Greg Bayliss

When #ragandboneman gets buzzed by the @rafredarrows and nails the vocals…😳👏😎

As a boy, I was at a boarding school very close to Parliament. I took the opportunity to go and watch the debates in both houses from the visitors' gallery; at that time it was not widely known that one could do this, so it was easy and quick to get in. I saw all the famous politicians of the 1970s. But what was self-evident, even to a teenager, was that whereas the elected members of parliament were out to score points in their speeches, before voting according to pre-set ideas, the hereditary Lords were genuinely issued in persuasion and had open minds. This was because, being hereditary, they were beholden to no-one and no party; ironically, they were much more representative of ordinary people with common sense than their political colleagues in the lower house.

VAT on private school fees was pitched as a way to raise money for public services. New report: it's projected to cost the public £181m by 2038.

Even today I find it shocking that Labour’s flagship policy was to tax parents who pay for their own children’s education with their own earned income and whilst not taking up a taxpayer funded place in a state school. Mind boggling stupidity from @UKLabour.

Britain's SAS is losing operators in significant numbers because they are more afraid of a knock on the door from a human rights lawyer than they are of the enemy, and the government's response is essentially a shrug. As someone who served in Special Forces, I can tell you that when you break the trust between a government and its warriors and let lawyers turn combat decisions into courtroom spectacles, you do not just lose soldiers, you lose the will to fight. Much of this stems from new UN Human Rights agreements which are retroactively being applied to operations that happened in the past under a different standard, the Law of Armed Conflict. We should not be holding special operators accountable to a standard that didn’t exist at the time the operations happened. That’s not just ludicrous—it’s dangerous. The free world is at risk of losing a significant percentage of its Tier 1 operational capacity. This is not good for America or its allies, and only serves to reduce our readiness and embolden our adversaries.

Funny how this country picks and chooses who it protects. On one side, you’ve got men from the Special Air Service—the tip of the spear—walking away because they feel like they’ve got a target on their backs. Not from the enemy… from their own side. Sent into chaos, told to get the job done. No headlines, no glory—just results. Years later? Lawyers circling, investigations looming, and a government that suddenly can’t quite remember backing them. Then look at veterans from Northern Ireland—dragged back through the mud decades on, while the people who sent them there sit comfortably out of reach. But when failure happens here at home—think the Stockport massacre—what do we see? Quiet resignations. Full pensions. No decades-long pursuit. We’ll chase soldiers across half a century for decisions made in the fog of conflict… But when leadership fails in plain sight, it’s a polite handshake and a send-off. That’s not justice. That’s convenience. And if you’re one of the lads watching all this unfold, why would you stay? Why would you risk everything knowing you might be the one left holding the bag years later? We don’t have a recruitment problem. We’ve got a loyalty problem. No wonder the lads are getting out of the regiment—half the country hasn’t got a clue why they sleep soundly at night.

Excellent thread, this. Something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about… The British state is run by people who have never been fired, never missed a number, never had a client scream at them, never stayed up until 3am working on a deal, or repricing a book because Tokyo opened badly. They have never experienced CONSEQUENCE. Ever. THAT is the single most important fact in British public life. The pipeline is so uniform and mediocre it scarcely needs describing: - School - PPE or adjacent - Civil Service fast stream or a Think Tank research role - Spell as local councillor to appear “grounded,” - Then a safe seat and a red box before 40 At no point has the market ever called them a moron. At no point has a P&L told them their idea was shit. The feedback loop that every private sector professional takes for granted simply does not exist in their world. This matters because policy is NOT an essay. It IS a trade. Every regulation has a cost, every tax has a behavioural response, every intervention has second and third order consequences. In markets, if you misread convexity you get carried out. In government, you get reshuffled to a different department. The incentive structure could not be more perfectly designed to retain the incompetent and repel the capable. Anyone with genuine commercial talent is earning multiples of a ministerial salary by their early thirties. So the applicant pool self selects for people for whom the title is the reward because they could never command that status where performance is measured. The think tank ecosystem makes it worse. IPPR, the Resolution Foundation, JRF and the rest function as ideological finishing schools and revolving doors. They produce people fluent in the language of policy who have never implemented anything. They can model a distributional impact assessment in their sleep but could not run a corner shop at profit. This is NOT intelligence. It is pattern matching within a closed system that never tests its own assumptions because everyone in it shares the same priors. The civil service compounds it further. The fast stream rewards generalism, rotating you through departments every 18 to 24 months to develop “breadth,” which in practice means you never develop depth. A Treasury official who helped design a tax policy in 2019 is working on transport by the time it starts distorting behaviour in 2022. Nobody owns the outcome. The private sector has one thing the state fundamentally lacks: a kill switch. Bad companies go bust. Bad traders get sacked. The state just absorbs failure, reclassifies it as “lessons learned,” and promotes the people responsible. The compound effect of thirty years of this is a permanent class institutionally incapable of delivering growth or even understanding why the private sector they depend on for revenue keeps shrinking under their stewardship. This is what we have, right now. You cannot fix this with better people inside the same system. The system selects against competence, insulates against feedback, and rewards survival over performance. Every parliament is just a fresh rotation of the same profile through the same machine expressing the same surprise when nothing improves. We need parallel institutions to be built by the guy or gal staying up til 3am repricing the book. The risk taker. The entrepreneur. Then we gradually phase the existing sclerotic failed structures out. That’s how we win. Make Britain Great Again 🇬🇧 💪

