W Rod

[Essex Patriot @Essex_Patriot]

Andy Burnham has appointed 28 ministers in the new cabinet.

Here's a total of private sector experience

Andy Burnham -

3 years at a publishing company after university

Louise Haigh -

3 years middle management at Aviva ended with fraud conviction THATS IT

A team with no business, finance or management experience

ARE GOING TO RUN A £3 TRILLION ECONOMY 🇬🇧

[Asuka @asuka_aryan]

They're cutting your pension so that an increasing number of unemployable dysgenic retards from the third world can live at your expense.

[Ki🫧⚒️ @KB_WHU]

Had a bank holiday for beating Haiti you silly cunt

[W Rod @lovesapunt]

@bet365 how are you settling the ‘lowest scoring team’ at WC market if there is a tie please?

[W Rod @lovesapunt]

@VFTNinian Fair play to Lincoln, executed their game plan perfectly. We really missed having a focal point as we couldn’t open them up playing in front of them. Didn’t look like scoring

Silly mistakes for the goals. Osho at fault for the first +shouldn’t be starting games of this stature.

[Second Tier podcast @secondtierpod]

On this day in 2016 🗓️

A vintage Peter Whittingham free kick! 🗑️

[BLAIM GAME @BLAIMGame]

@TrisOsborneMP Here is the Westminster committee where the CEO’s of the energy companies tell the truth that Government policy is why energy prices are so high regardless of gas prices

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

In a crowded field “a wealth tax” is a phrase I’d like to see sunset. The UK has quite a few wealth taxes - including IHT and CGT. What these genuine economists don’t do is put a new tax on wealth in context of existing levies. For example Norway’s annual wealth tax came after its Inheritance Tax was abolished. If the UK wants a sensible public policy debate then all taxes on wealth should be in scope - and so cover the (probable) merits of moving from an event driven tax (at sale, death) to a recurring annual levy.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

This will be a tough weekend for the Chancellor. She knew almost six weeks before the Budget from the OBR there was no ‘black hole’. Yet she and the Treasury still stoked up the idea that there was — and it would take big tax rises to fill it.
By Oct 31 she knew from the OBR there was actually £4bn headroom rather than a black hole. Yet still on Nov 5th she commandeered breakfast media to roll the pitch for big tax rises.
Even by mid-November she was telling the BBC if Labour stuck to its manifesto commitments (ie no income tax rises) she’d need deep cuts to capital investment.
None of what she said in the run up to the Budget was true. The Treasury select committee needs to ask her why she so misled the Parliament, the markets and the British people.
She raised taxes to give herself some more headroom and to pay for yet another increase in (largely welfare) spending.
The tax burden is going to all-time record level for a simple reason: the Labour manifesto said public spending would be around £10bn higher than Tory plans by 2028/29. In reality on the latest projections it will be £179bn higher!!! Nothing to do with filling in black holes.

[Matt Gubba @MattGubba]

Ten years ago, a small business owner taking a £100k dividend could pay as little as £2,500 in personal tax if structured efficiently under the old dividend tax system.

Today in 2025, they’re paying £21,250.

Next year, under Labour’s new budget, they’ll pay over £23,000.

And that’s after the company has already paid 25% corporation tax on the profits used to fund that dividend.

In a decade, we’ve gone from a manageable tax bill to one where the state takes nearly a quarter of the dividend on top of corporation tax before the owner sees a penny.

That’s a nearly 800% increase in personal tax on the same £100k.

All for the crime of running a business in Britain.

- This is why entrepreneurship is dying here.
- This is why people aren’t scaling.
- This is why founders are taking their companies and jobs abroad.

If you want growth, stop treating business owners like a bottomless ATM.

Britain needs entrepreneurs, not policies that punish them for succeeding.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

There's a line every Chancellor knows they cannot cross: you do not invent a crisis to plunder the public purse. Rachel Reeves didn't cross the line – she erased it. The facts are clear. On 31 October, the OBR told her she had £4.2 billion of headroom. No black hole. No fiscal cliff. No looming disaster. Yet on 4 November she strode out and spoke as if Britain were teetering on collapse, as if some unseen storm had torn through the nation's books. She talked of "difficult choices," of "consequences," of a shortfall she knew was fiction. That wasn't a slip of the tongue. It was a deliberate lie.

She didn't raise taxes because she had to. She raised them because she wanted to. She froze thresholds, dragged almost a million more people into higher-rate tax, and cooked up the biggest stealth raid in modern times. All of it hidden behind a phantom crisis. The black hole was political theatre, designed to shield a welfare splurge aimed at pacifying Labour's restless backbenches. The story of a collapsing budget was nothing more than an alibi, and a clumsy one at that.

Once you strip away the noise, the truth is plain: Reeves lied to the public so she could tighten her grip on their money. She even blamed Brexit, the Tories, inflation, global instability – anything except her own choices. And when the OBR published the timeline that exposed her, the Treasury lashed out, accusing the watchdog of breaching some sacred "private space." It was an act of panic. The OBR didn't breach anything. It blew the whistle. The only thing the Treasury wanted to protect was the lie.

A Chancellor's authority rests on trust. She signs off every tax a family pays. She shapes the numbers that steer the markets. When that figure misleads the country about the state of its finances, the entire system is tainted. Every forecast becomes suspect. Every Budget becomes theatre. Every future tax rise is greeted with the question she fears most: what are you hiding this time? You cannot run a credible economy when the Chancellor has debased her own currency – the truth.

