Patrick Finigan

Royalist Yorkshireman with roots in the Channel Islands.

[Patrick Finigan @PAFinigan]

And here lies a major problem with UK politics

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

Before Windows95, before Oasis released Wonder Wall and before OJ Simpson faced trial, our new PM Andy Burnham had a job. He had a job as a journalist working for a little publishing company for 3 years.

This is the only job any of the new UK Government Cabinet has had.

Other than those three years, more than 30 years ago the entire cabinet has only ever worked in tax payer funded roles.

None of them have ever had to make a sale. None of them have been paid to pour a pint. None have felt a sick feeling about making payroll. None have been answerable to investors.

In the UK 50% of the jobs are small businesses and almost ALL of the jobs growth is small businesses. None of them has ever started, owned or run one. Wouldn’t it be nice if just one of them had some experience in making a small business profitably grow before having a crack at the 7th largest economy.

Imagine what it must feel like to KNOW that your wage is paid for by the tax-payer. Imagine the certainty and security working for a government that never fires anyone for anything. Imagine how it would feel knowing you could blow out a budget with no real consequences or you could completely screw up a project and nothing bad would happen. Imagine that level of insulation and comfort for decades.

I can’t. I’ve been in business for the last 25 years. If I don’t sell I don’t eat. If I screw up I face very real consequences very fast. Millions of small businesses are being asked to get out there and hire people and grow the economy by a team of people who’ve never had a proper job. Surely something isn’t right with that?

[Adam Smith Institute @ASI]

Since you mentioned the 1980s, @andyburnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved:

• Top rate of income tax: 83% → 40%
• Savings income taxed at up to 98% in 1979 — surcharge abolished
• Basic rate: 33% → 25%
• Inflation: 21.9% peak (1980) → 2.4% (1986)
• Days lost to strikes: 29.5 million (1979) → 1.9 million (1990)
• Real take-home pay for the average earner: up by a third

• Right to Buy: over a million council tenants became homeowners
• Home ownership: 55% → 67%
• Individual shareholders: 3 million → 11 million — one in four adults

• Foreign holidays: roughly doubled
• Homes with a telephone: two-thirds → nearly nine in ten
• Pensioners’ average incomes: up around 30% in real terms
• Infant mortality: down almost 40%

• Real GDP: up by almost a third
• GDP per head outgrew France, Germany and Italy in the 1980s
• Manufacturing productivity: slowest growth in the G7 in the 1970s → fastest in the 1980s
• Self-employed: 1.9 million → 3.5 million
• Nissan to Sunderland, Toyota to Derby, Honda to Swindon
• Britain became a net oil exporter
• London restored as the world’s financial capital in 1986

• Budget surpluses three years running — Britain repaid debt, 1987–90
• National debt: 47% of GDP → 28%
• State spending: ~45% of GDP → ~39%
• The civil service: 732,000 → 565,000

• Corporation tax: 52% → 35%; the small firms’ rate: 42% → 25%
• Personal tax allowances: up more than 25% in real terms
• Higher rates of income tax: nine → one
• Death duties: fourteen rates → one
• Exchange controls scrapped after 40 years

• 40+ nationalised businesses privatised — 600,000 employees moved to the private sector
• The 33 big state industries: took ~£500m from taxpayers in 1980 → paid £8.4bn to the Exchequer by 1987
• British Steel: world-record loss-maker (1980/81) → £733m profit (1989/90)
• BT, 1984: the largest share offer the world had ever seen
• “Tell Sid” broke the record again in 1986
• British Airways: nationalised loss-maker → profitable, private, “the world’s favourite airline”
• The Channel Tunnel launched and entirely privately financed

Over to you.

[MinistryofWit @MinistryofWit]

THIS is a leader of Britain, not the unelected Andy Burnham of Labour. Remember the Falklands

[Britain's Lost & Living Pubs @Britains___Pubs]

There is nothing in existence as glorious as the pubs of the Anglo-Celtic Isles.

[Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA 🗽 @SteveBakerFRSA]

📈 Once again, it is officially acknowledged that UK public debt is on an unsustainable upward path over the coming decades.

🗽As the OBR points out, it is not too late to do something about this looming disaster. The sooner we act, the less painful it will be.

🔗in 🧵

[tag 🇬🇧 @tag4UK]

I am married with a young daughter, both myself and my husband work.

-We are not entitled to housing benefit, or any other benefit for that matter.

-We do not get free eye tests, free dental care or free prescriptions.