This is the man that helped create the Climate Change Act that has resulted in the UK closing its fertiliser plants. Now he's worried about a lack of fertiliser. These people should be in prison.

Quis Separabit? ☘️

Dear Prime Minister & Energy Secretary, We hope this finds you warm. Not metaphorically warm — actually warm. As in, central heating on without having to remortgage the house. Because out here in the wilds of Ordinary Britain™, we’ve developed a new hobby: staring at the thermostat like it’s a slot machine. Will it go up? Will it bankrupt us? Who knows. Spin again. Now, forgive us simple folk, but we’re slightly confused. We’re sat on North Sea oil and gas. It’s there. Under the sea. Not imaginary. Not theoretical. Not powered by positive thinking and recycled conference lanyards. And yet the national strategy appears to be: 1.Don’t drill it. 2.Import it. 3.Pay more for it. 4.Look surprised when bills explode. It’s a bold plan. Very avant-garde. Almost performance art. Meanwhile, every time fuel prices twitch, petrol stations react like someone’s shouted “fire” in a theatre. Prices up faster than a minister’s expenses claim. Oddly, they never drop with the same Olympic enthusiasm. Must be gravity working differently in Britain. We’re told another wind farm will fix it. Another turbine. Another “long-term strategy.” Now don’t get us wrong — wind is lovely. Very breezy. Excellent for drying washing. But when it’s minus three and the grid’s wobbling like a jelly at a church raffle, we’d quite like something a bit more… reliable. Energy policy shouldn’t feel like we’re betting the house on a weather app. Here’s the uncomfortable bit: ordinary people are cutting back. Pensioners choosing between heating and eating. Families watching fuel costs creep up while wages politely stay seated. And from Westminster we get speeches. Targets. Pledges. Strongly worded enthusiasm. We don’t need enthusiasm. We need affordable energy. Preferably sourced from the resources we already have. It’s not radical. It’s not extremist. It’s not anti-planet to acknowledge that until storage technology catches up and renewables can carry the load alone, turning off domestic supply while importing foreign supply at a premium is… financially acrobatic. The North Sea isn’t a moral failing. It’s an asset. Using it sensibly while transitioning responsibly isn’t betrayal. It’s common sense. Ordinary taxpayers aren’t asking for miracles. We’re just asking not to be collateral damage in a PowerPoint presentation. So here’s a humble suggestion: Warm homes first. Affordable fuel first. Energy security first. Then — by all means — save the world. Yours in mild hypothermia and rising direct debits, The People Who Actually Pay The Bills

This country hasn’t been run into the ground by one government. It’s been a 25-year relay race of incompetence, with each new lot grabbing the baton and sprinting enthusiastically in the wrong direction. Armed forces? Cut to the bone. Police? Cut to the bone. Energy security? Sacrificed on the altar of political fashion. For decades we sat on oil and gas in the North Sea that could power the country and keep bills down. What did our political geniuses do? Strangle the industry with policy, ban new exploration, and then act shocked when energy prices go through the roof. It’s like selling your car, burning your bicycle, and then wondering why the taxi fare is expensive. Food security? Once upon a time Britain fed itself. Now our farmers are treated like a nuisance by policymakers whose closest contact with agriculture is avocado toast in a London café. So we import more food, import more energy, and pretend this is some sort of enlightened strategy instead of the reckless stupidity it actually is. Meanwhile the people expected to defend the country — our servicemen and women — are asked to do it with shrinking budgets, ageing equipment, and leadership that seems far more comfortable making speeches than making decisions. And the taxpayer? Absolutely hammered. Taxes go up every year, yet the country somehow feels poorer, weaker, and less prepared than it did twenty years ago. Where’s the money going? Because it certainly isn’t going into defence. It isn’t going into policing. It isn’t going into infrastructure. And it definitely isn’t going into making Britain energy or food secure. But don’t worry — somewhere in Whitehall there’ll be another committee meeting about lanyards, slogans, and whatever the latest fashionable policy trend happens to be. The basics of running a country — power, food, defence, security — have been treated like optional extras by career politicians who have never built, grown, produced, or defended a thing in their lives. A serious country makes sure it can feed itself, power itself, and defend itself. Right now Britain struggles to guarantee any of the three. And after 25 years of this nonsense, people are starting to realise the real problem isn’t one party. It’s the entire political class

