Craig

[Tony Ward @TonyWard867811]

They promised £300 off your energy bill.
Cheaper mortgages.
Lower inflation.
To fight the cost of living.

You got breakfast clubs.
The highest energy costs in the developed world.
Higher mortgage payments.
Less money in your pocket.

But hang on.

They knocked 20p off the bus fare.
And made gherkins a bit cheaper.

They take hundreds from your heating, your mortgage and your wage.

They hand you back 20p and a pickle.
And they expect you to say thank you.

That is who is running the country.

[ClarksonsFarm @ClarksonsFarm1]

At what point do we stop focusing on who needs to pay more tax and start asking where all of our tax money is going.

[The Guitarcorsist @ianjoyce1968]

@GBNEWS @CamillaTominey The incompetent labour government in one sentence 🙄

[Craig @scotty459]

@cerencanimyaa 48

[Politics Polls @PoliticsPollss]

If there was a general election in the UK tomorrow, who would you vote for?

#Politics #Poll

Repost after voting! 🗳️ 🔁

[Craig @scotty459]

@UK_Needs_Reform @mikestockmusic 4

[Mike Gardner @mikegardner_wb]

Sir Martin Sorrell is one of the UK’s top businessmen.

He sees nothing in Labour’s likely budget offering to help the economy, laments the economic decline of Europe and quickly rubbishes the UK’s “highest growth in the G7” mantra.

Worth a watch.

[Craig @scotty459]

@virginmedia Why is my broadband keep cutting out over the last week?

Any @virginmedia issues we should be told about?

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

Andy Burnham: "I won't accept that there's nothing I can do to help."

He's joking, right? About 46% of the price of filling up your tank is TAX. That's absolutely something the PM could do something about. And how about expanding drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea?

[Ricky Gervais @rickygervais]

This billboard wasn’t allowed in public incase it offended anyone so please do not repost it. Thanks.

[Liam Halligan @LiamHalligan]

“The fasten seat belts sign is on”.

This is a message I received early this morning from one of the UK’s most experienced, savvy and respected financial traders. Someone I have come to know and trust for the last 25 years.

10-year bond yields are now almost 4.5pc - up some 50 basis points over the last month.

30-year yields this morning went above 6pc - a 28-year high.

Yet the UK’s political and media class continues to focus on party posturing and folksy rhetoric, ignoring the slow-motion disaster that has been happening on the UK’s sovereign bond markets for at least the last 18 months - a disaster that will inevitably, unless we drastically change course, turn into a fully blown market meltdown.

At that point, the UK government won’t be able to borrow enough money to finance our already spiralling debt interest bill.

Britain’s financial management will be taken over by overseas technocrats - that will be the condition of additional borrowing, to maintain the basic functions of the state, as happened in Greece and Italy back in the early 2010s and here in Britain 50 years ago this year (when we were forced in 1976 to apply to the IMF for a bailout).

The austerity then imposed on Britain would make 2010-2019 feel like a picnic - far, far worse than it would be if we took serious action now to control our public finances.

Lower-income households would suffer most - and there would be serious damage done to the UK’s already rapidly-fraying social fabric ….

I have been warning about these looking fiscal dangers publicly, in my newspaper columns and elsewhere, since at least early 2024.

Doing so hasn’t been easy or fun. I have been dismissed and derided by numerous economists, “economists”, officials and policymakers - as well as lots of journalists.

I absolutely don’t want a disastrous 1976-style outcome - which is why I’ve taken the blows and issued the warnings.

The state is too big. Public spending is out of control. Our fiscal rules are a convenient nonsense - designed to kick the can of financial reality into the future. We need to get real … and take bold action to tame the growth of spending, push back a now totally over-bearing state and snap the British economy out of today’s high-tax-high-borrowing-low-growth doom loop - the result of myopic, counter-productive policy-making by successive governments for the last decade and more …

Other prominent economists who agree with me - ie who are financially-literate, can read a yield curve, have a passing interest in economic history and who understand the dangers of some 80pc of UK government borrowing going on debt interest as it currently is - need to chuck “career risk” in the bin, and start saying publicly what so many of them have, for quite a while now, only had the bottle to say to me in private …

Remember: “The fasten seat belts sign is on”

[J Stewart @triffic_stuff_]

Finally, someone challenged Miatta Fahnbulleh and she completely crumbled.

Well done to Tom Swarbrick for asking the obvious question about net zero and high energy bills.

Miatta starts off with a blatant lie:

“The reason why our energy bills are much higher than in other countries is because those costs are being driven by global fossil fuel markets.”

I mean that doesn’t even make sense. Why would ours be so much higher if it was just about “global fossil fuel markets”? She just made that up on the spot, and Tom doesn’t let her get away with it:

“It is not just down to being exposed to oil and gas prices because of wars far away. There are choices, political choices, made by you and your colleagues that say we are going to increase bill prices to pay for upgrades to the national grid, to pay for renewable subsidies. That’s what’s putting bills up.”

Exactly! We all know this is the case, but she just always tries to blame anything and everything but that.

Miatta: “Well, no. It is both. We should be honest and it is both.”

