Roderic

[Gareth @thehandofbeadle]

Jimenez scoring a world cup goal at the Azteca, and in a few weeks he'll be sat on a team bus in Wolverhampton while Trippier shows him photos of his new XL bully

[Vikram Pai @vikpai]

Running a business is just realizing how dumb you were 6 months ago every 6 months

[Spencer A. Klavan @SpencerKlavan]

I’m learning that getting older means graduating from main character to supporting cast. From child, student, suitor to parent, teacher, spouse. You grow ever more deeply invested in other people’s successes, if you’re doing it right, and realizing what a privilege that is. You come to see and feel that the richer and deeper your own life becomes, the less you want to be the center of attention, the more you understand that the money spot of the human soul is in the cheering section, where the self is lost in love. I think this carries on forever, by the way.

[Toby Young @toadmeister]

As someone with a worm’s eye view of the legislative process, it really irritates me that Starmer’s spin for the poor local election results is that his Govt hasn’t been moving fast enough. There were 40 bills in the first parliamentary session and there are 37 in the second, as set out in yesterday’s King’s Speech. Starmer has created 96 peers – a higher rate per year than any previous Prime Minister. He could not be going any faster.

The fact that the legislation the Govt has rammed through has not delivered growth or reduced the tax burden on working people or lowered the cost of living – delivered the ‘change’ that Labour promised – is because they’re not designed to do that. They’re designed to placate the Party’s ‘stakeholders’ – backbench Labour MPs, trade unions, NGOs, think tanks, lobby groups, allies in the legal profession, cheerleaders in the media, etc.

It’s been bleedin’ obvious to everyone on the opposition benches – and probably some on the Govt benches too – that the legislation was introduced in the last parliamentary session – particularly the Employment Rights Act – will impede growth, not accelerate it.

We’ve told the Govt’s ministers this in the chamber again and again and everything we’ve predicted would happen has happened – rising unemployment, rising inflation, accelerating borrowing costs, an unmanageable welfare bill, exodus of high income-earners, thereby increasing the tax burden on the rest of us, etc.

The idea that if the Govt had been going *even faster* – which is just straightforwardly impossible – the country would be better off, is for the birds. Even as a piece of spin, it’s pathetic. The reason we’re in an economic doom spiral is because this Govt is only interested in pandering to its ‘stakeholders’ and their only motive is to line their own pockets and advance their own narrow sectional interests.

Changing the leader will make no difference. We need a Prime Minister and a Govt who are going to prioritise the national interest. I don’t see anyone in the pack of hyenas stalking Starmer who’s going to do that.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

The Green Party has complained about this cartoon of Zack Polanski by the The Times.

They’re deeply unhappy with it. Whatever you do, do not repost!

[Metropolitan Police @metpoliceuk]

“Apprehending violent and dangerous criminals is a full contact and messy task which may appear shocking to observers with little experience of policing in the real world.”

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley writes to Zack Polanski.

[Roderic @rodericyapp]

I’m 44. This is still the best damn job I ever had. A privilege to work with these guys… I was 25, I just hope I did a good enough job.

[Bootneck Stuff @BootneckStuff]

10 troop, Delta Company 40 Commando on Herrick 7.

[Roderic @rodericyapp]

@BootneckStuff I was the Troop Commander, best damn job I ever had. Loved working with those lads.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

There's a crisis hiding inside British local government right now that almost nobody is talking about. And it connects to almost everything else that's going wrong.

Since 2018, seven councils have effectively gone bankrupt. Northamptonshire. Croydon. Slough. Thurrock. Woking. Birmingham. Nottingham. They issued what's called a Section 114 notice. Local government's way of saying the money has run out.

The number of councils needing emergency help from central government is growing every year. In 2025-26, 30 councils needed exceptional financial support. This year it's 35, sharing around £1.5 billion. The government had been warned it could reach 100.

The Local Government Association estimates almost 1 in 5 councils are at risk. The LGIU found more than half of senior council figures believe their authority will effectively go bankrupt within five years.

Some of this is mismanagement. Woking racked up £2.4 billion in debt, 100 times its annual budget, gambling on hotels and skyscrapers. Thurrock lost hundreds of millions on solar farm investments. Croydon's housing company collapsed.

But the deeper story is structural. Between 2009 and 2020, central government funding to councils was cut by 40% in real terms. From £46.5 billion to £28 billion. At the same time, demand for the services councils are legally required to provide has been rising every single year.

And while the funding was being slashed, your council tax was going in the opposite direction.

In 2011, the average Band D council tax bill was £1,439. Today it's £2,392. Up over 66% in fifteen years. This year, 274 out of 384 councils raised it by the maximum allowed without triggering a referendum. Seven were given special permission to go even higher.

You'd think all that extra money would mean better services. It doesn't. Libraries are closing. Bins are collected less often. Roads are falling apart. Social care is being rationed. You're paying more every year and getting less every year.

