Monkfish 🇬🇧🇳🇴🇮🇩🇪🇺🌐

Energy, security and planning policy. Russian Strategic Culture as a niche.

[Kris @krxsctr]

UK Civil Service salaries never cease to confuse me, you can either help manage the UK’s nuclear defence for £47k or you can make TikToks for Andy Burnham for £57k

[Monkfish 🇬🇧🇳🇴🇮🇩🇪🇺🌐 @Slickrickwitha2]

@haugejostein Power projection and imperialism are two very different things.

[Tom Canham 🏳️‍🌈 @tcanham459]

Do we have estimates for how much cheaper it would have been to just not fucking bury it

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

“The bond market has taken over the government …

… You don’t want to be in a situation where your government’s economic policies are totally dominated by a bunch of bond traders who are not democratically elected and don’t have peoples wellbeing in their hearts” - @garyseconomics

Gary and I can agree on this sentiment.

My answer to this problem is we need a growing economy and we need a smaller government that isn’t reliant on debt.

When the government is running a deficit year after year, we are dependent on the bond markets. So, the best way to avoid being influenced by debt traders is to avoid spiralling debt.

The UK Government currently expands debt by £20B per month. It also has to refinance debt every quarter and most of it is being refinanced at higher rates.

On the growth side, for every 1% of real growth the UK can create we get £30B of GDP and about £12.5B of that is tax revenue.

To me this spells out a simple equation - Bring government spending down and get the economy up. Pro-growth, anti-government. Pro-business, anti-new-taxes. We need a plan to grow from a £3T to a £5T economy by 2050.

Gary’s answer… tax wealth!!

Crunch the numbers and you’ll see that the richest 1000 families in the UK have about £750B between them. If you impose a 2% wealth tax and NONE of them leave and none of their assets are devalued (which would be a miracle) then you have about £15B.

Smash and grab money from then next 10,000 richest families and you might get another £5-10B… Let’s call it £25B if EVERYTHING goes to plan. Which it never has in the history of wealth taxes.

The UK Government added £132B of new debt in the last 12 months. Our debt is edging up around £3Trillion… Put another way a wealth tax that has no second order consequences would be lithe equivalent of giving a compulsive gambler a poker chip to help them through the next hand.

Our UK government will take any new tax revenue you give it and use it to get even more debt. It’s addicted to debt and allergic to spending within its means.

Of course a wealth tax will have second order consequences. Punitive tax on wealth will make the UK less investable, less business friendly and less wealthy. If a wealth tax causes the UK not to grow it costs £30B of GDP and £12.5B of taxes for every 1% we lose.

Which way do you think will work?

[max tempers @maxtempers]

The entire Boriswave will be entitled to Pension Credit IF they obtain ILR. Care workers who arrived in their 40s/50s and have never earned a salary >£30k will all be eligible, along with their spouses. This should be a first order concern if you're worried about pension spend.

[Trevoh Chalobah @TrevohChalobah]

Believe

[Dan Thomas @DanThomasESPN]

Cape Verde have had more possession than Arsenal did in the UCL final.

[Britgirl @Britgirlnuked]

This is social housing

[Jardine Matheson Internationalist @emergenteffects]

The Japanese Ground Self Defence Forces have double the regular personnel as Britain.

Their navy has 36 destroyers to our six.

Their air force has 75 more aircraft than ours.

This is a country constitutionally forbidden from having a real military.

This is a joke!

[Kraut @The_Davos_Man]

>Demand more social justice
>Be tax heaven

>Push hard for E.U green energy bill
>Continue burning heavy emissions peat

>Demand tough E.U sanctions on Russia
>Sell aluminium to Russian arms industry

>Demand E.U sanctions on Israel
>Become Israel's Nr.2 trade partner in E.U

[Purav Menon @profavi_]

Zack Polanski in April 2016 citing San Francisco as a prime example of why rent controls don’t work and stifle housing supply 🕊️

[Rado 🎈 @thee_ovie]

Look at how the PSG players immediately stopped appealing the moment the referee waved it away. Only Marquinhos approached the ref, and the bench stayed calm. Zero drama.

Now contrast that with Mikel Arteta and Arsenal. When Madueke pulled down Nuno Mendes and intentionally went down looking for a soft penalty, the Arsenal players threw a collective tantrum on the pitch. Arteta rallied his entire bench, screaming at the officials for almost a minute and nearly interrupting the game.

That’s the exact brand of tactical tantrum he throws in the PL to bully weak English referees who completely lack authority.

What makes Arteta truly embarrassing is his shameless desperation. Later on, when Gyokeres’ shot got deflected for a corner, Arteta was up in the fourth official's face demanding a handball penalty. Then we saw the replay, and the ball wasn't even close to a PSG player's arm.

He’s a certified embarrassment to the beautiful game.

[BBC News (UK) @BBCNews]

Every VAR error: How Arsenal escaped red cards and penalties https://t.co/xEProzlgeu

[Loeckske🦊🇳🇱 @Loeckske]

These images show 2 High Speed Rail systems. Guess wich costed more to build? 😶

[Benedict @carto_graph]

Ben isn’t exaggerating about the order of magnitude difference.

In constant $:
🇬🇧 HS2: $626 mn/km

🇫��� LGV to Bordeaux: $43 mn/km
🇮🇹 Brescia–Verona: $63 mn/km
🇰🇷 Suseo line: $89 mn/km. Pricey. But that’s because it’s 87% in tunnel.

[Ed West @edwest]

Sierra Leone's first lady has social housing in inner London https://t.co/1mMs2WJwwK

[Monkfish 🇬🇧🇳🇴🇮🇩🇪🇺🌐 @Slickrickwitha2]

@CHinchliffMP Wanker

[Looking for Growth @lfg_uk]

Meanwhile in the UK, we spent £700,000,000 to protect one salmon every decade at a nuclear power plant (which still hasn't been completed).

[max tempers @maxtempers]

In 2025, New Zealand faced a comparable situation to our own. Equal pay claims were rampaging through the courts on similarly spurious "equal value" grounds, and taxpayers and companies were on the hook for payouts worth billions of dollars.

What did they do? 🧵

[Tsar Apu II Apustayevich @tsarlet2]

"In the UK it's considered ludicrous for a CEO to earn slightly more — and after income tax, slightly less — than a mid-level American tech wagie"