@oldwarwickian

Old codger who went to Warwick School decades ago. Don’t believe lockdowns work.

[Tim Bennett @hellotimbennett]

HMRC data shows that:

- The top 10% of earners already pay 60% of all income tax collected, and
- The top 1% pay 30% of it.

Hard to argue that many of the “rich” are not paying their share.

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

Another legacy of Gordon Brown is PFI* - which he loved because it kept spending “off the books” (as @Camlowandslow reminded me).

We are still paying the costs. Some contracts signed under Brown’s regime run until the 2040s or 50s.

Hundreds of billions of pounds he shoved onto future chancellors of the exchequer - and future taxpayers.

Labour loves spending other people’s money.

* Approximately £50–55 billion in capital value for PFI deals signed in 1997–2010, with total lifetime unitary charge payments (the full cost to the public sector) estimated in the range of roughly £220–300 billion

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Providing safe routes is a cowardly way of saying Letting in Lots More People no one wants.

This is a national emergency

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Shut up!
You are loathed, Miliband, you have devastated our country with your net zero bullshit.
History will deride you.

[Andrew Bridgen @ABridgen]

Thank you Ed Miliband for giving us the most expensive energy costs in the developed world.

[BanksyCat @Banksycat]

Burnham stood there ERM-ing and STUMBLING, swearing blind he's got a GRIP on the boats.

In his OWN first week as PM, nearly 900 crossed. Including 165 people crammed into ONE dinghy, the biggest single boatload on record.

So much for the grip and here's the man saying it. He spent TWENTY YEARS voting the other way.

He almost always voted AGAINST tougher immigration enforcement. 6% aligned. Six. He wanted to scrap the rule that stops migrants claiming benefits. His whole career, Labour's soft touch, open arms.

Then he needed your vote.

Suddenly he's on the News doing tough. GRIP. CONTROL. He voted for a crackdown two weeks ago he'd have marched AGAINST a year back. He even took days to say a word, then dodged the charge he'd just handed the whole thing to his Home Secretary.

The tough talk is two weeks old. The record is twenty years long. That's not conviction. That's a COSTUM and watch it fall apart.

TODAY, French police were filmed handing life jackets to migrants and WAVING them off to Britain. We pay France £662 MILLION to STOP the boats. Their law bars them touching a boat in the water, so they don't. They hand out vests and wave.

The traffickers have a sales pitch now. Don't worry lads, the French will see you off. Vest included.

We're not funding a border. We're funding the WELCOME PARTY.

Here’s the bill they'd rather you never saw. £8 BILLION a year. £230 out of every taxpayer. Hotels alone, £5.77 MILLION a day. The contract TRIPLED to £15.3 billion, MPs called it SQUANDERED.

Don’t think this started with Burnham. Labour opened the doors under BLAIR. Net migration five times higher. No controls in 2004, a decision his own Home Secretary later called a SPECTACULAR MISTAKE. The Tories then lost the Channel and let the bill triple. Different rosettes. Twenty-five years. One direction. And YOU paying for all of it.

Then the number that ends it. Of certain refused claims, 95% are NEVER removed. Only 4% of everyone who's crossed since 2018 has EVER been returned. They arrive, they're refused, they stay anyway.

Burnham's proof it's working? Crossings are DOWN. Down from 2025, the SECOND-HIGHEST year on record. Seas flat calm, GB News admits it's the WEATHER, and the summer surge hasn't landed. Still 39,000 a year. 90% of all illegal arrivals.

Wait for the year to end. Then count.

We pay France half a billion to stop the boats. They hand out the life jackets.

The weather does the rest and the man calling it a GRIP spent twenty years holding the door open.

[Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ]

Two weeks after Ann Widdecombe was murdered and that is what Zack Polanski decides to share. Utterly sick and shows his true character.

[Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 @TiceRichard]

Another week, another obsessive assault on Reform
by The Times Group

Their journo team, who actively despise us, producing more smears, innuendo, inaccuracies & lies

Coordinated, politically motivated smear campaign, often using illegally obtained documents from NCA, who may have committed multiple criminal offences

Yet still we lead polls & win by elections every week

Britain needs Reform

[Tony Knox @TonyKnox15]

Five things Andy says he’s done
1 End rough sleeping
He hasn’t,it’s just a hope and it rose in Manchester while he was in charge
2 He says he’s lowering bus fares to £2
In fact the cap was £2 until labour put it up to £3 then lowered it back to where it was
3 He says he’s cut pub business rates by 20%
He hasn’t. Mine were put by labour up in May by 100%
Now they are lowering them next year by 20% so they are still massively up
4 I forgot what 4 is
5 Congratulations he has managed to waste a fortune on not moving house
We changed from Starmer to an even bigger liar

[Rt. Hon Ben Wallace @BenWallace70]

I am no fan of Refom but every time the @timespolitics @guardian mentions Geroge Cottrell the prefix it with “convicted criminal.”. They must prefix Louie Haigh then with “convicted fraudster.” Not to do so is to show disdain for professional journalism.

[Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 @TiceRichard]

The Times Group despise Reform & its senior figures so much

The bosses even cancelled a lifestyle magazine article on Isabel and I, after it was commissioned.

