David Wright

Reform UK announced their "Hard Work Bonus" this weekend. No income tax on overtime for workers earning under £75,000 working more than 40 hours a week. £5bn a year. Paid for by welfare cuts. Here's what the economists said. Julian Jessop, IEA fellow and former Capital Economics chief economist, said he could not find a single economics expert who would endorse it. His word for it: "fundamentally flawed." The self-employed don't benefit. The part-time worker taking an extra shift doesn't benefit. The single mother working 20 hours a week and picking up overtime to make ends meet, precisely the people Reform say they want to help, don't benefit. You have to be an employee working more than 40 hours. France tried this. The result wasn't a surge in productivity. Relatively well-off people simply reclassified their existing hours as overtime and pocketed the difference. No benefit to lower paid workers. No benefit to the economy. Reform's own announcement acknowledges this risk, which is why they've promised anti-avoidance rules to stop employers doing exactly that. They're promising to police employer tax avoidance with a smaller civil service. The £5bn cost assumes behaviour doesn't change. Every independent economist says behaviour always changes, and when it does the cost goes up and the benefit goes down. TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak noted that the same party promising to make work pay also wants to tear up the Employment Rights Act, scrap day one sick pay, remove bans on exploitative zero hours contracts and eliminate fire and rehire protections. Reform announced this policy on the same weekend the Observer, the Mirror and Carol Vorderman were all reporting on their Makerfield by-election candidate's deleted social media posts. The Heinz factory workers in Wigan were told they'd be £1,000 better off. Their candidate called abortion the cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby and made sexually explicit comments about Carol Vorderman. Views don't change. They just get hidden.

1 in 5 people in Britain weren't born here. 1 in 5. Can we just fucking lock in please.

BREAKING: 🇺🇸🇮🇱Israeli citizen, Ori Solomon, who was arrested for operating an illegal biolab in Las Vegas, which contained HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, has had all of his federal charges dismissed and he is free to go back to Israel

Trump admin DROPS FEDERAL CHARGES against ISRAELI CITIZEN in Las Vegas home BIOLAB case over 'possible BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS' & 'UKNOWN LIQUIDS'