Maca

I believe in democracy and the will of the people. voted for both labour and Tories in my time. A Leave voter and despise Marxist BLM. Passionate NUFC fan.

[Maca @macatoon]

As usual Newcastle airport takes longer to give us our baggage than the flight from London.. ☹️☹️

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

Check out the ten-year gilt yield this morning - after the UK's likely next Prime Minister tried to lecture international investors about the intricacies of fiscal policy and the UK's national accounts.

A subject about which she clearly knows absolutely nothing.

Nice one @AngelaRayner !!!

Markets now demanding 4.9% per annum to lend money to the British government. In Morocco, it's 3.4%.

And get this. In February 2026, the UK government a massive £14.3 billion - according to figures released this morning.

No less than £13 billion of that money borrowed last month went on interest payments on existing debt.

Think about that for one second - it's utterly insane. The UK's national accounts are now akin to a Ponzi scheme.

And yet still, lunatic MPs and potential Prime Ministers call for ever more borrowing and spending - "because it's the right thing to do"

Labour's chronic economic illiteracy and internal party-political posturing is driving the UK economy off a cliff ...

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

So you price young people out of the labour market with huge rises in the minimum wage and national insurance.
Then you subsidise employers to employ young people.
Government is brilliant. Simply brilliant.

[J Stewart @triffic_stuff_]

🚨BOMBSHELL EXPOSÉ: TREVOR PHILLIPS RIPS LID OFF LABOUR'S GROOMING GANGS COVER-UP 💣

Keir Starmer and the Labour Party Sabotaging National Inquiry to Hide Racial Targeting of White Girls and Decades of Failure in Their Own Councils

In a devastating intervention, Sir Trevor Phillips has blown the whistle on what he calls a deliberate political cover-up at the heart of Britain's grooming gangs scandal.

The former Equality and Human Rights Commission chair accuses Labour of sabotaging the national inquiry because of its explosive racial implications — and because so much of the abuse took place under Labour-controlled councils that did nothing to stop it.

“The government clearly never wanted these two things to be put together,” Phillips declared. He points to Labour's efforts to downplay “the intersection of race and sexual predation,” insisting the perpetrators deliberately targeted victims because they were white and outside the groomers' community.

“These children are chosen because of their race. They are chosen because they are white and because they’re outside the community of the groomers.”

Phillips highlights the chilling uniqueness of these crimes: unlike typical child abuse kept hidden, grooming gangs operate in plain sight — with perpetrators knowing they are shielded.

“The other thing is these people know that they are protected. They’re protected politically, they’re protected by social workers, they’re protected by local police. That is the scandal here.”

He pulls no punches on why a full reckoning has been avoided: “Much of this took place in local Labour councils and the authorities who were supposed to be watching over this, stopping it, monitoring it and all the rest of it were controlled by those councils and they did nothing.”

This is not just institutional failure — it's a politically motivated shield thrown over horrific, racially aggravated sexual exploitation that went on for years under Labour's watch.

Right now, they deserve justice — and Britain deserves the full, fearless national inquiry that has been denied for far too long.

[Graham Linehan @Glinner]

You fuckin' tell him, Joe.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Almost everything this PM says now requires a community note.
The electricity price cap is not coming down because the government has managed to produce electricity more cheaply. It’s still the most expensive in the world — and forecast to become even more expensive.
The cap is reduced because the government has taken £117-worth of largely green subsidies from fuel your bills and put them on to general taxation. You’re still paying for them — just in a different way.
And as your taxes go up to meet these green levies the cap is still £73 higher than when Labour came to power. So your energy bills are not coming down — though Labour promised they would — and the overall tax burden is at a record high.
There PM. Sorted it for you.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Bonuses for Blunders: How a £10 Billion Welfare Black Hole Exposes Britain's Broken State

There is something deeply wrong with a country that rewards failure on an industrial scale. The Department for Work and Pensions has overpaid almost £10 billion in benefits in a single year, yet still found £12.7 million to hand out in bonuses. If you want a snapshot of how the modern British state now works, this is it.

