Mike Langstaff

Husband, Father, Surgeon, Astronaut. I also tend to exaggerate my Bio a bit.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@AlexMSilverman Awful view but it's clearly more about being seen than seeing, isn't it?

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@GOLDBABYO So your niece stopped going to practise and then you had to go and pick her up from practise? sounds a bit like fiction to me.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@g__j 49362.6

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

You created them. Every single one of those NEETs is a product of your former party's choices. The ones you made while you were in Cabinet.

Adult education and apprenticeship spending: 25% lower in 2024-25 than when your former party took office (IFS, Nuffield Foundation).

Publicly funded adult further education courses: fell from 5.4 million in 2004 to 1.7 million by the time you left office. A 70% reduction, the majority of it on your watch (IFS, January 2026).

College funding per student: 11% lower in real terms than 2010. Sixth-form funding per student: 23% lower (IFS, January 2025).

Adults taking qualifications at GCSE level and below: down 50%. At A-level equivalent: down 33% (IFS, Nuffield Foundation).

Intermediate apprenticeship starts, the entry-level route for young people without degrees: collapsed from 200,000 in 2010 to fewer than 50,000 by 2020. Your government did that (IFS).

Youth services: cut by 70% since 2010 (Mind, Big Mental Health Report 2025) .

You had 14 years to invest in British young people. You cut adult education by 25%. You cut FE courses by 70%. You cut college funding. You cut sixth-form funding. You cut apprenticeships for the people who needed them most. You cut youth services. Then you left office and started tweeting bollocks about NEETs as though they materialised from thin air.

The £5,000 Reeves is offering is a reimbursement of the Immigration Skills Charge, a levy your own government introduced in 2017 to fund domestic skills training. You created the charge. You collected the money. And you still cut the training budget by 25%.

And these visas are for high-skilled workers: doctors, engineers, specialists in fields where your 14 years of cuts left a workforce gap so deep that British employers cannot fill it domestically. They are not competing with NEETs. They are filling holes your government drilled.

You were Home Secretary. You were Attorney General. You sat in Cabinet while all of this happened. You do not get to set the house on fire and then complain about the smoke.

Sources:
Adult education and apprenticeship spending 25% below 2010 levels: Institute for Fiscal Studies / Nuffield Foundation, October 2022 (https://t.co/ptZIX5c4b8)

Adult FE courses fell from 5.4 million to 1.7 million (70% reduction): Institute for Fiscal Studies, January 2026 (https://t.co/ViEuIX7qIj)

College funding per student 11% lower, sixth-form funding 23% lower: Institute for Fiscal Studies, Annual Report on Education Spending in England, January 2025, cited in House of Commons Library (https://t.co/c6qLKyCyjA)

Adults taking Level 2 qualifications down 50%, Level 3 down 33%: Institute for Fiscal Studies / Nuffield Foundation (https://t.co/1veNy8CJcY)

Intermediate apprenticeship starts collapsed from 200,000 to fewer than 50,000: Institute for Fiscal Studies / Nuffield Foundation, same source as above

Youth services cut by 70% since 2010: Mind, Big Mental Health Report 2025 (https://t.co/zTQbfpIdQq)

Immigration Skills Charge Regulations 2017: (https://t.co/IcciQZPTer)

Skills policy and apprenticeship data: House of Commons Library (https://t.co/trQjEw6FEZ)

Immigration Skills Charge parliamentary debate: Hansard, 21 March 2017 (https://t.co/yD8OvAthBl)

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@FinanceTiger

[Count Binface @CountBinface]

I see Question Time has reached its inevitable endgame. It was bound to happen.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@RaithRovers Great work from Ellie Mae there.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@fesshole On the plus side, at least the 2 actions weren't in the opposite order.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@CFBRaith @fesshole Saucy !

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@fesshole Why wait until you left? If you'd performed this cunning plan earlier you'd have saved yourself some sleep. Bit stupid for a "student", no?

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@RosieCorlett @OctopusEnergy For a company that advertises its great customer service it's really poor. All the people I've spoken with have been lovely and polite etc, but that's no comfort when there's no action taken to resolve issues. It's also clear these metering issues are very widespread.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@RosieCorlett @OctopusEnergy I'm in the same boat Rosie. Useless customer service. I don't think they even have a "Smart Meter Team" - and don't bother escalating this to "Senior Leadership" - I don't believe they even exist.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@OctopusEnergy How's this going to help when you can't even get your Smart Metering team (or your "Senior Leadership Team" for that matter) to solve customer problems for months? Yet to see any "Legendary Service".

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@fesshole Tell us you sleep with your cat without telling us you sleep with your cat.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@OctopusEnergy And yet customers are still waiting months in the vain attempt to get metering problems sorted. Not all are "healthy"

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

😂

[Craig Smith @smithythelegend]

Well done to all the Falkirk fans today. Impeccable.

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@fesshole You must both be the size of a house ! 😃

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@Herring1967 Didn't know what a treatment was. Copilot helped

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

Why is Crypto the "future"?

[Mike Langstaff @mikelangstaff]

@fesshole You're just making people escape goats for your own inadequacies.