freetruth

@AllForProgress_ Absolutely scandalous. Disgusting to read.

A young couple in England, the day before they were due to exchange contracts on what was to be their first home, received two phone calls in quick succession. The first was from their estate agent. The second was from their solicitor. The information was the same in both. The local council had outbid them for their house, by £20,000. The seller had accepted. The couple had been bidding for the house since the asking price was £150,000. The bidding had taken the price up to £190,000, already, by their own account, the upper edge of what they could afford. The council had come in at £210,000, a level they could not match. Their offer was abandoned. Their survey, costing £900, was wasted. They still owe legal fees of £2,200 plus VAT regardless. The fixed-rate mortgage offer they had secured, in a market where rates have been rising again, will now expire before they find another property. Their landlord has new tenants moving in to their current rental in the second week of June. They are looking, on the calendar in front of them, at potential homelessness inside two months. The reason the council bought the house was disclosed to them, after some pushing, by a councillor they happened to know personally. The council needed urgent additional accommodation for asylum seekers. The property they had been buying was already previously registered as a House in Multiple Occupation, which made the conversion straightforward. The taxpayer money the council used to outbid them comes from a £500 million national pilot scheme, established under the present government, in which local authorities are funded to buy properties on the open market in order to house asylum seekers and reduce the cost of asylum hotels. In other words, local government is, on the order of central government, using your own money to give housing that you should It's a representative case. 134,760 British households were in temporary accommodation as of September 2025, which is a record. 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2025, also a record, and 171% higher than in 2010. 28% of all new social housing lettings in England in 2024/25, approximately 75,000 households, went to people deemed statutorily homeless. The number of new social housing lettings that included a member of the Armed Forces community was, in the same year, approximately 2,600. The number of new lettings that went to non-UK nationals, on the basis of the nationality data published by central government, was substantially in excess of that veteran figure, by, depending on how the data is cut, about 10x. This is the British state, in 2026, using the working tax contributions of two young people in the first weeks of trying to buy a home, to outbid those same two young people for that same home, in order to provide free accommodation for foreign nationals whose claims to be in this country have not yet been assessed and may well be completely worthless. The young people will, on the present trajectory, be made homeless in the same June in which the asylum seekers move into the property they were trying to buy. The young people will be paying, through their council tax for the rest of their working lives, for the accommodation in which the asylum seekers will live. It is likely, given the number of migrants to Britain whose lifetime tax contribution is net negative, that they will be paying tax to offset these new arrivals for the rest of their lives. It goes without saying that we need the most fundamental imaginable reconstruction of our asylum, housing, planning, and immigration laws to prevent such travesties of justice from happening again. We all know what is required by way of change in those areas. Progress has written a more extensively policy testament on this subject than any other political organisation in Britain. Beyond that there is one last thing worth saying. The young couple, on the available account, are not in a position to fight any of this through the courts. They cannot afford to. Their solicitor, on their telling, was pressing them for the legal fees on a debit card before the rest of the conversation was over. They will, in all likelihood, lose the home, the deposit, the survey, the rate deal, and the remainder of their tenancy in a single short summer. They will then watch the property they were trying to buy be filled, at the public's expense, by the people the British state has decided to prioritise over them. If that does not make you furious enough to do something about what is happening in Britain, nothing will.

@brianmlucey What's been excluded?

We constantly hear Oh Ireland is massively overtaxed, we are being fleeced etc Of course this argument collapses at the first brush with the actual data

@kenbrennan2000 @danobrien20 Imagine having to explain this to people.

@danobrien20 This was never an issue with price gouging at the forecourt. This is an issue with tax gouging by the state; and it is everywhere, across all areas of life. The state is suffocating taxpayers.

Seems to be some confusion about this post. *Ireland has the 3rd lowest diesel prices in west Europe, with only Italy and Spain cheaper. *Ireland has the 6th lowest petrol prices in west Europe, with Austria, Sweden, Luxembourg, Italy and Spain cheaper. *Geographically, countries that were once behind the iron curtain are in central and eastern Europe. They have lower average incomes, which is why their governments tend to tax fuel less.

@john_mcguirk Have these economic 'advisors' ever been right?

Huge fan of David's work but the implicit suggestion here that if wages go up Government has some right or obligation to tax you more for fuel is not an argument I recognise as being based on any coherent economic theory.

@kilogolfsierra @ConorHogarty @declanganley Bot

@APH01264004 @ConorHogarty @declanganley Nope. You've proved nothing and just deflected. Every post is another admission.

These are non-violent, entirely peaceful protests. Normal working people, business owners, farmers, hauliers, trades and more. The Garda are from the same families and communities. Their families are being ripped off at the fuel pumps too. Pitting water cannon and battens against these peaceful, justifiable protests is a non-starter. Plenty of farmers sons and daughters in Garda uniforms out there. #FuelProtest

@kilogolfsierra @ConorHogarty @declanganley Take the L

@APH01264004 @ConorHogarty @declanganley No. I'm not.

@kilogolfsierra @ConorHogarty @declanganley You're wrong 🤣

@APH01264004 @ConorHogarty @declanganley Yes. So now that we've established where you are, are you going to go out and block an oil depot in the UAE?

@kilogolfsierra @ConorHogarty @declanganley Lol

@APH01264004 @ConorHogarty @declanganley Do you not? That's strange.

@kilogolfsierra @ConorHogarty @declanganley Not sure what you mean

@APH01264004 @ConorHogarty @declanganley Try it in the UAE. We'll watch.

