Man Of Pie

Interested in technology and freedom, not always tweeting about it

[Philip Murray @philipmurraylaw]

Ladies and gentleman, the Secretary of State for Education of His Majesty's Government:

[Harry Lines🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @HarryLines7]

🚨A Notts sergeant, 20 years in.

Man in custody calls England a dirty nation. Calls English people animals.
Calls officers English b******s.

Sergeant says get back on the boat then.

He’s sacked. Barred for life.

The comments were on CCTV.
A colleague reported him.

Hearing: 2 August. Equality and diversity.

He said it blurted out.
Chair said he should have known better.

That’s the standard now.

Credit: Nottingham Post / BBC Country first. 🫡🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Mike Diplockre @MikeDiplockre]

I don't see how Restore can spin this result as anything other than a disappointment.

Makerfield was the only seat they were standing in last night, and they did worse than the openly National Socialist BNP in 2010 who stood 338 candidates that night and weren't pushed by Musk.

[Maxi @AllForProgress_]

A whistleblower has revealed this month that civil servants across multiple Whitehall departments have been gaming the flexitime system to award themselves up to fifty extra days of paid holiday a year

That's about 2.5 months of full-time work lifted off the public payroll without record, on top of the CS-norm 26 days of annual leave, the eight public holidays, the contractual sick days, and of course the parental allowances that are already part of the standard package.

The methods and techniques by which this fraud has been accomplished are worth dwelling on, because the detail tells you something about the institution.

The first technique is the laptop-open-on-the-kitchen-table move. Here, the civil servant clocks off for all intents and purposes at 5pm but leaves a work laptop on, accumulating "active hours" from a home Wi-Fi connection, registering the evening as labour without performing any of it.

The second trick is the commuting-time-as-paid-hours wheeze, in which the round trip from Surbiton to Whitehall - coffee-and-podcast - is logged as part of the working day.

The third con, which the whistleblower reported as the most brazen of them all, is the straightforward falsification of office attendance against the three-days-a-week-on-site rule that this government, having promised the public a return of civil servants to civil-service buildings, has manifestly failed to enforce. The falsifications, in some cases, have been running for years.

Sit, for a moment, with the kind of person who does this and the kind of institution that permits it.

The person doing it is, in the main, a desk-bound senior official on between £55,000-130,000 a year, with access to a clocking system that runs on trust, who has decided, with the active connivance of his line manager and the silent assent of his department, that the appropriate response to that public trust is to defraud it.

And it's not even ambitious or spectacular. At least with a major fraud, you have a level of vision and nerve you have to admire even as you despise the motivating corruption. No, here, it's done through a series of small, deniable engineered manoeuvres that together transfer large sums of public money into undeserving pockets.

No honour among thieves, but some thieves are even less honourable than others.

The institution that permits it is the British Civil Service, an organisation whose senior cadre has spent the last decade in a state of escalating public-facing self-pity about its working conditions while the country it is paid to run has visibly fallen apart underneath it.

These are the same people who inherited the mandate of Brexit and, because the idea ran against the Metropolitan class bromides by which they orient their lives, hashed it up on purpose to punish the electorate whom they are duty-bound to serve.

And it's the same civil service that could not, in the end, manage a single COVID procurement contract without losing about £30 billion out of the back of the warehouse.

In light of this general disposition, a flexitime fraud is its small, daily, individual expression.

And the cost is not abstract. The Civil Service pay bill runs to roughly £15 billion a year. Headcount has grown by approximately a hundred and fifty thousand since 2016, with the deepest expansion in the policy and "leadership non-teacher" desk grades, the exact cohort the whistleblower says is gaming hardest.

Every 50-day phantom holiday, on a senior salary, is around £20k of public money paid for nothing. The country has been told for years, under successive governments, that there is no fiscal room for the things the country actually wants, like policing, prosecutions, courts that sit, borders, doctors, dentists, because the public finances are too tight.

Bollocks are they. You've got a whole parallel economy of piss-artist leave-taking running in Whitehall, and there'll be plenty more cash coming in to keep its subsidy even given this whistleblower's report. I don't for a second believe that no one senior saw it or knew about it, just as I don't believe that the rampant inequities in our police departments go unnoticed by whole legions of bystanders.

But the bystanders are not arsed.

That's why I say "Hooray for the whistleblower." Their life is going to be hell. They will be hugely unpopular. They will be described as bitter, disloyal, mentally ill, motivated by personal grievance, and unrepresentative of the dedicated public servants who go above and beyond.

That is what these institutions always say when one of their own breaks ranks. It is what they said to Maggie Oliver about Rotherham, to Alan Bates about Horizon, to the survivors of the Letby ward, the Cumberlege report, and the Sussex maternity unit. The smothering of internal dissent is now part of what the British civil service does for a living. The actual public service is something it has subcontracted to itself, badly, in stolen office hours, from the kitchen table.

I was the Civil Service comprehensively remade in this country, the only way such things are ever made, which is by changing the people and all the incentives under which they operate.

These people have been on the public payroll for fifteen years and have produced nothing for which the public can be grateful.

