being released from prison having served six months of a two-year sentence for illegally crossing the English Channel

[Voting Right | Uniting The Right UK @UniteRightUK]

Four more by-elections this Thursday.

Let's not hand another one over.

Who to back

👇👇👇

https://t.co/ohx47fTHQD

[Lorri 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🦉🚜 @lorripops]

@BellTower1775 A wedding I believe 🙂

[Lorri 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🦉🚜 @lorripops]

Autumn colours at Elsecar, Barnsley on our walk today 🍂🍁 and church bells at Wentworth, Rotherham 🔔😊 #lovewhereyoulive #England

[Colin Brazier @ColinBrazierTV]

In a democracy we submit to be governed. And there is an unwritten agreement. You keep us safe, stop society descending into devil-take-the-hindmost savagery, and we - the people - agree to contract-out the right to defend ourselves and punish those who would do us harm. 

In other words, policing by consent not vigilantism. When we see, as we have this week - criminals walking free, punching the air, having served a fraction of the sentence imposed by the Crown, on our behalf, then we are entitled to wonder - are we not - whose side the law is now really on. 

My latest monologue, available on Substack.
https://t.co/U0Sow2IGiW

[Voting Right | Uniting The Right UK @UniteRightUK]

The final by-election from this week has been announced.

There were 5 in total and we called right the strongest right-of-centre party in every one of them.

Two, including this one, were lost to a split vote.

Time to fix this and it can only be done by you spreading the word.

[Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis]

Important News: @Ofgem’s just launched a ‘consultation’ about switching on the Market Stabilisation Charge as soon as November. It doesn’t sound a big deal, but it could be, it ain’t good for consumers and I don't want it to slip under the radar.

In a nutshell, it means if wholesale energy prices drop sharply, the cheap fixes and switcher’s deals offered will be a lot more expensive, in order to protect energy firms’ profits.

That’s because any firm taking on a new customer, including on a cheap fix or other specialist tariff, will have to pay compensation to that customer’s old supplier, if they switch. It's basically a form of switching penalty.

While technically this is a consultation, it’s one of those where Ofgem has made up its mind, but is required to consult - it will almost certainly happen. Below is my ‘first look’ explainer on this...
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How it works (simplified to make it easy to understand):

Ofgem decided to put this power back into suppliers’ licences in May, so it could switch it on quickly if needed, and now it is trying to do just that.

It means if wholesale prices drop more than 10% below the level built into the Price Cap (and remember the January Price Cap is currently predicted to be 25% higher than now), and someone switches supplier from that or any tariff, the new firm must pay the old one 85% of the drop in wholesale rates beyond that 10%.

So very roughly, say the wholesale energy in the Price Cap costs £1,000 (a made-up number, to keep it simple. This is about proportions, not exact amounts):

- If prices drop to £900, there’s no Market Stabilisation Charge.\
- If prices drop to £800, you get the first £100 drop, but 85% of the next £100 (£85) goes to your old supplier.

So almost certainly the new firm will make you pay the difference, meaning the tariff will be up to £85 more than it would otherwise have been (other factors could affect the amount, but this is a rough illustration)

In other words, the new supplier can’t pass a chunk of the saving from lower wholesale rates on to you, because it has to hand much of it to your old supplier.

Why Ofgem says it’s doing this

Its argument is that the Price Cap requires suppliers buy energy in advance. If wholesale rates fall sharply and people leave in large numbers, those suppliers would be left out of pocket, and it doesn’t want suppliers who did the right thing by buying energy in advance to be penalised.

My View

I don’t like it. This is a ‘Market Stabilisation Charge’ but the supplier market is pretty stable, and I doubt we are at the domino risk of suppliers going bust in the way they did in the early twenties. A good few energy firms have made large profits since then, and protecting them over winter by effectively dampening competition because it’s ‘not their fault’ feels raw.

After all we don’t take their profits off them when they make them ‘through no fault’. Until now, my hope had been that at some point the Middle East situation would de-escalate, wholesale rates would drop. While it would take months for that to feed into the Price Cap, other cheaper tariffs would be available to switch to. That would still happen, but the savings could be no-where near as good as otherwise.
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As noted, these are my provisional thoughts and this has only just come out. I will need to do more looking/thinking.