Margot

@RollingHedge Thank you for that very comprehensive answer ! How will people store wealth if not in their houses? Through share portfolios?

You’re probably thinking: well fuck that, what’s the alternative? The alternative, mechanically speaking, is the unwind happens anyway, it is as inevitable as gravity. The question is who runs it and who it hurts and to what degree. Three default pathways stand as alternatives: 1/ Gilt-forced, where the 2027 receipts shock triggers emergency policy and prices drop 25 to 40 percent in 12 to 24 months, putting two million households into negative equity and detonating the collateral before redeployment is possible. 2/ Demographic, where the homeowner-pensioner coalition ages out and prices correct in real terms over a decade without intervention, painless on paper but wasting the entire substrate window so Britain corrects into a world where the productive assets are already owned elsewhere. 3/ Patrician, where the productive cohort emigrates, the gilt crisis forces welfare-priority settlements, and the substrate gets bought at distressed prices by foreign capital, while the owner-occupier base hollows from the top and BTL consolidates into institutional foreign hands, turning the asset class into a rent stream extracted from the population that remains. Each is worse than deliberate. Gilt-forced destroys the collateral before redeployment. Demographic wastes the timing. Patrician transfers the ownership offshore. Whereas - deliberate keeps the capital onshore and redirects it into substrate. The defaults destroy it, waste it, or hand it over. Until deliberate, accidental. Until accidental, Britain pays the rent. Once accidental, Britain pays it to someone else. 2/2

Britain is stuck in a long bad patch and it is worse than the political class admits. The country is genuinely more stressed than it has been in living memory. The data shows it: fewer babies, fewer marriages, more people on disability, nearly a million young people not working or studying, mental health collapsing. This is a physical response to impossible conditions, not a mood. The state cannot fix it because the money has run out. Tax is at a record high, debt is huge, and the bond market has lost patience. Households are quietly drowning, hidden by mortgage forbearance, with debt charity demand at a 15-year high. AI is now eating entry-level professional jobs in real time. The Big Four and law firms have cut graduate intake by a third. Those young people end up on benefits, paid for with borrowed money. Two specific danger points sit in the next year: the Autumn Statement and the spring 2027 tax receipts, when the migration maths will print badly. Either could break the government and force a gilt crisis. The old American backstop is gone. The relationship has soured structurally and will not snap back. Five things would fix it: build nuclear, unwind the housing bubble, redirect British savings into Britain, retrain workers for the AI shift, and break the cartels capturing the gains. None are happening fast enough. If nothing changes, the slump lasts to roughly 2050. Today’s 25-year-old will be 55 before the recovery arrives. The 60-year-old will be dead. Part Three was released earlier today and covers what to actually do about it: @anglofuturismcapitallp/note/p-198803709?r=1uhim&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@anglofuturism… (I can share a similar précis of this if you like?)

Why do they never learn? Rachel Reeves' hikes in Stamp Duty have predictably led to lower revenues - a 6% decline so far. Stamp Duty is a voluntary tax only paid if you choose to move house. If it's set high then people will either choose not to move or won't be able to afford to move. CGT is another voluntary tax paid only if you choose to sell assets. Yet dim Labour luminaries like Streeting and Burnham are still arguing that it should be increased. Both Stamp Duty and CGT should be scrapped.

🚨NEW: Net migration data by status: British nationals: -136,000 EU nationals: -42,000 Non-EU nationals: +349,000 [@ONS]

@Keir_Starmer You’re morally bankrupt

I’ll always champion peaceful protest. But the Unite the Kingdom march organisers are peddling hatred and division. We’ve already blocked visas for far-right agitators who want to come here to spew their extremist views. They don't speak for the decent, fair, respectful Britain I know.

“The natural state of mankind is tyranny and misery. Free societies have been very rare.” — Milton Friedman

@patrickkmaguire WTF. These people are crazy.

Catherine West now on Radio 4 saying Keir Starmer could win a leadership election and not ruling out voting for him

What a load of crap!

This Government is entirely wrong to ban foreign commentators from speaking at Robinson’s rally on Saturday I will be formally challenging the Home Office, again, on the decision to prevent these individuals from entering. I won’t be there myself, but many patriots will be and they deserve to hear lawful views in order to decide for themselves if they agree or not. That is free speech. Islamist extremists are personally welcomed by the Prime Minister, yet this group is banned. It stinks.

Looking forward to Wednesday

@Steven_Swinford Sounds like it’s written by a high schooler. Also, everything she says is just ‘more of the same’. Labour (and the Tories) have implemented socialist policies for decades and we’re all paying the price.