So where is the money going?

Social care is the single biggest answer. It's eating local government alive. The adult social care funding gap is now over £1 billion a year just to stand still. The Health Foundation estimates an additional £8.3 billion will be needed by 2032 just to keep up with growing demand. Care England estimates that increases to the National Living Wage and employer National Insurance have added £3.7 billion in extra costs to the sector. The government's response has fallen well short of that.

But there's another cost most people don't know about. And I want to be precise here because the numbers are contested and the picture is complicated.

Councils fund themselves from multiple sources. Government grants. Business rates. Fees. And council tax. Council tax is the part you pay directly. So when I talk about what follows, I'm talking specifically about how much of your council tax revenue goes to one particular cost.

Freedom of Information requests submitted to over 300 councils found that local authorities across England contributed roughly £6.7 billion to staff pension schemes last year. When measured against the council tax those councils collected, that works out at an average of around 23p in every pound of council tax revenue going to staff pensions.

Councils will rightly point out that council tax is only one part of their total funding. That's true and it's an important caveat. But council tax is the part that comes directly from you.

Council employees are enrolled in the Local Government Pension Scheme. A defined benefit scheme where councils pay an average of roughly 20% of each staff member's salary in employer contributions. In the private sector, the minimum employer contribution under auto-enrolment is 3%. The two aren't directly comparable because defined benefit and defined contribution schemes work very differently. But the gap gives you a sense of the cost pressure.

And this isn't an argument against council workers having decent retirements. Many of them are low paid and do vital work. The average LGPS pension in payment is around £4,000 a year. This isn't gold-plated for most people.

But when your council tax has gone up over 66% in fifteen years while your services have visibly deteriorated, you deserve to understand what's driving those costs. Pension obligations are one significant part of the picture. Social care is another. And between them, they leave very little room for everything else.

Now here's where it connects to the NHS.

Care providers are closing. Councils are rationing who qualifies for help. And the knock-on effect is landing directly on hospitals.

Every single day in England, somewhere between 13,000 and 14,000 hospital beds are occupied by patients who are medically fit to go home but can't. Because the social care they need to leave hospital doesn't exist. One in eight general and acute beds in the country. Blocked. Not because the patients are sick. Because there's nowhere for them to go.

Care England estimates that over 45% of hospital discharge delays are linked to social care. The Royal College of Physicians has called this "a failing system" and said the NHS front door will remain in a state of emergency until it's fixed.

This is a doom loop. And nobody in government is treating it as one.

Councils can't fund social care. So elderly patients can't leave hospital. So hospital beds are blocked. So waiting lists grow. So people who need treatment can't get it. So they can't work. So economic inactivity rises. So tax receipts fall. So the government has less money. So councils get squeezed further. So social care gets worse. So more beds are blocked.

And round it goes.

Every part of that chain is supported by data from official sources. The waiting lists. The inactivity figures. The funding gaps. The discharge numbers. The Section 114 notices. They're all published separately by different departments. But nobody is connecting them.

The DWP treats inactivity as a welfare problem. The NHS treats waiting lists as a health problem. The Treasury treats both as spending problems. Local government treats social care as a funding problem. They're all looking at their own piece. Nobody is looking at the system.

Meanwhile your council tax keeps going up. Your services keep getting worse. The population is ageing. The fertility rate just hit its lowest level on record. And the cost of everything, pensions, healthcare, social care, debt interest, keeps growing faster than the economy that's supposed to pay for it.

The councils going bust aren't the crisis. They're the symptom. The crisis is a system that was built for a younger, richer, growing country and is now buckling under the weight of an older, poorer, stagnating one.

And nobody in power is willing to say that out loud. Because the honest answer is that this requires a fundamental redesign of how the state works. And nobody wants to be the one to start that conversation.

[Sam Parr @thesamparr]

Just now getting around to Paul Graham’s essay on the Swiss watch industry.

In the 1970s, quartz watches made mechanical watches outdated because they were cheaper and more accurate.

Three companies survived--Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and Rolex.

- Rolex saw it coming first. Stopped innovating on movements in the 1960s. Went all-in on marketing, celebrities, sponsorships.

- Patek created artificial scarcity. Track every watch by serial number. Multi-year waitlists. They literally buy back their own watches to keep prices up.

- AP made the case design the entire identity. The Royal Oak, with octagonal bezel, exposed screws was instantly recognizable.

Meanwhile there was another company called Omega that used to be in the same tier but instead of focusing on brand they tried to compete with the other quartz watches, which didn’t go too well.

Graham’s takeaway was that when the tech makes things easier to produce, brand becomes the only differentiator.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

One of the hardest conversations to have in this country is about pensions and welfare spending. It’s because the moment you raise them, people assume you’re attacking pensioners or the vulnerable.