Even Labour MPs can see it. Graham Stringer says the whole justification for the pain has melted away "like snow on a spring day." Others mutter that "it all looks a bit odd." When your own side begins edging away from you, the dam has already cracked. Kemi Badenoch is right to call for her resignation. Mel Stride is right to say she misled the country. And the public – those who will now pay more on their wages, their savings, their pensions, their fuel – can see the pattern for what it is.

This isn't a one-off error. It is the first real glimpse of how this government works: panic the country, raid its pockets, and hope no one spots the join. Reeves didn't inherit chaos. She manufactured it. She should go. If she stays, it tells Britain that dishonesty is no longer a scandal in government but standard practice. A free people cannot accept that. A country built on plain dealing cannot live under a Chancellor who treats truth as a prop and the public as marks.

Reeves should resign because the office she holds demands honesty, not stagecraft. And because a nation cannot build a future on a lie.

"Reeves didn't inherit chaos. She manufactured it. She should go. If she stays, it tells Britain that dishonesty is no longer a scandal in government but standard practice."

[Kevin Hatchard 🎙⚽️ @kevinhatchard]

The Andy Robertson controversy in #mcfc v #lfc underlines the mess that we’ve got into as a sport. Way too much subjectivity that’s tying good referees in knots. Scrap #VAR for all but goalline and offsides, simplify offside and handball laws. Let referees get on with the job.

[⚪️ @owenthfc__]

Married his childhood sweetheart who he has four kids with, donates to both armed forces & mental health charities while having his own mental health foundation, doesn't drink or smoke, been caught up in zero career scandals which is rare for a 32 year old footballer with his fame.

That's not even mentioning things like being both his nation's & boyhood club's all time goalscorer. 6 golden boots, 4 of which being in the Premier League & the World Cup.

All of this yet Harry Kane is one of the world's most disrespected & disliked footballers of all time. Bizarre. He is everything a child should look up to.

[Peter Bradbury @PEBradbury]

This has to be the worst decision I’ve ever seen.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Today’s monologue from The Times at One with Andrew Neil on Labour and business. @TimesRadio Back tomorrow 1pm.

In the run up to last year’s general election Labour wooed business hard. It worked. The Tories were no longer seen, with good reason, as the party of business. Private enterprise wanted a change. 
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, in more moderate mode than only a few years before, seemed to be saying all the right things.  The more gullible in business and finance even started to believe Rachel Reeves would know what she was doing. 
They were wrong — and the honeymoon is long over, smashed in the car crash that was Chancellor Reeves’ first Budget last October. Recriminations have now set in.
Former boss of Marks & Spencer told Times Radio yesterday that we were now ‘at the edge of a crisis.’  
James Dyson of the eponymous vacuum cleaners says Labour is out to punish those who create wealth and jobs.
The Chairman of Asda complains Labour is taxing ‘everything in some way, shape or form’ adding for good measure ‘I think there’s more gloom than we’ve seen in a long time.’  
The head of Next thinks that worse is yet to come. 
It already has. Jim Ratcliffe says his massive energy company, Ineos, will no longer invest in Britain because it now has one of the most ‘unstable fiscal regimes in the world.’ All investment in UK energy has been halted. But 3 billion pounds has been allocated for investment in America. 
It’s not just the scale of taxes that has scared away Ratcliffe. It’s the constant chopping and changing. 
As is often the case, what is wrong with Britain today started under the last Tory government. Back in May 2022 then Chancellor Rishi Sunak introduced a windfall tax on energy company profits. Fair enough. They were making money hand over fist after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spiked energy prices. 
It was meant to be temporary and set at 25% on top of existing profit taxes. But Jeremy Hunt whacked it up to 35%. And Rachel Reeves couldn’t resist taking it to 38% and extending it to 2030 
North Sea operators now face a 78% tax rate on their endeavours — among the highest in the world. So why bother. Ratcliffe has decided he won’t – and skedaddled to America. 
This deserves more coverage than it’s had. Business investment in Britain is the lowest in the G7. We’re 28th out of 31 in the OECD. Only Slovenia, Hungary and Latvia do worse. 
Rachel Reeves’ job was to lift us off the bottom and put rocket boosters under business investment. Instead, in her first shambles of a Budget she’s just made things worse.
She still spouts pro-business vacuities. But business is no longer listening. Companies remember she promised no major tax rises to get elected — and broke that promise big time in her first Budget. 
She then promised that was a one-off. She would not be back for more tax. But business knows she is coming back for a lot more in her second Budget in November. 
Business also sees what the various hopefuls are saying in the contest for Labour deputy leader. There is nothing business friendly about their utterances. Business senses that’s a more accurate representation of Labour’s real views than the Starmer-Reeves bromides.
In recent weeks we’ve started to stress about the risk of the bond markets turning against us because of the scale of our debt and deficits. But perhaps the more imminent danger facing Britain is that there could be a lot more Ratcliffes coming round the corner.

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

This is the same Jess Phillips who publicly accused me of being a ‘safeguarding concern’ to her 630k X followers, unprovoked.

This resulted in people writing to have me struck off from the teaching profession.

Why?

A malfunctioning Tina Turner gif I tweeted.

[Michael Spicer @MrMichaelSpicer]

People think money has ruined football but the sight of a rapist dictator standing next to a corrupt football official in front of a big gold trophy at a competition bankrolled by Saudi Arabia reminds me the game still belongs to us.

[ßen @BCAFCBH]

Let's have it then @EFL no excuses why you can't have a £25/22/20 cap now too.

Make it fair in every division!

[At The Races @AtTheRaces]

Three well-bred colts draw clear but it's Rogue Millions who comes on top!

The son of Dubawi and talented mare Nyaleti gets on top late on to open his account for @JPOwenRacing and @Luke_Morris88 at @Chepstow_Racing!