charles thomas

@jordanbhx That’s a tax on EV’s, not sure that will work!

The real answer that everyone is avoiding is that cars have gotten heavier. This is unsustainable. We need a tax on vehicles by weight so the burden of road repair costs falls more fairly on people who cause the most damage. Some people need a car. No one needs a 2 tonne SUV.

@recouso Did the same in Seattle. No where to get coffee!

Okay guys, had a few cultural shocks in Spain: > Go to the gym, opens 10am on a Sunday > Go to work from a coworking, closed > Go to a coffee shop, no wifi Absolutely unthinkable in a barely productive economy like the US, yet alone UAE. Europe is a daylight museum.

@heyaimsarah I’ve been asked if I’m alright around midday walking in American cities

I woke up in Athens on a Sunday morning at 6am (miserably jet lagged). I rushed out of the apartment to go searching for coffee. The only other soul out-and-about was an old man sweeping the street. He asked me if I was okay and if I needed help. He was deeply concerned.

@RoverguyB @DanNeidle Is this not true in the other economies as well? Why are we comparing apples to oranges!!

@DanNeidle The figures for the UK are usually only based upon employees in PAYE. They don't include the self employed who do their own taxes and are classed as sole traders, contractors, etc. This has always skewed UK salary comparisons as the self employed are well paid but not counted.

What is the reason for the marked divergence post-pandemic?

@Bounce_BackLoan They are replacing them but they are not ready yet.

As the press are reporting the UK is now begging France again to lend them some warships, here are just a few of the most recent Royal Navy ships to be decommissioned. No one in successive Governments thought it would be a good idea to replace them.

@iMiaSanMia Presumably he is going to leave man united then?

Bruno Fernandes discusses Harry Kane on the importance of winning trophies: "If he had stayed [at Tottenham] another one or two seasons, he’d have been the best goalscorer ever in the Premier League. So, would he have been a legend or not? He would. He decided to go to Bayern and the decision is good because he knows he has a big chance of winning trophies. And now we’re talking about Harry Kane that is scoring the same amount of goals he was scoring at Tottenham, but he might win a Ballon d’Or now because he’s going to win trophies" [@TimesSport]

@change4spurs I really like him but isn’t he the profile we already have. We need a deep lying passer. Alex Scott is bergvall but several years more advanced

If Tottenham are serious about raising standards this summer, tough calls have to be made. Sell Pape Matar Sarr and bring in Alex Scott . More creativity, better progression, Calm under pressure and a midfielder who actually fits a modern system. Enough sentiment, start building properly.

@nicksortor Pakistan, who mediated the thing, said it was…

🚨 JUST IN: JD Vance says Lebanon was NOT supposed to be included in their two-week ceasefire, but believes the Iranians THOUGHT Lebanon was included This comes after Iran accused Israel of VIOLATING the peace deal with massive strikes in Lebanon today "First of all, I actually think and there is a lot of bad faith negotiation and a lot of bad faith propaganda going on. I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians THOUGHT that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn't. We NEVER made that promise, we NEVER indicated that would be the case. What we said is that the cease-fire would be focused on Iran and the cease-fire would be focused on America's allies, both Israel and the gulf Arab states."

@thfcjevo I think everyone sees it differently

Spent yesterday watching videos/tactical analysis from De Zerbi yesterday. - Danso, Dragusin, and Gallagher might be useless under him. - I think Palinha might be a surprise under De Zerbi he loves “warriors” style players. Does anybody else see differently? #COYS

@EYakoby Is this a joke. Huge uplift from 0 to 3? 138 is the usual traffic.

A black woman bullies a toddler on a flight. Absolutely insufferable behavior. News flash: Children exist in public. Build a bridge and get over it.

@MaxFRobespierre @MrMBrown You invest £100 and receive a 5% rate of return over 25 years and then sell. Your investment is now worth £330. Let’s say you pay 40% capital gains tax(£92) you are left with £238. In that 25 years with inflation the value of money has halved. So you took a risk for £38….

@MrMBrown Explain why this would be wrong?

Morons. *UK GREENS SAY THEY WOULD EQUALIZE CAPITAL GAINS AND INCOME TAX

@FurkanGozukara 10% of what?

Brilliant move by Iran. They are planning to levy a 10% toll on all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. This will generate $73 billion a year, completely offsetting US sanctions and paying for war damages. Checkmate.

@lancelachlan If I compare Germany both countries are some of the biggest renewable adopters with Germany just ahead. The real difference is Germany burns a lot of coal, with coal making up well over 20% of their mix. So yes less dependent on gas but would you be happy to phase coal back in?

Britain’s electricity is expensive because our power prices are still tied to gas. Gas share of electricity: UK: ~35–40% Germany: ~12–15% Spain: ~15–20% France: ~6–7% When gas prices spike, UK electricity prices spike too. Countries with more nuclear and renewables aren’t exposed the same way. We built a system where the most expensive fuel sets the price.

@raphaeldogg But surely we can issue licences on any basis we want. It needs to be commercially interesting enough to achieve interest from the private sector but I’m sure there is something to negotiate

It isn't British gas. It's Esso gas, Mobil gas, Q8 gas, drilled by private companies, extracted by private companies, sold by private companies, and private companies will take the profits. Britons will see neither gas nor cash. The people on here claiming otherwise are liars.

@AimenDean To get to this island they will need to sail a task force through the straits….