So let me be clear before I go any further. This isn’t an argument against supporting people who need it. It’s a question about whether the system that provides that support can survive in its current form. Because if it can’t, the people who depend on it the most are the ones who get hurt first. That’s why this conversation matters.

Now the numbers…

The government raises roughly £1.2 trillion a year in total receipts. Here’s where it comes from. £329 billion from income tax. £200 billion from National Insurance. £214 billion from VAT. £105 billion from corporation tax. £50 billion from council tax. Plus fuel duty, stamp duty, alcohol and tobacco duties, inheritance tax, capital gains tax, and everything else.

The welfare bill is £333 billion. Every penny raised from income tax, the single largest source of government revenue, doesn’t cover it. The welfare bill is larger than income tax receipts.

Combine income tax and National Insurance and you get roughly £529 billion. Welfare takes £333 billion of that. Debt interest takes another £114 billion. That’s £447 billion gone before a single pound goes to the NHS, schools, police, defence, roads, or anything else. Those two items alone consume 85% of everything raised through income tax and NI combined.

Everything else the government does has to be funded from VAT, corporation tax, council tax, and every other levy. And here’s the thing people don’t always connect. You pay those too. VAT is 20% on almost everything you buy. Employer National Insurance, just raised to 15%, gets passed on through higher prices and lower wages. Corporation tax gets passed on through the cost of goods and services. Council tax comes straight out of your household budget. Fuel duty, insurance premium tax, alcohol duty, tobacco duty. It all comes back to you.

The tax burden is at its highest level since the 1940s. Income tax thresholds have been frozen since 2021, dragging millions more people into higher tax brackets without anyone voting for a tax rise. There are now 39 million income tax payers, up from 33 million just four years ago. Six million more people paying income tax.

And it’s still not enough.

Welfare spending rose by £18 billion this year alone. The two biggest drivers are the triple lock on pensions, which has added £21 billion since 2019, and disability and incapacity benefits, which have added £24 billion in the same period. Both rising faster than the economy that funds them.

The two-child benefit cap was just lifted at a cost of £3 billion a year. Whether you think that’s the right call or not, it’s another £3 billion added to a bill that already exceeds total income tax receipts. And that’s the pattern. Every individual spending commitment has a justification. The total is unsustainable. And anyone who tries to talk about the total gets dragged into an argument about the individual line items.

None of this is an argument for pulling support from people who need it. It’s an argument for being honest about whether the current system can continue to provide it. Because right now, it can’t. Everyone who’s looked at the numbers honestly knows it can’t. The OBR knows it. The IFS knows it. The Treasury knows it.

The cruellest thing we can do is pretend it’s all fine and let people plan their lives around promises that won’t be kept. The woman relying on her state pension at 67. The carer who needs the system to be there. The disabled person who depends on support that’s already under political pressure. They deserve honesty more than anyone.

But we can’t get to honesty because the conversation gets shut down before it starts. And the people who benefit most from that silence aren’t the vulnerable. It’s the politicians who’d rather nobody looked at the numbers too closely.

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

Retired 4-Star Navy Admiral and former Navy SEAL William McRaven on Donald Trump: "Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation."

RETWEET if you stand with Admiral McRaven!

[kramerica industries @hepimp]

maybe shoulda tried work-life integrating the poor ‘equity punks’ eh.

[Kitana ☁︎ @stickygoons]

I appreciate the heads up

[Documenting Saylor @saylordocs]

Real Luxuries in Life

1. Living 10 minutes from work
2. Living 5 minutes from the gym
3. Having quiet neighbors
4. Having money left at the end of the month and investing it
5. Peace at home
6. Drinking coffee without rushing
7. Sleeping with a clear conscience
8. Laughing with people who truly get you
9. Traveling every year
10. Waking up naturally without an alarm
11. Enjoying a home-cooked meal with loved ones
12. Having time to read a book in one sitting
13. Finding joy in simple daily routines
14. Having a pet that greets you happily at the door

These are the things that actually feel rich.

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

This is the zenith of Dunning-Kruger. This shit-piston is so stupid that he’s actually achieved a kind of subatomic density of stupidity; turning his own skull into a cognitive black hole from which no light or basic reason can ever hope to escape. It's amazing to watch: you can actually witness him de-evolving in real-time. Surely one of the worst human beings that humanity has ever produced.

[Edmund @Kulambq]

Hearing this person speak makes me think of what Charles Bukowski said:

'The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.'

[Roderic @rodericyapp]

@jimhamilton4 They were so bad. No leadership on the field and how are these coaches keeping their jobs? Squad and coaching staff aren’t good enough

[Roderic @rodericyapp]

@Harlequins So glad that’s over. Best players aren’t hanging around, left with a squad that is no where near good enough for this league. Listening to Lawrie, it sounds like the players are being given a lot of autonomy but they’re not stepping up and taking responsibility.

[Roderic @rodericyapp]

@Harlequins He scored from half way! Players jogging to catch him, this is shocking