Paul Bird

Travel and flash lights;

📸 @paulj_bird

[Hayward @JH_Investments]

I’m about to pay £5,000 in Stamp Duty to move house

In the grand scheme of buying a home, it’s not the biggest cost

But…

The government made £45 million today from people moving house

I’ve already paid Income Tax and National Insurance

Then I’m taxed again just for buying somewhere to live

The same house can generate Stamp Duty over and over again

Why is moving house taxed at all?

[Ian @brodders_be]

We paid £43,000 of Stamp Duty when we bought our house. I presume this would be refunded with interest otherwise we’re paying Stamp Duty again on a property we’ve already bought.

[Lloyd Lewis 💙 @LloydGeorge57]

The Slug & Lettuce.

[Paul Bird @paulj_bird]

@WealthWatcherCo @grok Done

[Matt Gubba @MattGubba]

Britain has quietly become the land of taxes on taxes on taxes, and small business owners are getting rinsed from every angle.

- Taxed when you earn it (corporation tax)
- Taxed again when you take it (dividend tax)
- Taxed when you hire (employer NI)
- Taxed when you get paid (employee NI + income tax)
- Taxed when you spend it (VAT)

Then, every allowance is frozen so inflation can finish the job.

Then leftist politicians go on TV claiming entrepreneurs “aren’t paying their fair share”.

We’re past debate; this is punishment for being productive.

You cannot build a dynamic economy by treating business owners like a bottomless ATM.

If Britain wants growth, jobs and innovation, it needs to stop taxing success like it’s a crime.

[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.

[Matt Gubba @MattGubba]

The Budget's 2% tax rise on dividends is a frontal assault on small businesses and SME owners.

Labour's main target is millions of hard-working business owners who take their earnings as dividends.

At a time when we should be boosting the economy, Reeves is decimating it.

[Roshan M Salih @RmSalih]

Guess what Reform UK fans. After you've deported the Muslims and the immigrants you'll still be poor and living in a country where nothing works, everything is unaffordable and everyone hates each other.

It'll just have worse public services and food, more boring people and no culture.

But those millionaires who sold you the dream of Blighty won't care because they'll just sod off to Dubai or the Bahamas.

You're a bunch of chumps and you're getting played.

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster!

[Narinder Kaur @narindertweets]

Hahahahaha

[Carol Vorderman @carolvorders]

Right wingers stamping their feet saying

Call A General Election

Tell you what....

Let's have a Rejoin the EU referendum at the same time?

Six million people signed that petition

[UK Space Agency @spacegovuk]

Less than 10 hours to go before Starship's sixth flight test! 🚀

Watch the launch tonight from 9:15 PM GMT. 👇

[Moog @a_toots]

Working hard for the people of Clacton.

[Mark Francewanker @FlyOnNo10Wall]

This was inevitable. The people who hate him won’t buy it and the people who like him can’t read.

https://t.co/Lx2mvZojUZ

[Bill Esterson @Bill_Esterson]

Who would have thought it.

Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick received £25,000 from a company controlled by someone who has been sanctioned by the Ukrainian government.

I’m sure the main weekend news programmes will be all over this.

https://t.co/OSDw6mLTJ8

[Bill Esterson @Bill_Esterson]

Nigel Farage calls it direct election interference when Labour supporters campaign for Kamala Harris.

I wonder what he thinks we should call it when he campaigns for Trump?

[Adam Bienkov @AdamBienkov]

Robert Jenrick says he would reduce immigration to "the tens of thousands, or lower" if he was in Government.

A reminder that when he was actually in charge, as immigration minister, net migration to the UK rose to 685,000.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Robert Jenrick, "In towns across our country right now.. There are hotels which should be full of tourists but instead, are full of illegal migrants.. And this is just the tip of the iceberg"

"When I was minister for immigration, I saw things that made me angry.. But I know how to fix this"

Immigration Minister who didn't fix the problem he saw when he was Immigration Minister says that if you vote for him to be Prime Minister he'll fix the immigration issues he was in charge of when he was Immigration Minister 🤷‍♂️

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

This is what will matter 1000 years from now.

Not your politics. Not your stupid tantrums about who platformed who on some website. Not your incomprehensible desire to send NASA's entire budget to the third world.

This guy reignited the Space Age.

He spent his own money, hired a bunch of dudes, and reignited the Space Age. And together, they underbid and outdid NASA and its pet dinosaur corporations on every conceivable level.

This is history happening before you.

If you are a puddlefish, if you think this is a wasteful showpiece or science project, then you don't understand physics, economics, astronomy, or in fact the basic layout of the universe you live in.

We live in a tiny puddle at the bottom of a well.

Out there is an entire universe, full not only of stuff to explore, but full of stuff to build things out of.

Big things. Wonderful things. Things that are going to make all of the cool stuff you have today, all of human civilization to date look like early Assyrians writing stuff down on wet clay with a reed.

Infinite resources. Infinite energy. Infinite space.

Instead of fighting over little patches of land, we will have an infinite 3d volume. Enclose it in steel, pump it full of air, spin it, and it's a habitat.

Instead of scratching tiny scraps of metal out of the crust of one planet, we will break down entire asteroids and smelt them.

Instead of drilling for hydrocarbons and turning water wheels, we will harness entire suns, split the atom, and eventually draw our fuel from the substance that makes up 99% of the entire universe.

None of your local, temporal Earth politics matter compared to this. This is more important than pride parades and abortions, more important than tribal conflicts in eastern Europe and southwest Asia, more important than tensions with Russia and China.

More important, in the long run, than the United States of America.

America's most important function, its one most vital purpose, is to serve as an incubator for this.

Because this changes everything.

All of our arguments about conditions on this planet become obsolete, because the whole planet becomes just one suburban neighborhood.

All of our wars over resources and territory become obsolete, because no one has time to brawl when we're all sitting on top of a dragon horde with sacks and shovels.

Everyone who was alive at the time remembers where they were when Kennedy died in Dallas. When the towers fell. When the Eagle landed. When the Wall came down.

But this... this is the real moment, one of the first of many. They are what every child will know about a thousand years from now, even if they have four arms and are genetically engineered for zero-g, or are sentient blocks of code running on a sphere of computronium enclosing an entire star.

You may not live to see that, depending on what we do or don't invent, and when.

But it will happen, and you will live to see wonderful things.

If the puddlefish don't get in the way.

Don't be a puddlefish.

[Alex Proyas @alex_proyas]

Hey Elon, Can I have my designs back please? #ElonMusk #Elon_Musk