She says “we should be honest” at the exact time she is not being honest! Unbelievable!

Tom jumps straight back: “So not “no” then! It’s not “no”. It is true that you are making choices to increase people’s bills to spend on renewable subsidies and infrastructure costs.”

Well done Tom. I’ve watched many of her interviews this morning and previously, and no one challenges her on this key claim. They just let her off with the usual talking points.

Net Zero is a primary reason your energy bills are sky-high, and that is a fact.

They just don’t like to admit it because they know how unpopular it is, so they do what they do on almost every issue: blame something or someone else.

[David Shaw @David90shaw]

🚨 EMERGENCY WARNING TO EVERY PENSIONER IN GREAT BRITAIN: LABOUR IS PREPARING THE ULTIMATE WEALTH GRAB!

If you worked hard for 40 years, paid your taxes, and saved for retirement, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has just placed a massive target firmly on your back.

The highly influential IPPR think tank, which is packed with Burnham's own inner circle, just published the exact socialist blueprint Labour plans to use to bail out their bankrupt government. 🤡

Look at the terrifying three step robbery they are demanding for the October Budget.

First, slapping National Insurance directly onto the incomes of 9.6 million British pensioners.

Second, hiking capital gains tax to a staggering 40 percent to crush your investments.

Third, a devastating 0.65 percent annual property wealth tax just for the privilege of living inside your own family home!

They label you "wealthy" to justify stealing the nest egg you spent a lifetime building. Yet they magically find endless billions to house illegal arrivals in catered hotels without blinking an eye.

They treat the generation that built this country like an absolute cash machine while engineering our total national decline. The mask has completely slipped.

RT and SHARE this everywhere to warn every single retiree in Great Britain before Chancellor John Healey raids their bank accounts! 🇬🇧🔥

[Michelle Dewberry @MichelleDewbs]

Yep & the occupants are coming to a HMO near us…🤷‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

Personally, I’m grateful for the list of these hotels @ukhomeoffice I would never stay at any of them now.

Many of these kinds of hotels often cancelled bookings (incl. weddings, christenings etc with little notice), fired staff & changed the dynamics of the communities they served - all for a quick buck via the taxpayer.

I hope they go bust.

A national emergency should have been declared ages ago re these ‘not so small boats’.

Shame on all of you; politicians, charities, landlords etc who are complicit in enabling all this stuff….

Shame on you.

[Lee Nallalingham @LNallalingham]

🚨 IF THEY CAN’T PASS AN AUDIT, THEY CAN’T RAISE YOUR TAXES.

I’ve launched a petition to make this law:

❌ Fail audit = no tax rises and no bigger budget.

❌ Fail two years running = those responsible cannot stand for re-election.

Politicians should not be allowed to demand more of your money when they cannot properly account for the money they already have.

If you agree, please sign and share my petition.

Link: https://t.co/r4CliorXCJ

[The British Patriots @TheBritPats]

🚨INSANITY: The average British worker works 40 hours a week, year after year, watching taxes climb while the cost of living crushes them and still barely make ends meet.

Meanwhile, the government is spending your money like this:

Aid across the world:

• World Health Organisation: £310M
• Ukraine: £237M
• Ethiopia: £217M
• Afghanistan: £171M
• Syria: £146M
• Yemen: £144M
• Somalia: £143M
• Sudan: £140M
• South Sudan: £134M
• Palestine: £129M
• Nigeria: £117M
• Congo (DRC): £107M
• Pakistan: £99M
• Overseas Territories: £98M
• Kenya: £79M
• Jordan: £68M
• Myanmar: £65M
• Bangladesh: £61M
• Nepal: £60M
• Lebanon: £56M
• Tanzania: £56M
• Malawi: £50M
• Mozambique: £49M
• Uganda: £46M
• Indonesia: £45M
• Zambia: £42M
• Rwanda: £31M
• Zimbabwe: £31M
• Sierra Leone: £30M
• Turkey: £19M
• Ghana and Liberia: £16M
• South Africa: £14M
• Eastern Neighbourhood: £14M
• Central Asia: £13M
• Western Balkans: £13M

Illegal immigration:

Housing and benefits: £5/6billion
Translation fees: £150M

Foreign criminals in British prisons: £600M​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

NET STUPID ZERO 6.7 BILLION.

Just in this list alone it exceeds:
£15.5 BILLION!!!

YET, there’s no money to fix pot holes, the NHS, police on the streets, schools falling apart, social care for the elderly, housing the homeless, or support for veterans.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.. amongst other things,

Absolutely disgraceful.

[JD 🇬🇧 @JackieD86388657]

How have we got enough money for

Illegal immigrants
Foreign aid
Ukraine

But not enough money for

Social care
Pensions

Asking people to pay more tax to pay for these two priorities is very wrong, the money is already there but they're just making decisions to spend it on other things that have nothing to do with us

[Your Accountant @TJiMTS]

Andy Burnham, in two weeks of being PM, has perfectly illustrated the main problem in UK public finances.

Week 1: there's a cost of living crisis, so to help you we've taken £45 a year off your electricity bill and capped bus fares at £2.

Week 2: we don't have enough money to fund everything we want to do, so we're taking £630 a year out of your salary.

