Graham Ⓥ

Tech, food & conservation policy, politics & democracy, dad. 🌱 Great apes in Cameroon. Ex-radio. RTs not endorsements

[Graham Ⓥ @twistol]

A healthier, kinder world, saving water, resources, land and lives - and stopping climate change.

Everyone needs to watch this film.

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

One of our most popular films of 2019 asked: what would happen if everyone went vegan by 2050? https://t.co/QpvVFEhAO1

[Great British PAC 🇬🇧 @GreatBritishPAC]

Labour promised to defend British Overseas Territories and their right to self-determination.
Starmer is doing the opposite: giving Chagos to Mauritius and denying Chagossians a vote.
That makes his manifesto a lie. Labour MPs should be ashamed. #SaveChagos

[Luke George🇬🇧🇪🇺 @MrLukeGeorge]

Tony Blair on increasing the top rate of tax. Blair was the only Labour PM who understood economics.

Very much echoes @LiamHalligan

[Graham Ⓥ @twistol]

@DanielMumby @SomersetCouncil @CharlieTaylor4 👀 Good news for Cheddar

[Daniel Mumby @DanielMumby]

Relief for #Cheddar residents as @SomersetCouncil confirms it has no plans to close the village's household waste recycling centre - despite proposing such a measure back in January 2024: https://t.co/sxRwaCLstP #LDReporter #Somerset #Budget2026

[Kate Ferguson @kateferguson4]

EXCL: David Lammy demands officials call him Deputy PM rather than his name, insiders say.

They accuse him of arrogance.

He is also under massive pressure (form within Govt) to apologise to MPs for misleading the Commons over the prisoner release bungle

https://t.co/09y1QT0HG6

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

No one wanted to listen.

[Julia Lopez MP @JuliaLopezMP]

We are losing major life sciences investments and Labour has got diddly squat to say about it.

Astra Zeneca - £450m gone and £200m paused
Merck - £1bn gone
Eli Lilly - £279 million incubator on hold
Sanofi - won't consider "any substantial investment" in UK R&D under current conditions

The industry says the UK is becoming 'uninvestable' for the life sciences. Yet Labour this week tried to dress up as a growth plan a programme we started and which they screwed up.

The crisis in life sciences is going to affect us all - it means some pharma companies not bringing new drugs to market here. The NHS will not be able to give people cutting edge treatments. Trials for appalling health conditions won't be done here. Fewer high end science and manufacturing jobs. A less resilient supply chain in medicine manufacture.

And yet there's no sign that the Science Secretary is doing anything across government to grip this crisis.

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

If you tax something too much, people alter their behaviour because the incentives have changed.

If you tax people who work and give money to people who don’t work then it’s obvious that less people will work and more people won’t work. That is the incentive structure.

If you make something more expensive fewer people will buy it.

If you make it expensive to earn over £100K, then fewer people will bother doing it. If you make it more expensive to hire people, fewer companies will be hiring.

If a nation taxes wealth, it will have a less wealthy nation.

This is summed up in the Laffer Curve (below) - the economic principle that at a certain point, higher taxes reduces the overall taxes collected. There are 4 principles that economists have learned about when to raise taxes or not to:

1. If a country has relatively low taxes, raising taxes will likely result in collecting more.

2. If a country already has high taxes, raising taxes will likely result in raising LESS.

3. If a country has a wide tax base, raising taxes will likely result in collecting more.

4. If a country has a narrow tax base, raising taxes will likely result in collecting less.

The UK currently has high taxes on a narrow tax base (of very mobile people) so the established economic theory says that when Rachel Reeves raises taxes in her next budget, it will actually do more harm than good - less will be collected.

It seems counter intuitive but LOWERING taxes has a higher chance of collecting more money.

Anyone who runs a business knows this. There comes a point where if you put your prices up and a few clients leave you can crash your business. If you can find a way to reduce your prices, your total revenue will grow.

Walmart, McDonald’s, Amazon and Toyota became dominant because they were committed to keeping prices down not putting them up. They understood the Laffer Curve but it would seem that the UK needs to learn this lesson through painful experience every 50 years or so.

[Graham Ⓥ @twistol]

@AldiUK The box says ‘filled with Creepy Critters’ but there weren’t any included. Kids disappointed. Is it a packing mistake or very misleading text on the box? @Zimplikids

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

I sit in Parliament listening to these ministers, and it’s all just so depressing - the vast majority of them have never run a business, and it SHOWS. You would not believe how bad it is.

They think ‘work’ means turning up to an office between 9 and 5, answering a few emails, and going home at the end of the day. Nice lunch break, few coffees away from the desk, probably a smoking break or several. It doesn’t - not for the millions of men and women who actually create the wealth that funds the state.

