Helga 3.5 % # Rejoin 🇪🇺💚

'And the creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig again, but already it was impossible to tell which was which.'
- George Orwell

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

The UK’s welfare bill is lower than it was 15 years ago as a proportion of national income.

But mainstream media keep pushing the idea that it needs to be slashed so we can spend more on “defence”.

When economist Jonathan Portes was asked on Sky News where the welfare bill could be cut – he called out the broadcaster for asking a "nonsense" question.

The idea that welfare spending is out of control “is just wrong," he said.

[Roy Andrew @AndrewRoy70]

#gmb this morning . Four incredibly wealthy women casually chatting away at how best to cut benefits for people who have next to nothing.
What a country eh

[Mrs Gee 💚🇵🇸🎒 @earthygirl011]

The system in question

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

Lush will donate 75% of its new product to Defend Our Juries to highlight the government eroding the right to protest

By @OsoSabioUK
https://t.co/UbhjfPnAw2

[Alicia Painter 🫒 (they/them) @AliArthPainter]

People who physically aren't able to walk for 30 minutes a day are more likely to need those incentives.

This is discriminatory against disabled people.

NHS to reward people who walk 30 minutes a day - BBC News https://t.co/YHm9pxy8fY

[Sally Bourliakas 💙 @SallyBourliakas]

Why do we need to bring down Welfare Spending @vicderbyshire ?

The Welfare budget has been 11% of GDP for decades and is projected to to be around 11% of GDP till 2030

👀 At the figures
WELFARE SPEND IS NOT BALLOONING

Working Age Incapacity benfits due to be stable at 1% GDP till 2030

Total Welfare spend
Stable at 11% GDP
(& projected to stay at 11% till 2030)

Working Age
Economic Inactivity
Stable at 10M
& Has been for 30 years
1995-2024

& ⬇️ in last decade
2011 23.6%
2024 21.2%

Working Age (WA)
Economic Inactivity
as a percentage of Working Age people Down
⬇️in last decade

2011 23.6%

2024 21.2%

2025 20.8%

Don't you think you've worried enough disabled and retired people and people with terminal diseases and long term conditions enough?

PIP fraud
2024 0.0%
2025 0.4%

1.8M of 3.7M on #PIP are not new claims but adults over 16
migrated from DLA

The whole welfare or warfare debate has to ✋ stop

You are lying to the country about welfare ballooning

1.8M of the people on #PIP were migrated there from DLA when PIP was established in 2014:
Not New Claims

The dramatic UC increase
is 80% migration from legacy benefits too: not new claims!

The whole NEETS narrative breaks down when you look at the figures...

Just as the constant narrative of ballooning benefits in general is bogus so is this..
NEETS 16-17yr
2017 6%
2024 5.4%

https://t.co/drdJeNVoWc…

https://t.co/8gfcyrpktB

https://t.co/8gfcyrpktB

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

1) It’s *literally* your job to regulate this platform.

2) If you can’t, what does that mean? Tell us.

3) The Dept of Culture is not ‘your’ department, it’s ours. You’re its temporary custodian

5) But Facebook is ok? Really?

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Left: Lisa Nandy complains about a lack of regulation on social media

Right: Lisa Nandy quitting Twitter because of a lack of regulation on social media

Your reminder that it's been Lisa Nandy's job for two years to regulate social media

Instead of doing her job, she's quitting Twitter

And as a minister, on top of her MPs salary of £91,346 per year, Lisa Nandy gets paid a ministerial salary of £67,505

So far Lisa Nandy has got £135,010 from the taxpayer for not doing her job of regulating social media

14 years of complaining of Conservative incompetence, and here's Labour doing the same

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

Portes "Theres a lot of nonsense talked, including on Sky, about the spiralling welfare bill.. as a proportion of our national income.. its lower than it was 15yrs ago & its pretty much back to what it was under Thatcher.. this idea its out of control is just wrong"

Spot on!

[PenScribbler @ScribblerPen]

Poor Germany. Day 1 of illness, peak contagion, when the sick person will now need to sit and infect everyone in the waiting room, so more will be off sick, for longer. "We can't afford the extraordinary high levels of sick leave" = Covid is costing us, but we won't tackle Covid.

[simon maginn @simonmaginn]

'The Russians are coming to rape our women-folk!' screams entirely sane and rational Lord West.
So you can forget about children having enough to eat or pensioners keeping warm in winter because THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!
UK politics, 2026.

[Big Brother Watch @BigBrotherWatch]

🚨 Tell Sainsbury’s to STOP spying on all of us using live facial recognition

We've just made a speedy tool for you to write to @sainsburys urging them to stop turning shoppers' faces into barcodes

Take action to #StopSainsburysSpying⤵️
https://t.co/NezdTOAd1m

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

“There are whacking great loopholes in a bit of legislation that the government is trying to bring through Parliament at the moment... power in British politics sits in far too few hands.”

​Today in London, we spoke with Liberal Democrat MP Lisa Smart about the Representation of the People Bill and the government’s cherry-picked response to the Rycroft Review.

​While the government asked an expert for recommendations to keep "bad money" out of UK politics, they are currently only supporting 2 out of the 17 proposed ideas. They are making a show of banning crypto and capping foreign donations over £100k, but staying completely silent on uncapped corporate political donations. By focusing on a company's revenue rather than its actual profits, ministers are leaving a massive back door open for billionaires, gazillionaires, and shell companies to buy influence over British democracy.

​📍 London

📅 1 July 2026

​ #RycroftReview #RepresentationOfThePeopleBill #PoliticalDonations #TheCanary #ukpolitics

[Global Justice Now @GlobalJusticeUK]

Great to see a mention of our and @JustTreatment's work in parliament as MPs called for gov to come clean on the true costs of the US-UK medicines deal.

This deal with Trump could cost BILLIONS + hundreds of thousands of lives - yet has not been subject to a democratic vote.

[The BMJ @bmj_latest]

Around £45bn in NHS funding will be diverted from other NHS care by 2036 to pay more for new medicines under the UK-US trade deal agreed last December unless more funding is made available to cover the additional costs, suggests new Analaysis in The BMJ
https://t.co/7cGlK1OEvH

[Aditya Chakrabortty @chakrabortty]

Keir Starmer has done a trade deal with Donald Trump that could end up costing our NHS £45 billion - and, experts say, cause more Britons to die than Covid.

So why is hardly anyone talking about it?

My column https://t.co/Tqs1Kmhcsv

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

So the trade deal the UK govt signed with the US will lead to lots of us dying needlessly because billions of NHS funding is being diverted from essential services to bolster the profits of US big pharma.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP @BellRibeiroAddy]

Last year, Palantir paid an effective tax rate of just 8%.

As well as making large profits from public sector contracts and sensitive NHS data, Palantir doesn’t even pay its fair share of taxes on those profits.
https://t.co/YAASIWCThi

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

No explanation has been given by @LloydsBank to @TheCanaryUK for its sudden decision to debank them, despite the outlet having repeatedly sought an explanation and after banking with them for nearly a decade.

This is an attack on free expression and independent media.

[the Juice Media @thejuicemedia]

The Government™ has made an ad about Palantir, and it's surprsingly honest and informative.
https://t.co/KMWiKt6pvk