Same government, same month.

Credit where it's due first - taking VAT off electricity from October is real money, so is the £2 bus cap in January if you're on a bus twice a day. Immediate cost of living relief is genuinely needed by most people.

But I'm not sure how someone who couldn't manage without that £45 a year of relief is supposed to now manage with £630 a year less in their pocket?

The £630 is a 1.8% levy on income to fund a National Care Service costed at £18bn a year. On a £35,000 salary it's £630, on £50,000 it's £900.

It's charged as a percentage of your income.
It's collected out of your income.
It is not, apparently, income tax, because they're going to call it a levy.

It also only applies to taxpayers over 34... So you turn 35 and take a pay cut, at the exact age most people are stretched on a mortgage with childcare costing more than the mortgage.

But the UKs ACTUALLY problem? Spending is too high. And it's too high in ways that are fixable if anyone was willing to challenge the status quo rather than buy more votes with handouts.

This is where £1,383bn goes this year:

Health, £269.6bn
Pensions, £236.3bn
Welfare, £204.0bn
Education, £126.7bn
Debt interest, £104.6bn
Defence, £75.2bn
Everything else, £367.1bn

Health, £269.6bn: We need mandatory health insurance as an employment benefit and a hybrid model. Everyone hears "insurance" and pictures America, someone bleeding out over a copay, as if no other model exists on earth.

The Netherlands has mandatory private health insurance. Insurers are legally required to accept everyone. They cannot charge you more for being chronically ill. A risk equalisation pool moves money towards the insurers covering the sickest people. It's consistently ranked top three in Europe.

Welfare, £204.0bn: Income tax raises £330bn. So almost 2 of every 3 pounds of Income Tax taken from every working person in this country is spoken for by the welfare bill.

Welfare should be for people who cannot work. Disability, genuine incapacity, the people it was built to protect. It has drifted into a general income top-up, and the number that proves it is 4.2 million working age people now claiming at least one health related benefit, up a million since 2019.

Change how we determine eligibility, fix a lot of spending issues immediately.

Pensions, £236.3bn: The state pension is a Ponzi scheme, and I mean that technically rather than as an insult. There is no fund - the ONS says so plainly. Your National Insurance is not being put aside and invested for your State Pension, It just pays the payouts for last year's pensioners. Yours depends entirely on there being enough workers behind you.

Which, btw, there won't be. The ratio of pensioners to workers goes from 27% to 48% by 2050 (and these estimates are before we've seen the proper impact of AI/automation on jobs.

Australia already fixed this: 12% of earnings into a private fund with your name on it, mandatory, employer paid. It's your money, it compounds, it doesn't need a bigger generation behind you to work.

We could mandate the same tomorrow and let the state pension run down over the next 40 years, eventually saving £236bn a year.

You can't levy your way out of these problems. A 1.8% charge on everyone over 34 raises £18bn. It doesn't even cover the interest on our existing debt.

And in the meantime... If we're going to borrow anyway, why is none of it buying anything?

Norway found oil in 1969 and put the money in a fund... That fund is now worth $2.049 trillion. It holds a stake in roughly 1.5% of every listed company on the planet.

We found oil in the same decade and spent it.

The UK's National Wealth Fund is capitalised at £27.8bn. Norway's is about 73 times bigger.

So where is our position in AI, in data centres, in grid scale renewables, in batteries, in electric vehicles, in any of the things the next fifty years actually runs on? We borrow £133bn a year and almost none of it buys an asset.

Fix government spending immediately, increase government income over time (without milking people for every penny of 'levy' you can find), and quality of life will genuinely improve as people have more money in their pockets.

The UK has a spending problem, not a tax problem.

[معلومة Information @BBPP3M]

🗣️لويس إنريكي: درّبت ليونيل ميسي في برشلونة، واليوم لا يسعني السكوت.

لا شك أن ميسي أحد أعظم لاعبي كرة القدم الذين عملت معهم على الإطلاق. موهبته لا جدال فيها. لكن لا ينبغي أبدًا استخدام العظمة لتبرير ما يعتبره العديد من المشجعين قرارات مثيرة للجدل.

ما شاهدته في هذه النسخة من كأس العالم أصابني بالإحباط وخيبة الأمل. التحكيم، وعدم الاتساق، والشعور بأن بعض الفرق تحظى بمعاملة تفضيلية، كلها أمور تضر بمصداقية كرة القدم.

بالنسبة لي، بُني إرث كريستيانو رونالدو على العمل الجاد، والانضباط، والاتساق، والجدارة. سواء كنت من مؤيديه أم لا، فإن إنجازاته تتحدث عن نفسها دون الحاجة إلى الجدل لتحديدها.

كمدرب، لن أؤيد أبدًا أي شيء يمس بنزاهة اللعبة. يجب أن تُحسم كرة القدم على أرض الملعب، لا بقرارات تجعل ملايين المشجعين يشككون في نزاهة المنافسة.

أفضّل الخسارة بشرف على الفوز وسط الجدل.

يجب على الفيفا حماية نزاهة كرة القدم قبل أن يفقد المشجعون ثقتهم في اللعبة الجميلة.