The numbers alone are enough to make taxpayers wince. In 2024–25 the DWP overpaid an estimated £9.5 billion in benefits. Around £6.5 billion of that was fraud. A further £1.9 billion was claimant error. Another £1 billion was official error by the department itself. This is not loose change lost down the back of the sofa. It is a sum comparable to the entire budget of the legal system and more than Britain spends on higher education or foreign aid. A 1p cut in income tax costs roughly £6.4 billion. The money lost through fraud alone could fund it.

Against that backdrop, civil servants were handed £12.7 million in bonuses. Nearly 200 senior officials received an average bonus of just over £2,100. Tens of thousands of junior staff received payments and vouchers worth millions more. The permanent secretary and senior executives received bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000. This happened in the same year Whitehall told departments to stop awarding bonuses for "generally doing your job".

The deeper scandal sits in the incentives this reveals. About 55 per cent of senior civil servants received some form of bonus last year. Just two were dismissed for underperformance. Two. In a department losing billions. In any private organisation, results like this would trigger sackings, restructuring and public accountability. In Whitehall, they trigger a bonus round.

This is the real story. The modern administrative state no longer punishes failure. It manages it. It budgets for it. It rewards the people presiding over it. The message to the public is brutal and simple: if the system fails you, you pay. If the system fails itself, it gets rewarded.

The timing makes the contrast even sharper. The country is being warned about rising taxes, slow growth and higher defence spending. Ministers speak about tough choices and tight budgets. Households are told to tighten their belts. Yet within the same state machinery, millions are quietly distributed as rewards while billions slip through the net.

At the same time, the DWP is being handed new powers to monitor bank accounts and recover money directly from citizens without a court order. MPs are already warning about potential overreach. The contradiction could not be clearer. A department that cannot control its own error is being trusted with greater powers over the public. A system that cannot prevent billions in losses is expanding its reach into private lives.

None of this happens in a vacuum. Fraud has surged since the pandemic. Convictions for benefit fraud have collapsed from more than 4,000 a year in 2017 to just 685. Universal Credit fraud alone now runs at around 10 per cent of spending. Remote assessments replaced face-to-face checks. The system grew rapidly, and control weakened just as quickly. Yet the culture inside the system has barely changed at all.

This is how trust dies. People do not resent welfare because they oppose helping those in need. They resent the sense that nobody is in charge, nobody is accountable and nobody is ever held responsible. They see billions lost, bonuses paid and powers expanded. They draw their own conclusions.

A welfare state cannot survive without public trust. Once taxpayers believe their money is being wasted without consequence, support for the entire system begins to erode. That is the danger here. Not just the money lost this year, but the faith being lost alongside it.

"Convictions for benefit fraud have collapsed from more than 4,000 a year in 2017 to just 685."

[Maca @macatoon]

@mattletiss7 Train wreck…

[Maca @macatoon]

@benonwine Keep it up. 👍

[Maca @macatoon]

@anika_climate @lesleyb2212 At last common sense. 👍

[Becky Argyle @ArgyleBecky]

If you listen to anything today, listen to Komstantin Kisin on BBC QT, he is the lone voice of sense on the panel. Net zero is taking our country off a cliff edge, it is economic suicide and must go now.

[Maca @macatoon]

Just about to watch Jools Holland, as I do every new year and seen that Lenny Henry and Nish Kumar are his guests. I would rather poke my eyes with pins.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Well I never.

[Graham Linehan @Glinner]

Delete your account @owenjonesjourno

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

"Progressive" activists have spent years demanding data on ethnicity, religion and culture across every area of life to "prove" how bigoted and racist our society is. Yet when someone asks for the same data on, say, grooming gangs, they are accused of fuelling hate and division. Funny, that.

[Neil Oliver @thecoastguy]

Thanks, Jim!

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

👇👇 👇👇 👇👇 👇👇

[Peter Szanto 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 @peterszanto]

@EdwardJDavey Utter rubbish. The excellent economist, @julianHjessop: Another naff Brexit "exclusive" with "new analysis" fed to the Independent by the LibDems! It's based on the NBER working paper, debunked here. https://t.co/3aGc3p88sq

[Julian Jessop @julianHjessop]

@Kevin_Maguire Debunked here... 🤓

https://t.co/Ksp2ygT1zl

[Maca @macatoon]

@tracybernedett1 @paulmasonnews And we are still waiting to hear what happened to Nick Brown?