It's time to find out where the hours went, and dispense with those who are wasting them, along with our money.

[Nigel Farage @Nigel_Farage]

I found some absolute classics in this record store. 💿

[Mack Murray III @MurrayMack4]

"Of the UK's 380 stations, only 14% meet World Meteorological Organization standards."

[Anglo Futurism Capital LP 🇬🇧🐿️ @RollingHedge]

Yes. Great point. One for @an0n_Nic

The real "working people" are those on >£43-45k. Let me explain…

At £43-45k gross, a single person is paying roughly £6,300 income tax, £2,700 employee NICs, their employer pays circa £4,500 employer NICs on their behalf, then perhaps £3,500 in VAT through consumption, circa £2,000 council tax, fuel duty, excise, the cascade of indirect levies. Only then does that person scrape past the crucial £20k mark.

That £43-45k figure is the bare minimum at which a taxpayer stops being a net drain on the state. Officially. Unofficially it’s higher. I’ll come back to this.

The ONS defines "net recipients" as households receiving more in benefits (including benefits in kind: NHS, education, policing) than they pay in all taxes combined. Already 55% of UK households are net recipients under this framework. Let that one ruminate and stink the gaff out.

TME 2025-26: £1,370bn divided by 68.3m population = £20,059 per head. NHS, education, defence, welfare, debt interest, the lot. Bear in mind that population figure is informed by census and DWP data. The real number of bodies consuming services is higher. The Home Office openly concedes it cannot track expired visa holders. The true fiscal drag is significantly worse.

Per the official (lowballed) data alone, the three thresholds work out roughly as:

Single, no dependants: circa £43,500 gross. One head of spending to cover at £20k.

Couple, no dependants: circa £65-67k gross household. Two heads = £40k burden.

Family of four: circa £105k gross household. This is the most savage figure of all. Four heads of spending at £20k each = £80k burden, only two earners generating tax revenue. The children consume full public spending (education alone runs circa £7k per head per year) while contributing precisely nothing to the revenue side. You need to be comfortably in the top decile of household income to have two kids and not be a net taker. And it gets worse. If the family of four runs on a single earner, which is to say a father working while the mother raises the children, the breakeven figure does not sit at £105k. It sits north of £135k. And that single earner hits the £100-125k personal allowance taper, where the marginal rate spikes to circa 60-67%. The state actively punishes the very household configuration it should be incentivising. The man trying to support a family on one income is taxed as though he is a luxury. Hosed relentlessly no matter what you do.

Now consider. If the excess population above 68.3m is entirely on the consumption side of the ledger, paying no tax, consuming full services, what does that do to the per-capita burden carried by the existing population?

The maths is straightforward. TME is fixed at £1,370bn. That money gets spent regardless. The question is how many heads are consuming it.

70m: Burden rises to £20,558 per head. Hidden liability of circa £34bn, roughly £1,200 per household per year.

75m: £22,027 per head. Hidden liability circa £134bn. Approximately £4,700 per household per year. More than double the average council tax bill. Materialising as longer NHS waits, overcrowded classrooms, infrastructure running beyond capacity.

80m: £23,494 per head. Hidden liability circa £235bn. Roughly £8,200 per household per year. A sum larger than most households' entire income tax contribution, socialised silently across the tax base.

At 75m a family of four needs north of £120k to break even. At 80m it approaches £140k. The median household is not remotely in contention at any scenario.

The £20k figure is itself conservative. Blended TME includes defence and debt interest which do not scale with headcount. The marginal cost of an additional service-consuming resident (NHS, education, housing, policing) is higher than the average.

This is how terminally fucked Britain's social contract is. The only answer at this point is to smash the welfare state to bits.

@trevgoes4th @ColeFusionHQ @db_fink @HayekAndChips

[The Anglofuturist 🇬🇧🐿️ @Anglo_Futurist]

“It’s just Conservatives 2.0”

“Rehashed Tory Party”

What many seemingly fail to recognise is that this has been the norm since the 19th century, allowing parties to realign and better represent shifting voter bases.

For example, the ‘Peelites’ in 1846 broke from the Conservatives over free trade, ultimately contributing to the formation of the Liberal Party, which dominated British politics for decades and successfully modernised economic policy.

[Marcus H 🇬🇧🔶 @MarcusH_01]

> Give 16 and 17 year olds the vote
> Gooning ban
> Make it 10 times harder to get a driving license
> Ban them from drinking non (???) alcoholic drinks

Masterful gambit, Mr Starmer

[David Goodhart @David_Goodhart]

"I've never known a more right-wing Britain," said Andrew Marr a few weeks ago. I examine this outlandish claim and what it might tell us about Labour's failure in office, at least so far. See my (free) substack A Goodhart is Hard to Find https://t.co/CQuRpaPXGD

[Man Of Pie @pieanapint]

This will do nothing because it treats men as soft and broken, if anything it will make young men feel worse

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: The Government has announced the first ever Men's Health Strategy

It aims to tackle the "physical and mental health challenges" men and boys face every day by:

- Partnering with the Premier League to link football clubs with local NHS trusts for suicide prevention training and support

- Promoting NHS Talking Therapies and Every Mind Matters through football channels

- Investing £3.6m in suicide prevention projects for middle aged men

- Expanding mental health support teams in schools to reach 900,000 more pupils

- Introducing home testing for men with prostate cancer from 2027 and allowing them to order tests through the NHS App

- Investing £3m in community based men’s health programmes

- Training NHS staff with new men’s health e-learning modules

- Piloting workplace health schemes with EDF Energy and other male dominated industries

- Trailing £200,000 worth of interventions focused on cocaine and alcohol related deaths

[Man Of Pie @pieanapint]

Why is this fence here?