BREAKING: Angela Rayner says Sir Keir Starmer must allow Andy Burnham to become an MP as she accuses him of presiding over a 'toxic culture of cronyism' Rayner warns that Labour risks becoming 'a party of the well off, not working people' She says Starmer's decision to block Burnham was a 'mistake' and the scale of the moment means that Labour needs to bring 'our best players into Parliament' She says that 'the Peter Mandelson scandal showed a toxic culture of cronyism' and that 'decisions like cutting winter fuel allowance just weren’t what people expected from a Labour government' She suggests that Labour should go for oil companies and those who are 'benefiting' from the Iran war to help balance the books She doesn't go for the PM directly, but lays down a clear marker: 'The prime minister must now meet the moment and set out the change our country needs' It all heaps even more pressure on Starmer ahead of his speech tomorrow. It's consistent with what Blunkett and others are saying - effectively that if the PM doesn't show dramatic change this week he is toast RAYNER STATEMENT IN FULL: Our party has suffered a historic defeat. Many good Labour colleagues have lost their seats despite working hard for those they represented. We have lost good Labour administrations and lost the chance for more. What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance. The Labour Party must now live up to our name: we must be the party of working people. We’ve heard the same on the doorstep as we’ve seen in the polls - the cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties. People have turned to populists and nationalists because we have not done enough to fix it. Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago. People feel hopeless - that the cost of living crisis will never end, and now they see oil and gas companies use global instability to post record profits. Once again, ordinary people are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make. It’s no wonder that across the UK, working people feel the system is rigged against them. Things can be so much better than this. Countries including Spain and Canada have shown that economies can grow and people can thrive when governments stay true to labour and social democratic values and put people first. We need to learn from that. In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home. In my patch and across the north, we lost working people whose wages are too low and costs too high. In Scotland and Wales, people do not currently see Labour as the answer. We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people. The Peter Mandelson scandal showed a toxic culture of cronyism. Decisions like cutting winter fuel allowance just weren’t what people expected from a Labour government. For too long, successive governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top without a plan to ensure the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly. The result is an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in too few hands. This level of inequality, alongside squeezed living standards, is the outcome of a model built on deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics. But we have the chance to fix this. We need immediate action to cut costs for households and put money back into the everyday economy. This can be done within the current fiscal rules, by ensuring those who benefit from the crisis contribute more so that everyone can thrive. Our Employment Rights Act was just the first step in our plan to Make Work Pay. Now is the time to take the next steps, starting with a Fair Pay Agreement in social care - but not ending there. A rising minimum wage must go alongside our programme to get young people into work. The investment we secured in social and affordable housing should now unleash a building boom that benefits British business and workers. We must double down on renters’ reform and show leaseholders our action on tackling ground rents and charges was just a first step to ending freehold for good. Our devolution revolution has begun, but is nowhere near done. Giving mayors powers to transform planning and licensing can boost local business and good growth, in the interests of local people. They must go alongside economic powers and public services. Boosting community ownership and stopping the sell-off of local assets from pubs to playgrounds will put power back in local hands, helping restore the pride they feel in the places they live. We must go further on planning reforms, to build the schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure the country needs to grow. We should be unafraid to promote new forms of public, community and cooperative ownership across the board. Buses and trains being brought back into public hands can now operate for the public good, at prices passengers can afford. Thames Water is an iconic failure of privatisation, which resonates for the same reasons. People are rightly sick of bonuses for bosses who deliver nothing but higher bills. We must face down demands that the public pay the price of private failure. We must create good jobs that pay decent wages by ensuring defence investment includes a secure manufacturing base. Use our house building programme to boost construction, invest in the green economy, backing SMEs by reforming business rates and increasing support to revive our high streets and local economies, raise the minimum wage and get young people into work. And then there is politics itself, putting power back into people’s hands so that they are shaping the decisions that impact them. We must tackle the inflow of dodgy money in our politics - something that Nigel Farage, who took 5 million pounds in a secret personal gift from an offshore crypto baron, will never do. We must make politics work for ordinary people. We can only prove we mean it by putting the common interest ahead of factionalism. This is bigger than personalities, but it is time to acknowledge that blocking Andy Burnham was a mistake. We must show we understand the scale of change the moment calls for - that means bringing our best players into Parliament - and embracing the type of agenda that has been successful at a local level, rather than reaching back to an agenda and politics that has failed people. These are the fights we need to have, and the change in direction we need to see. Policy tweaks will not fix the fundamental challenges facing our country. This government needs, at pace, to put measures in place that make people's lives tangibly better, while fixing the foundations of a system rigged against them. The Prime Minister must now meet the moment and set out the change our country needs. Change our economic agenda to prioritise making people better off, change how we run our party so that all voices are listened to, and change how we do politics. Labour exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change — now.

@ClarkeMicah I have always thought it is a feminist issue too and have been surprised not to see more coverage of this. 4 senior men picking on a high performing junior woman at work is not new.

Letyby is a Feminist Issue. independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/…

President Trump just posted the summary data of the study from the Netherlands related to which immigrants are a net positive contribution. It also highlights which immigrants are a net negative to the country. The data is about what you would expect.

Rachel Reeves: "We have restored economic stability"

They arrested the President of the United States of America 4X, charged him 91X, indicted him 4X, spied on his campaign, sabotaged his first term, jailed his supporters, raided his private residence, censored him, gagged him, tried to bankrupt him, and attempted to remove him from state ballots. When all of that failed they tried to assassinate him not once but four times. And they go on national television to talk about how we need to vote for them to save democracy.

@Strandjunker Number of people who died while waiting for care last year: 🇦🇺 ~2,500 🇨🇦 23,746 🇩🇰 ~200 🇫🇮 ~300 🇫🇷 ~1,500 🇩🇪 ~800 🇮🇸 ~20 🇮🇪 ~600 🇮🇹 ~2,000 🇯🇵 ~500 🇳🇱 ~400 🇳🇴 ~150 🇵🇹 ~700 🇪🇸 ~1,800 🇸🇪 ~400 🇬🇧 ~120,000 🇺🇸 ~300 There’s a lesson there

🚨 The UK just sold 10 Year Gilts for the highest yield since the 2008 Financial Crisis. The same day the IMF once again crushed their growth forecast for the UK. Starmer and Reeves are destroying our country.

🚨IRELAND ON THE BRINK! In the last 24 hours, Irish patriots have shut down the nation! Truck drivers, bus operators and farmers have paralysed cities with massive blockades. Even as Gardaí threaten 6 months in jail, more patriots flood the streets in defiance. Ireland is primed for revolution.

Javier Milei: “I thought being on the left was a mental problem. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming that it never worked anywhere, and they refused to accept it.” “But what I discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul. The left is built on envy, hatred, resentment, and unequal treatment under the law. They are very violent, and since they have no way or arguments to answer, they go for physical violence.”