Look, yesterday I said there was maybe a 25% chance that this war could end with the use of tactical nuclear weapons to obliterate Iran’s 460 kg of highly enriched uranium, the amount that could theoretically produce about 11 nuclear warheads. That was the doomsday scenario. But today, after watching how things are unfolding, I think there is another path emerging, it has a 50% likelihood! What I would call the mother of all deals. Here is my thinking. If you want the Islamic Republic to give up its 460 kg of highly enriched uranium, you need leverage. Real leverage. Something the regime cannot live without. And that leverage has a name: Kharg Island. For those who don’t follow oil logistics, Kharg Island is not just another island in the Gulf. It is Iran’s economic jugular. Roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports leave the country through that island terminal. Millions of barrels per day. It is, quite literally, the golden goose that lays the golden eggs for the regime. Now imagine the following scenario. The US military already this morning neutralised the island’s defences, the naval units guarding it, the missiles, the air defenses, the IRGC garrison. Now that umbrella is gone, Kharg becomes what strategists call a sitting duck in the Gulf waters, literally. 🦆 And then comes the strategic move: seize the island with all the oil facilities intact. Because the facilities are the bargaining chip. And once you have that island, the negotiation becomes very simple: “You want your island back? Fine. Hand over the 460 kg. Every gram. Not one kilogram missing. Then you get your oil terminal back.” It’s brutal leverage, but in strategic terms it’s actually kind of genius. Trump basically taking the Ayatollahs’ golden goose, pointing a literal gun at its head, and saying: “Give us the highly enriched stuff… Or I will blow up the stuff out of the goose.” Now of course the Ayatollahs could respond with bravado. They could say: “Fine. Keep the island. We’ll survive. We’ll continue to harass the Strait of Hormuz. We’ll endure.” .. in fact, they might start bombing the island themselves to target US forces there, but then they risk damaging the very thing they could very soon depend on for survival cash!💰 So what you get is a standoff. An island. A nuclear stockpile. A lot of very tense bargaining. Trump on one side. The Ayatollahs on the other. And everyone playing a very uncomfortable mind game of who blinks first. Honestly, the whole thing sounds less like traditional strategic geopolitics and more like a script from “Lost” 😅 except the scriptwriters themselves are lost.😵‍💫 But if you ask me (and this is just my opinion, my own calculation looking at the board right now) this scenario is no longer a mere possibility. If I were a betting man, I would say this is now the most likely outcome. 50% probability. The war turning into a very strange standoff over a small island in the Gulf - an island that happens to control 90% of Iran’s oil exports and might end up deciding the fate of 460 kilograms of uranium. I personally prefer this option. It’s less bloody and more predictable.

@OrwellianOne @RickyDoggin Also nonsense

@RickyDoggin Additionally, w/ the Five Eyes (FVEY) in dissolution, very limited intelligence sharing is going on w/ Brittan's MI5 & MI6, which serves the algorithms & analysis basis that Loyd's of London predicates their very viability upon...

Trump Just Outmaneuvered the "British Empire" at Hormuz A viral breakdown has exposed a subtle but devastating dynamic unfolding in the Persian Gulf. In a single stroke of economic and military genius, the Trump administration appears to have neutralized one of the United Kingdom's most ancient and powerful geopolitical tools, potentially "crushing" a key ally's economy to secure American energy supremacy. The crisis began when Lloyd’s of London—the world's only insurance market large enough to back the staggering value of the global oil fleet—abruptly announced it would no longer insure any vessel transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This move, according to Armes, would have effectively grounded the 20 to 30 percent of the world’s oil that flows through that 21-mile chokepoint. "Trump just killed the British Empire." Let me explain. This is the Strait of Hormuz. You've been hearing about it on the news. About 20 to 30 percent of all oil in the world goes through this strait. Here is what you don't know. In order to go through this strait, ships have to have insurance. There is only one company in the entire globe that is big enough to insure all the oil tankers going through this strait. That company is Lloyd’s of London. It is responsible for about 2 percent of the British Empire’s GDP, over a $40 billion contribution to the United Kingdom and 50,000 jobs, but it’s also a geopolitical tool for the UK. And they decided they were no longer going to insure anyone going through the Strait of Hormuz, which would have halted all energy shipments. It was kind of a giant F you to Donald Trump to confuse and distort the energy markets and make America look bad. But Trump said that the United States government is going to start insuring these shipping companies. Not only that, they will provide personal escorts for these boats with the U.S. Navy. Just in a matter of minutes, the United States has shut down one of the largest geopolitical tools the United Kingdom has had all the way back to the 1600s. This not only ensures they no longer have geopolitical leverage but is going to crush their economy. It's not like Lloyd’s can just magically come back online. Now that the United States is insuring these boats, which, by the way, were the reason boats could even go through that strait anyway because of the United States military, it's not like these boats are going to go back to Lloyd’s of London insurance. They’re probably going to stay with the United States, and Trump knows this. A very subtle move but incredibly important."

@RickyDoggin This is the first bit of maga propaganda that I actually know a lot about. I work in the London insurance market and I can confirm that this is complete nonsense. But it’s also super interesting how a tiny grain of truth is spun extrapolated into some huge talking point.

@ProTottenham Beginning to think the championship could be good for us. Sell Romero, vdv. Bentancur, Give all the young players a year to bed in more. Danso and vuskovic starting cb. Grey bergval cm.

One of the biggest self centered mercenaries to ever pull on our shirt Refused to acknowledge Thomas Frank after a defeat Wanted to fight fans on the sideline calling them onto the pitch Ignored Tudors instructions to push up And last night in our biggest game of the season gets sent off needlessly for the most ridiculous, amateurish of challenges youll ever see Hes downed tools, downed on the club, on the fans and the badge, he shouldnt be playing again this season in my opinion. His heads turned by Barca and Liverpool and he has no interest in being at the club next season. Why should we be playing a player with this mindset? Im done with him

@USMilitaryViews *caspian!

@USMilitaryViews How did the brits get a ship into the captain sea? Very impressive!!