Duncan MacLaren

'Absolutely disgusting... they'll never get to feel what we've had to feel, that we've had to go through' The oldest surviving victim of the Post Office scandal, 92-year-old Betty Brown, shares her opinion, given that high-level individuals who knew what was going on during the scandal have not been prosecuted.

If Keir Starmer had said before the election that he would remove the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners, hammer the disabled with welfare cuts, add inheritance tax to family farms and family businesses causing thousands of them to close, his deputy prime minister dodging £40,000 in tax, council tax & energy price increases, raise university tuition fees, plaster mass-scale solar panels on thousands of acres of prime farmland despite huge local community objections, hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius at a cost of £35bn, spaff £30bn of taxpayers’ money on carbon capture machines, give £3bn a year of taxpayers’ money to Ukraine, betray WASPI women, hang out with BlackRock, 50,000 small boat crossings in one year, create a new £50bn economic black hole, increase the overall tax burden to record levels, destroy business growth with national insurance rises resulting in over 200,000 job losses, get exposed for receiving over £100,000 worth of freebies - he almost certainly wouldn’t have won. He duped the electorate. An utterly shameless display of snake oil political salesmanship. And still he lectures all of us in that gratingly sanctimonious manner of his like we are all somehow the problem here.

@harrym_vids @YouTube Harry , what do you make of the issues with Lotus and a 40% uk job cut this week

Two grumpy blokes talking car bollox.. Is Jaguar’s rebrand clever or a disaster & when was peak car? I drop by ... youtu.be/DXCfADxDHrc?si… via @YouTube

"If you keep getting pushed over, don't you think that people are going to try pushing ever more?" @AmolRajan challenges Labour's Pat McFadden over the u-turns on welfare reform, who says the government is committed to tackling long-term problems. #R4Today

🏆 CRYSTAL PALACE WIN THEIR FIRST MAJOR TROPHY 🏆

Check out this post on Nextdoor: nextdoor.co.uk/p/N9mKc6rRstqN…

Hats off to @BBCCountryfile for that report on post Brexit food and plant checks at U.K. ports. Jesus. Scary stuff.

Next week Rachel Reeves will reveal an enormous funding deficit for core public services, having instructed Treasury officials to ask each department to list services that aren’t being financed adequately or are in danger of collapse or where there is some other hidden liability. Just the liabilities we know about run to untold billions - from the NHS workforce plan, to infected blood and post office compensation, to public pay sector pay awards, to the advanced manufacturing plan, to our creaking nuclear defence capability, to more mainstream defence requirements, to commitments on education and overseas development, to the welfare costs of an epidemic of physical and mental disability, and so on and so on. It is easy to get to a financing hole of well over £50bn without even taking up the public sector equivalent of the floorboards, or worrying how many of our failing privatised services, water in particular, will end up as taxpayer costs. None of this is a surprise. I have been banging on for countless weeks that the new government would inherit a fiscal disaster. So with a face that looks as though she has chewed through a crate of lemons, Reeves is doing a George Osborne: just as in 2010 he built a political and economic strategy for an entire parliament around the charge that the previous Labour government had been spending money it didn’t have, she is blaming Johnson, Truss and Sunak for her toxic fiscal legacy. This is raw and obviously sensible politics. It should allow her and Starmer to shift opprobrium for their remedies to their Tory predecessors. There is one big difference between her and Osborne though. He was clear from the outset that his response would be austerity, or deep cuts in public services. He had a plan. In retrospect even his own Tory colleagues wish he hadn’t been quite as zealous as he was in pursuing that austerity plan. But it was real, and simple to communicate. But what on earth is Reeves’s plan? Austerity is not available to her - partly because the mess she has inherited was caused in part by that very austerity, and because even the most Starmerite of the hundreds of Labour MPs won’t wear it. Also she has closed off the option of letting the national debt rise for longer, and mending the fabric through additional borrowing: her fiscal rules are never to be tweaked or re-interpreted, her colleagues tell me; it is as if she went up the mountain and a deity she calls Stability dictated them as permanent commandments. So obviously she has to increase taxes. There’s nothing else for it. Her autumn budget will have to be a massive reset of the tax system to generate those colossal sums needed to fix the foundations of the state. Except that approach too looks almost impossible - because Starmer promised in the election he wouldn’t raise money from the biggest available pools, namely income taxes on people, or VAT or corporation tax. Reeves could increase taxes on capital, but that would alienate the investors and creditors she desperately needs to finance all those wind farms, and new homes and assorted infrastructure projects she and Starmer have promised. What she’s left with is - possibly - reducing tax breaks on saving for a pension, taxing land and increasing the yield from council tax. There are arguments for doing all or any of these. But quite how they would raise enough defeats me. So it is all very well for Reeves and Starmer to blame and heap shame on Sunak and co. But this is their problem now, and at some point - presumably in the next three months - they’ll have to tell us where the money’s coming from to fix it.

@GeoffreyBoycott @TheOpen @englandcricket I wish him so much better. I remember once being very ill on a Cornish family summer holiday aged 9 and spending most of it in Truro hospital. Were it not for your dad’s book for ‘ Young Cricketers’ given to me whilst there , I would never have enjoyed the game so much.