Dear Prime Minister & Home Secretary, I hope this letter finds you well, fully caffeinated, and in possession of a calculator. I’m writing with what I believe is a modest, fiscally responsible proposal. I understand the Government is offering up to £40,000 to certain individuals to voluntarily leave the United Kingdom. First of all — bold strategy. Nothing says “strong borders” quite like a cashback scheme. Now, I regret to inform you that I am, in fact, a fully tax-paying, law-abiding British citizen. I know — awkward. I appreciate this may disqualify me from the premium exit package, but I’m willing to negotiate. I would like to formally apply for £35,000 to leave. You see, unlike some applicants, I haven’t broken any laws to get here. I didn’t arrive by dinghy. I didn’t require processing, housing, or legal appeals. I’ve actually been funding the whole operation through PAYE for years — which I believe makes me a loyal shareholder in this enterprise. Given that you’re prepared to offer £40,000 for someone to depart voluntarily after entering illegally, I feel £35,000 for someone who’s been here legally all along represents excellent value for money. Think of it as a “Buy British, Get One Gone” discount. For £35,000 I will:    •   Leave quietly.    •   Not require a press conference.    •   Not demand a diversity officer to wave me off.    •   Even carry my own suitcase to the airport. I may also tweet a polite thank-you note on departure, praising the efficiency of the scheme. Frankly, it feels like I’ve misunderstood how incentives work in modern Britain. All these years I thought obeying the law, paying taxes, and contributing to society were the winning strategy. Turns out the real pro-move is to arrive unlawfully and wait for a loyalty bonus. Who knew? While British families are juggling rent, energy bills, and the weekly food shop like contestants on a dystopian game show, it’s reassuring to know the Treasury has located a spare £40,000 per head for voluntary goodbyes. May I ask — is there a points card? Ten years of National Insurance contributions and I get a free exit bonus? If so, I believe I’m overdue. In the spirit of fairness and fiscal responsibility, I am not even asking for the full £40,000. I’m trimming £5,000 off to help balance the books. That’s the kind of responsible budgeting I was raised on. If successful, I promise to:    •   Leave via a scheduled flight (economy is fine).    •   Not stage a protest on the runway.    •   And refrain from re-entering on a small boat to see if I qualify twice. All I ask is equal treatment. If departure is now a funded career pathway, I would very much like to submit my CV. Yours in hopeful relocation, A slightly confused taxpayer

I’ve just read a few British MPs saying they “don’t understand what family voting is.” Interesting. Between 2012 and 2014 I spent three months in Kabul during Afghan elections. I was deployed as a Personal Protection Officer for the EU Ambassador. Election day shut the entire city down. Roads empty. High threat. Elections in fragile states are flashpoints. Male and female polling stations were separate. I stood outside the female stations providing protection while the Ambassador went inside. Ballot papers had the candidates’ photographs on them because many Afghans couldn’t read. You voted with a thumbprint. Indelible ink marked your finger. Why? Because coercion happens. Because block control happens. Because “family voting” is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a recognised problem. Afghanistan, in the middle of insurgency and systemic corruption, understood the risk of one person directing multiple votes. So when an MP in the UK claims they don’t know what family voting is, forgive me if I don’t buy the innocence. I’m not speaking from theory. I’ve seen how seriously fragile democracies take ballot integrity.

The British Establishment has a simple rule: The problem is never the problem. The problem is people who dare to point out the problem. Grooming gangs, illegal immigration, terrorism, men in women's prisons, Net Zero. Same playbook every time: "racist", "denier", "Nazi". You'd think when you're calling a beloved children's author a Nazi, you'd maybe stop and pause. But no. Another part of the rule is that no matter how right the "bad" people turn out to be, they remain tainted by having been right. Feminists like JK Rowling were vilified for opposing puberty blockers being given to children. The government rowed back on the policy. But the women who spoke out against it are still considered bigots. Grooming gangs turned out to be racist anti-white hate crimes. If this had been done by an invading army, it would be rightly treated as a war crime. But the people who covered it up and ignored it are still the "good" people and the people who complained about it are still the "bad" people. The same is true of illegal immigration. Islamism. Net Zero. And this is why the country is screwed. Because we live in a society where the golden rule is that you must tolerate the intolerable or you'll be made a pariah for caring about the safety of British women and girls, for wanting a cohesive society, for wanting a strong economy. I've had enough of this and my sense is so have the British people. We won't keep quiet anymore. Call us all the names you want. It doesn't work anymore.