@EwanMacKenna Wrong.

I sense the protests are losing support for five reasons... 1. The rationale. Lower taxes now but no protests when higher taxes. 2. The nefarious actors hijacking this. 3. The swathes of support for the reasons for the prices hikes (Trump and Israel). 4. Hurting ordinary people who also have bills and jobs, by targeting the wrong places. 5. There's a fair sense the demands are "give us money", the rest don't matter. Again I'm not against them, in principle, and understand much of it, but even as somewhat of an anarchist I'm reluctant to jump on this as it's far from black and white.

@allenanalysis They have plenty domestic issues to worry about.

Ireland just officially recognized the state of Palestine. Ireland joins Spain, Norway, Slovenia and over 140 other nations that have now formally acknowledged Palestinian statehood. The United States has not.

@TullMcAdoo Get the slurry out.

Carnage when the protesters are pepper-sprayed in Whitegate.

@Ben_Scallan Kit Murray is a bot.

Literally anything is an option - we're a sovereign state, we can do anything we want to if there's sufficient political will, up to and including tearing up international agreements. Some things may be more or less desirable, but if we can physically do it, it's an option.

@ConorHogarty @declanganley Its a necessity.

@declanganley Blocking critical fuel supplies, hampering citizens going about their lawful business for days on end, and the blocking of ports is more than just protest.

@davidmcw @IrishTimes @IrishTimesOpEd Where have you been for the last decade?

Morning, @IrishTimes @IrishTimesOpEd article today is on the monumental waste of public money that plagues Ireland. The State is pissing billions away every year. The figures are startling. No one is accountable. irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/0…

@Mick_O_Keeffe @gavpepper85 Animals

@gavpepper85 Every member of that government should resign today. They have transformed Ireland into a country where hard-working men are attacked by state enforcers for protesting a cost of living crisis while 3rd world migrants stroll in and get everything handed to them for free.

🚨🇮🇪 BREAKING! Farmers are being dragged out of their tractors and assaulted by gardaí at the Whitegate oil refinery right now!

@Independent_ie The usual tactics, government shills.

Fuel protest organiser had tax judgments of €550,000 and was convicted of cruelty after 60 cattle died on farm buff.ly/PtD8KrA

@KeithWoodsYT @SS66199 Directly protesting IPAS isn't very palatable, but this protest is most likely an accumulation of a number of issues.

@SS66199 The protest is not against IPAS centres or foreign aid though, they could have done this kind of action over IPAS centres any point in the last few years but didn't. Obviously I don't think we should be spending that but you could use govt. misspending to protest any tax then.

Some thoughts on the fuel protests in Ireland: * Protests led by transport operators and farmers are causing major road disruptions across Ireland, in protest of sustained increases in fuel costs which they say is making their businesses unviable. * It is led mostly by small business owners, hauliers, farmers, contractors etc., it's a demographic that is otherwise one of the most supportive of govt. parties. Most of these people will ultimately support one of the government parties at the next election. * Carbon taxes should be scrapped, but they are a relatively small share of the total fuel cost. About half the cost of fuel in Ireland goes to tax which is high but not remarkably so by EU standards, where 8 countries tax it more heavily. There is a legitimate grievance that fuel taxes are "regressive" and hit small businesses and households disproportionately, but: * The government already responded to this price shock with a relief package and lowered excise duty, which itself is an exceptional measure to do outside an annual budget. What changed since then is the global price of oil continuing to rise, not anything the Irish state did. There should be more relief for businesses but this was already being negotiated with their representatives. * The price shock is entirely because of Israel and America's war on Iran, so it's especially contemptible seeing slopulists who cheered that on now trying to capitalise on this sentiment. * I don't like leftist groups like Just Stop Oil shutting down roads and inconveniencing ordinary people to impose their politics and I don't like other groups doing it. * This isn't some nationwide populist revolt and it won't become one, it's certainly not "civil war" as some slop accounts on here are trying to present it. This is a group with a very specific economic grievance against the government which isn't really ideological and isn't going to lead to any larger movement of anti-regime sentiment. * Sinn Féin and other leftist parties are already behind demands to lower fuel prices further, they will all adopt anger about the "cost of living crisis" into their policies and rhetoric. I understand the impulse to get behind anything disruptive and anti-establishment like this, but I consider the demands confused and the response of shutting down the country's supply chains over a specific tax grievance to be vastly disproportionate. I would be very happy if this led to a larger, more coherent anti-establishment movement, but my belief is these swells of reactionary sentiment rarely translate into anything meaningful without a firm ideological grounding.

@EwanMacKenna Now do VRT.

This won't be popular but Irish taxes on fuel aren't out of line with many EU countries. You can disagree with the amount, sure, I do, but we aren't some crazy outlier.

@EoinLenihan @walsh_olwy49662 A work of art that reply.

@walsh_olwy49662 In 2025 the Irish government spent; 1. €1.2 billion on IPAS accommodation. 2. €6+ billion on NGO funding. 3. €800 million on foreign aid. 4. RTE €225 million as part of the €750 million multi-year bail out. Take your pick.

If you are an outsider wondering why Irish hauliers and farmers are protesting, here is a breakdown of how much the government takes from every litre of petrol and diesel. Petrol - 59% tax Diesel - 52% tax All of this is on top of soaring electricity, decades of abandonment of native industry in favour of US FDI get rich quick investment. Private enterprise and farmers have been squeezed for decades. The current fuel crisis is simply the straw that broke the camel's back.