Another update on behalf of my Father: He’s just been discharged from hospital and is on the way home which is fantastic! Lots of pain meds and a liquid only diet for the foreseeable but he’s on the mend, and looking forward to watching @TheOpen and @englandcricket at home 🙌🏻

I'm about to go submarine. Under the rules, TV journalists aren't permitted to say anything material about politics on election day. So this is my last chance to offer a few reflections as the most maddening and absurd election battle of my life draws to a close. Here, in no particular order of importance, is a list of just a few of the events I never expected to see in an election period but did. 1) Revelations that Tory candidates and officials bet on the date of the election, rather than concentrate on winning the election, and that a Labour candidate bet he'd lose 2) A PM turning his back on free publicity that campaign money can't buy, through his early departure from a D-Day gathering of world leaders that was held to celebrate our brave war veterans 3) A wannabe Tory leader, Suella Braverman, saying that Rishi Sunak's attacks on racist remarks by Reform leaders and candidates have less force because the Tory party kept millions of pounds from a donor who made racist remarks 4) A Tory leader seemingly conceding defeat weeks before polling day by saying that the vote is all about making sure Labour wins only a normal majority, not what Sunak calls a "super" one 5) A prime minister drowning in the pouring rain when announcing the dissolution of parliament, for want of an umbrella And here are the big issues that would have been discussed in a healthy functioning democracy but were downplayed or ignored by Labour and Conservatives 1) how to manage the risks and rewards of the most far-reaching industrial revolution of modern times, the generative AI industrial revolution - that will require radical changes to our schools, welfare system, healthcare, employment, media rules and taxation 2) what kind of military and defence capability is necessary to protect ourselves from the military threats of Putin, China and the wider cyber threats of other bad actors 3) how to avoid deep cuts in public services after 2025, that are baked into spending plans underwritten by the Tories and Labour, at a time when prisons are overflowing, waiting lists for NHS treatment are still rising, teachers remain demoralised 4) whether it's sensible to commit to freezing all rates of direct personal and business taxation, when rates for those on average incomes are lower than they've been since 1975 and when public services are crying out for investment 5) how to end the strikes in the health service once and for all I could go on, and on, and on. It was in keeping with the systemic displacement activity of the campaigns that the final argument just before polling day has been about whether Keir Starmer should be allowed to have Friday nights with his kids if he becomes prime minister. In what universe do Rishi Sunak and the Tories believe that voters who are thinking of voting Labour, Reform, LibDem or anything but for him will be swayed by Starmer saying he wants to preserve space to be a dad? Anyway here is the nutshell of the two parties' arguments, if we can dignify them in that way. Tories: "Labour will put up your taxes and we'll cut them. Don't ask us how we'll fund public services, or our confidence levels in our plans to cut immigration." Labour: "We won't put up taxes and we'll encourage investment by promoting economic stability and dismantling planning restrictions. Don't ask us how we'll fund public services, or our confidence levels in our plans to cut immigration." Does any of what we've witnessed matter? I suspect not. The die for tomorrow's vote was probably cast long before Sunak announced 4 July would be the day. My thesis, which I will discuss with you after the votes have been counted, is that if history is made in this election - and that looks likely - the big causes go back to 2015, and there have been a series of sub-causes and triggers in the past few years. I'll explain more in coming days, as a special treat

@harrym_vids @RoyalAutomobile … @RoyalAutomobile , would love to see you review this one. Renault 5 E-tech. One of the few all electric cars that by the way it looks is tempting enough to want to own

Here’s what was going on at 5am this morning. It’s been a long day.. Thanks for the invitation @RoyalAutomobile it’s a real honour to see it in the famous Rotunda, I just hope Zag behaves and doesn’t leave a mess on the carpet 😉

@harrym_vids @LondonConcours @YouTube It looks fantastic Harry

@harrym_vids @LondonConcours @YouTube Thought you might like to see these at the RAC club

Latest video has just gone live and includes my guide to some of the best cars on display at @LondonConcours this year. First, though, we had to get there.. We drive the TVR Scamander into London for the 2024 Concours but things ... youtu.be/CElcOLt7Hvs?si… via @YouTube

@JeremyClarkson …we are just about to watch the last episode and you hesitate as it’s like opening your last Christmas present knowing that you have got to wait another year for such expectation and excitement #ClarksonsFarm #genius #saturdaynight

Once again, thank you for all the kind words about the second half of series 3. I hope you enjoy 4 as much.

@JeremyClarkson Jeremy this series has been timed perfectly and it deserves an award for the camera work , congratulations. It is compulsive viewing for our children in between exam revision. In fact it is the only tv program where the whole family watch together and laugh together too. 👏👏👏

Leicester City are crowned CHAMPIONS! 🦊💙

@GWRHelp 17.02 Kingham to Paddington today

@MacLarenPartner Hi there, thanks for getting in touch. I am sorry to hear this. Appreciate this can be uncomfortable, but trains are designed for standing passengers and we wouldn't run a service if it was unsafe. Can you confirm your journey details, please? -Szabina

⁦@GWRHelp⁩ this is dangerous overcrowding

Check out this post on Nextdoor: nextdoor.co.uk/p/rg8T3JmwXRRR…

@itvtakeaway Best tv moment of 2024 👌👏👏👏@itvtakeaway

The most amazing reunion 🥹 #SaturdayNightTakeaway