[Dr Ellie Chowns MP @EllieChowns]

Utterly ridiculous. 12 votes in the Commons tonight means 3 hours of tedious trudging through voting lobbies. What a total waste of time and energy when MPs could do it in 3 minutes with a modern voting system. It’s long past time to drag Parliament into the 21st century.

[Eric Kaufmann @epkaufm]

1/ We are entering a post-progressive era. The cultural left-liberalism which emerged a century ago and took off in the late 1960s is exhausted. This ‘vibe shift’doesn’t just repudiate the last decade, but the last 60 years. My latest @WSJ

[Alex Armstrong @Alexarmstrong]

The Prime Minister has been moved more by a FICTIONAL drama than speaking to the parents of little girls who were brutally murdered by the terrorist Axel Rudakubana.

Let that sink in.

[Man Of Pie @pieanapint]

Incredibly detailed way to say the guy is a fucking idiot

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

10 things that shocked me about my debate with @garyseconomics

1. He didn’t share any facts. Not one. He wants us to accept his entire philosophy on feels. When presented with data he jumps to “I’m always right betting on the economy”.

2. He didn’t know the difference or distinguish between income and inheritance. He described inheritance as income and wanted to tax it the same as income… even though it’s money that has already been taxed once already!

3. He thinks that Rishi Sunak is worth £700M and it should be taxed now even though this number related to his father in law’s foreign company. In Gary’s world, if you marry the daughter of a wealthy foreign national, the UK Government should be able to seize some of that families money. Also, owning a stake in a technology business was described as “hoarding wealth”.

4. Almost all examples he gives about “wealth” are where he imagines someone owning houses with no debt and no costs of running them and they all make 5% yield clear. In reality, hardly anyone rich owns a large number of debt free houses that spit off 5% “passive income”. Most billionaires own companies that comprise of intangible assets that can be relocated elsewhere.

5. He barely knows the difference between revenue, profit and assets. When I explored how to tax billionaires, his answers jumped between them indiscriminately.

6. He believes the cause of wealth inequality is … wealth inequality. A measurement can not be the cause of that measurement. Other than being born rich, Gary doesn’t acknowledge any underlying causes such as technology or the type of work someone does As playing a role in why people get different financial outcomes in life.

7. He seems to think all jobs should pay the same. A “grime poet” should be earning the same as someone working in finance. There’s no good or bad choices, it’s just unfair that some people end up richer than others.

8. He seems to think the only thing responsible for an affluent middle class from 1950s to 1980s was high taxes on the rich. He doesn’t take anything like labour shortages, massive post-war rebuilding efforts or a baby boom into consolidation.

9. Suggesting people have personal agency (or go—forbid, responsibility) isn’t a topic he’s comfortable with at all. Sharing statistics about the high levels of self-made millionaires doesn’t wash. Gary robs people of agency with his belief that you either have a rich dad or ”99.9% of the time you wont achieve financial security”.

10. The ONLY way to improve the economy is through higher taxes on wealth. He sees no downsides to this and genuinely thinks capital flight isn’t a real Consideration.

As much as I respect Gary’s passion and dedication, I feel like he has a very low resolution knowledge of the topic he wants to advise the country on. I feel like it’s just a deep anger about unfairness of outcomes when it comes to money.

[Colin Brazier @ColinBrazierTV]

For reasons best known to itself, The Daily Telegraph hasn’t put its piece from Robert Jenrick online. So here it is. In a dozen paragraphs he offers a cogent and devastating critique of immigration policy and isn’t afraid to explain where this takes us in the future.

[Alex Macdonald @alexfmac]

If you’re a young person watching this clip you could be fooled into thinking Gary is wise.

He’s both rich and a socialist - how is that possible?

Well let me explain what ails him.

He made his money playing a zero-sum game (trading).

Someone had to lose in order for him to win.

Most people in a capitalist society, like Daniel, create real value for everyone by playing positive sum games.

That’s how most entrepreneurs get rich.

Gary, despite all his gold stars on his maths tests at school, still doesn’t understand positive-games.

Don’t be Gary.

[Sam Ashworth-Hayes @SAshworthHayes]

A brief summary of life in the UK:

27 million private sector workers support 9 million economically inactive people aged 16-64, 6 million public sector workers, and 13 million pensioners.

If you suggest any part of this is unsustainable, people compare you to Hitler.