Peter Mandelson is one of the dodgiest people in politics. We've known this for decades - he first resigned in disgrace when I was 7 years old. Yet Starmer appointed him. He didn't need a full vetting process to know that Mandelson was no good. He could have just Googled him. In 1996, he took an interest-free £373,000 loan from Geoffrey Robinson, former Labour MP and owner of the New Statesman. The loan was offered, no strings attached, and Mandelson went on to buy a new house in Notting Hill. Robinson had previously been close with Robert Maxwell, the disgraced media baron charged with embezzling millions from his own companies' pension funds. Mandelson, as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, was responsible for the Department's investigation into Maxwell. Despite the huge loan that he'd been offered, Mandelson never declared that he had a conflict of interest in conducting that investigation. Robinson had dealings with many of Maxwell's companies - and again, Mandelson saw no need to declare a conflict of interest. In 1998, the story broke, and Mandelson was forced to resign in disgrace. He'd taken a huge loan from a friend, who could have been implicated in a corruption investigation that he was carrying out. In 1999, he was back, this time as Northern Ireland Secretary. By 2001, he was resigning again, after allegations that he used his position to influence a passport application for the sponsor of a major New Labour project. That man was Srichand Hinduja, who was under investigation by the Indian Government for his role in the Bofors scandal. He was alleged to have taken kickbacks as part of an arms deal. Yet Mandelson personally intervened to try and secure him a British passport. In 2004, Mandelson billed the taxpayer £3,000 to refurbish his constituency home in Hartlepool, after announcing his decision to stand down as an MP. In 2005, it was reported that, while serving as an EU Commissioner, he spent New Year’s Eve on the yacht of Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, while Microsoft was undergoing a major EU investigation. In 2006, he received a free cruise from an Italian fashion mogul, just before he helped to impose tariffs on Chinese shoes. In 2008, he spent time on a yacht with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch. In that same year, he cut aluminium tariffs on Russia, in a move that massively benefitted Deripaska's businesses. It turns out that when he'd visited Russia in 2005, the head of security at Deripaska's metals company had organised for Mandelson to get a swift entry visa. Following Jeffrey Epstein's conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, Mandelson maintained close contact with Epstein. This was a matter of public record. That's to say nothing of the most recent allegations - including the claim that he fed market-sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein just before the 2008 Financial Crash, after receiving money from Epstein. The Prime Minister and his team will try to hide behind the appointments process. There is plenty wrong with that process, including with who receives information, and when. But there was no need to conduct a formal vetting process into Mandelson. He’s been nationally famous as a dodgy politician for more than 25 years. Starmer knew the political risk in appointing him. He chose to do it anyway. That’s not a process issue, and it’s pathetic to pretend otherwise. It’s a judgment issue. Making important judgement calls is the Prime Minister’s job. The trouble is, he’s terrible at it.

The change of logo from His Majesty’s Government to ‘UK Government’ reflects Starmer’s own self-serving habit of referring to the govt as ‘his’ own. It is not his own. Starmer, like everyone else in govt, is a Minister of the Crown, and a crown servant. This is important because Ministers - like Armed Forces officers and police officers - discharge their duties and derive their authority from the Crown - not from transitory politicians who come and go. This is at the core of their responsibilities and duties. It is an important principle governing behaviour in office and standards. At a time of general concern about standards, it is a backwards step to make this change and it represents everything wrong with Labour’s warped view of government - that they are the be all and end all. They’re not.

He didn’t win a 5yr mandate. There is no such concept. Starmer won the right to deliver on his election promises which only the most dishonest would argue he has even really attempted to do. He has long since stopped talking about his promises. The British people deserve better.

Did you know, those little bees you see in the evening sitting on flowers are old bees. Old & sick bees don't return to the hive at the end of their day. They spend the night on flowers, and if they have the chance to see another sunrise, they resume their activity by bringing pollen or nectar to the colony. They do this sensing that the end is near. No bee waits to die in the hive so as not to burden the others. So, next time you see an old little bee sat upon a flower as the night closes in... ...thank the little bee for her life long service.

The BBC have increased the TV licence to £180 per year.

I note the BBC is reporting on its main page the third title of the new Gruffalo book, whether olive oil is good for gut health and an actor's attempt to learn a northern accent in the bath. Not a single word on our rape gang inquiry. Nothing. They jumped into action to discredit our inquiry last year and failed, being forced to issue an apology. Now the hearings have begun, and brave survivors are telling their stories for the first ever time? Total silence. You can't hate the BBC enough.

I was in Washington DC when Peter Mandelson was appointed as ambassador. There was serious dismay in the British embassy about it - not specifically because of his Epstein links, but because everyone knew he was trouble and it always ends in tears with him. Plus, Karen Pierce was a brilliant ambassador who had a great relationship with Trump’s team, and wanted to extend. It was just awful judgement by Keir Starmer and his No10 from the very get go.