-Our daughter is not entitled to free school meals, or free breakfast clubs, or free wrap around care, no help with her uniform.

-We don’t get council tax discount, or any other discount.

-We don’t get help with our energy bills, or low cost broadband.

-We don’t get help with the cost of going to the cinema, or days out at theme parks.

-My daughter is unable to play outside unsupervised, because you have failed to secure our borders and the streets aren’t safe.

-If I work more hours, I fall into the higher tax band.

Why should someone like me, vote for someone like you? @UKLabour @andyburnham

What are you offering my family?

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

We buy more gas from Norway than we pump ourselves (from the very same basin) for clinically insane climate reasons.

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Very important, as this shows how unelected 'advisers'
can make government policy without the cabinet ministers knowing about it

[Laurie Wastell @L_Wastell]

Anne Widdecombe was one of only five MPs to vote against the Labour Government's disastrous Climate Change Act in 2008, the start of the uniparty consensus that has railroaded us to eco-penury.

RIP to a real one.

[HJB News @HJB_News__]

These are the people destroying Britain right before our eyes.

[Adam Brooks AKA EssexPR 🇬🇧 @EssexPR]

This fella was my hero as a kid.
Now, he’s one of the biggest arseholes in Britain.
Our armed forces died in the Falklands.

Vile man.

[Vinnie Sullivan @VinnieSull1van]

Voices of the past explain the pain of losing their local pub. As I say often, the pub isn't just a place to drink, but a vital excuse to be among others. The loss of our pubs and the community therein is but the beginning of Britain's end. 🍻 @PubHistoryTours @Britains___Pubs

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

Yes, Burnham really is this stupid.

To avoid breaking Labour’s manifesto pledge on income tax, VAT and NI, he thinks he’s found a clever workaround! whack more tax on warehouses.

Except warehouses are part of the supply chain.

So the cost gets passed on through goods, deliveries, storage, fulfilment and distribution.

Meaning this isn’t really a tax on “big business”.

It’s a tax on the public, increasing the cost of living! … he just hopes you won’t notice.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

This is deeply concerning.

Photographer Alastair Hilton was enjoying a pint with a friend when two Metropolitan Police officers tracked him down and warned him about his posts on social media.

Mr Hilton was asked to step outside the pub, where the officers read out the section of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 under which they threatened to arrest him should he cross the line.

This was all because Mr Hilton had shared a post protesting the actions of a local Green councillor, who had successfully campaigned to remove the outdoor seating from three pubs on the Thames riverside near his home.

While we do not approve of intimidating public office holders at their homes, gathering at a pub in the vicinity of a councillor’s house and standing up for your right to sit outside and enjoy a beer is not a crime.

We can already see how this legislation — with this provision having come into force only on 29th June — can be manipulated to silence dissent.

The Met Police again appear more interested in dealing with free speech disputes online rather than tackling real crime.

@London_W4, the FSU will write to you today.

[James Clark 📈📉¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @mr_james_c]

For half this amount we could have built nuclear to meet the entire UK electricity supply.

Given it's since 2002 we probably could have built it all by now if we'd started then.

https://t.co/NRh1BCBVn2

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

Anything the government touches becomes expensive and in limited supply. Anything left to markets becomes cheap and abundant…

[Patrick Finigan @PAFinigan]

Pathetic. This government fails in its first duty!

[Simon Clarke @SirSimonClarke]

Defence spending in 2030 (share of GDP)

🇬🇧 2.69%
🇩🇪 3.70%
🇵🇱 4.48%

Or in £ terms, £9.3 billion short of what was assessed as needed.

A DIP unworthy of Britain.

[Rt. Hon Ben Wallace @BenWallace70]

if you ignore the Treasury tricks (including other people’s budgets being counted) and focus instead on the actual defence budget planned for the MoD you get the following breakdown as GDP:
FY 26/27 £68.3bn 2.12% GDP
FY 27/28 £73.8bn. 2.21% GDP
FY 28/29 £76.5bn.2.22% GDP
@afneil @bbcnickrobinson @haynesdeborah @larisamlbrown @FrankRGardner @jeromestarkey

[Patrick Finigan @PAFinigan]

@BearJFK Until we hold those responsible to account these things will keep happening.

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

If we did this 👇🏼 AND didn’t buy a single thing from China I’d partly understand BUT we’re not, we buy more & more, & ship it half way around the world to boot! We are literally committing economic suicide, with our energy bills in particular.