Perhaps they feared it may present us in a good light.

People need to know just how vindictive Times bosses are.

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

Labour doesn’t get it.

[Harriet Sergeant @HarrietSergeant]

The BBC Chairman says it’s finished unless its funding alters.

Wrong. It’s finished because it abandoned impartiality for ideological fads - antisemitism, hostility to women.

Switching on feels like taking part in an immoral act. I won’t do it anymore.

https://t.co/48MwdrCHFr

[Higgy @higgyboson]

Last week this utter bastard released a statement about 12 "terror suspects" being arrested for "anti-muslim" hate.

He declared that "lives had been saved" by the prompt actions of the security forces/police.

London Mayor, Sad Dick Khan, echoed @Keir_Starmer's sentiments.

In reality the arrested people were just flying a drone over a gathering of several thousand Muslims at an event organised by a group who have been outlawed in several Islamic states for their own links to terrorism.

No crime was committed. No crime was EVER going to be committed. There was absolutely no danger whatsoever to the attendees.

But these facts didn't stop Bastard Starmer from claiming a major terrorist plot had been foiled.

Subsequently all 12 of the "terrorists" have now been released uncharged.

There was NEVER a terror plot. Starmer knew this.

Has he issued an update? An apology?

Has he hell.

@Keir_Starmer is an utter bastard. Pass it on.

[Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 @TiceRichard]

Unbelievable who is in Burnham’s team

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

Dear Adam,

I have taken time to think about your apology. Mostly because, having made a mistake publicly before, I was keen to accept yours. It hurts when people don’t understand that you are sorry for messing up. I get that, probably more than most.

But here’s the thing… I’m not sure you understand what you did wrong. And so you don’t really understand what you are apologising for or why. With that in mind, I want to help you.

I didn’t know Ann, except as a powerhouse in politics and that so many people have spoken of her friendship and great loyalty. How lovely, I wish I had known her.

I am utterly disinterested in her sexual prowess or the state of her virginity. But I would have enjoyed hearing you speak of her great accomplishments. Not as a woman, but simply as a human being.

Here’s a list.

She served in the House of Commons for 23 years and won five general elections.

She served as a government minister in Social Security, Employment and the Home Office, where she was Minister of State for Prisons.

She rose to become Shadow Health Secretary and then Shadow Home Secretary.

She was appointed to the Privy Council.

After leaving Westminster, she built an entirely new career as an author, broadcaster, documentary-maker, stage performer and television personality.

Then, at the age of 71, she returned to elected politics and became a Member of the European Parliament.

She was a longstanding advocate for Britain leaving the European Union and, when the political establishment failed to deliver the referendum result, she left the Conservative Party after more than 50 years and stood for the Brexit Party.

She was elected as an MEP and took the argument for British independence directly into the European Parliament.

She was also an unapologetic defender of free speech. She continued to speak openly on difficult and unfashionable subjects when others chose silence, it was easier to do that, she accepted the criticism and hostility that came with it rather than surrendering her convictions.

Her Catholic faith was central to her life. She converted to Catholicism, met Pope John Paul II in Rome and was later made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI for her service to politics and public life.

She remained a powerful public voice well into her late seventies, defending her beliefs despite decades of ridicule and hostility.

That is an extraordinary life of public service, courage and reinvention.

Yet, when asked to speak about her after her sudden and violent death, you chose to tell the country that she was a “spinster”, an “old maid” and a virgin. You discussed a failed relationship and suggested that afterwards she simply dedicated herself to other activities.

Do you understand the reduction involved in that?

You took the life of a highly accomplished woman and assessed it according to whether she had married, whether she had sex and whether a man had wanted her.

That is what was wrong. That is what you should have known.

It wasn’t simply that your words were poorly chosen or badly timed. It was the instinct to view a woman’s entire life through her relationship with men, even when her achievements should have rendered that completely irrelevant.

Nobody discussing the death of an accomplished male politician would think it necessary to tell viewers whether he was a virgin, speculate about his sex life or describe him as an ageing bachelor whose romance had failed.

I don’t want you cancelled. I don’t believe that people should be denied forgiveness when they make mistakes.

But a meaningful apology has to identify the actual wrong.

Ann was murdered after a lifetime of public service. At the moment her achievements should have been remembered, you diminished her to an unmarried woman who apparently hadn’t had sex.

She deserved better than that. And I’m still not sure you get it. But every woman who watched you speak of her and then read your apology does.

Bernie.

[Chris @flemoil]

@DPJHodges #LearnToCode

There's a reason journalism is dying a slow death and its nothing to do with AI and everything to do with artificial intelligence from people like you.

WE DON'T CARE what YOU think and write about

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Abortion time limit;
12 weeks: Germany, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Austria.

14 weeks: France, Spain.

24 weeks plus no penalty for mother aborting up to full term: Britain.
Vying for the Infanticide Cup with People’s Republic of China.

[Annunziata Rees-Mogg @zatzi]

Screenshot in case for some mysterious reason Angela’s tweet vanished….

[Kate Hoey @CatharineHoey]

Would I be correct in thinking that Fiona Bruce @bbcquestiontime showed her bias against Reform in last nights programme. Surely she should try to show she is
impartial even if she dislikes Reform !!