Running a small business isn’t a job. It’s a way of life. It is life. It’s 24/7/365. It’s relentless. You are the accountant, HR department, compliance officer, cleaner, marketer, and customer service team - all in one. There’s no sick pay, no safety net, and no taxpayer-funded pension waiting for you.

Holiday? Good luck. If you do manage to get away, it’s checking the phone all day, every day. Wife/husband obviously getting pissed off. We’ve all been there...

It’s all on you. Every invoice chased, every tax deadline met, every bit of red tape navigated is on you. And if you make one mistake, one error, one small slip-up, the state comes after you - in a relentlessly efficient manner that is never afforded to us when we ask questions of it.

Most MPs have no idea what that feels like. They just don’t. We’re going to see more of this in the budget I’m sure. More hurt. More pain. More tax. They don’t get it.

They don’t understand that when a small business owner gets hit with another tax, it’s not absorbed by a ‘budget’ - it’s taken straight out of their family’s pocket.

There is no ‘deficit’ in the business world - that’s called going bust.

And they certainly don’t understand what real risk looks like. Politicians can vote through a policy on Monday and forget it by Tuesday - a small business owner lives with the consequences of that policy for years, decades. The MP monthly salary is safe. It always has been. In the public sector before, and in the public sector after - if not that, some charity/NGO funded entirely by the public sector.

GET A REAL JOB.

If MPs actually spent a week running a small firm - paying suppliers, tackling VAT, navigating health and safety law, sorting out HR issues, chasing clients for payment, trying to expand while staying compliant with everything from GDPR to local planning regulations - they’d legislate very differently. I can promise you that.

They’d realise that most of Britain’s problems could be solved by the state doing less, not more.

Cutting tax. Simplifying regulation. Slashing back the HRification of the country. Trusting people who actually produce things to get on with it.

Instead, we have a political class that talks endlessly about ‘growth’ while brutally punishing the only people capable of delivering it - especially going after the family businesses/farms, which is a particularly spiteful policy decision.

Small business owners are people who work harder than almost anyone in Parliament could imagine - and who are treated worse for it.

Britain’s small businesses don’t succeed because of politicians, they survive in spite of them.

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

Imagine seeing this gravity-defying dance sequence in a theater in 1951

[Elwood's Organic Dog Meat 🐾🥩 @ElwoodDogMeat]

@P_Kallioniemi

[Graham Ⓥ @twistol]

@onporter @xmuse_ It's the Ortaköy Mosque in Istanbul :)

[Chris Packham @ChrisGPackham]

I don’t know where to start with this . But it’s surely illegal and must be investigated and prosecuted . What sort of monster rams a calf ? Twice ?

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

If you’re a UK citizen, did you pay £17,000 in taxes last year? If you’re a family of 4, did you pay £64k of taxes as a household?

If not, someone else did on your behalf. A tiny group of people (1%) pay about 30% of the income taxes.

This tiny little group of Brits aren’t just our Dentists, Doctors, Professionals, Engineers, Pilots, Entertainers, Executives, Business Owners and Entrepreneurs, they are also the biggest tax slaves for everyone too.

A person earning £150k is paying £60k in tax. A person earning £30k is paying £6.2k in taxes.

The high earner is making 5x more and paying 10x more in tax.

Given the government spends £17k per person - The higher earner generates a surplus of £43k in taxes while the lower earner requires £11k of someone else’s taxes to cover their portion of government spending.

It takes an income of £60k to generate £17k of taxes. So, very few people in the economy are able to cover the costs of themselves, let alone their families too. A tiny number of people can cover their own costs and generate a surplus for society.

When you hear people talking about how greedy the rich are, and how we need to make life harder for them, it’s worth considering that if they were to stop earning or to leave, the entire system would collapse.

The issue we have in the UK is not enough rich people. We need to either develop them ourselves or import them from elsewhere. We absolutely can not afford to lose them.

As we approach an election, be sceptical of any party who claims they can fund spending through higher taxes on the rich. We already have that! What we need is a party that has a plan to create more rich people or invite them from abroad. It’s never been easier for rich people and high earners to live and work anywhere - of course they’ll go wherever they are treated best.

The UKs survival is directly linked to the number of high earners - best not to drive them away.

[Graham Ⓥ @twistol]

@pop_archives Alicia Vikander & Niv Sultan

[Axel | Flawless.Design @axeldesigns]

A lot of people think that the Windows 10 default wallpaper was made on Photoshop

What If I told you It was actually a photograph 👀

[Geoff Norcott @GeoffNorcott]

He looks like the CFO of a budget airline giving out a ‘stewardess of the year award’.

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

I disagree that you dress like Cary Grant. In this thread, I will list some of the ways in which your dress differs and why such important details matter. 🧵