Benjamin Nathan

This disused toilet block in Greville Smyth Park would make a great micropub & cafe, paying for toilets to be reinstated & open to all. I’d love to do this. This park badly needs toilet facilities (as most parks in Bristol do). Who’s the cabinet member for parks @bristolgreen ?

Hello @BristolCouncil

@J_Elliott94 And what happens when they reach retirement age and can’t afford private rent? Ticking timebomb.

Around a quarter of private renters in the UK spend over 40% of disposable income on rents. This is among the highest rates across the world. Meanwhile new analysis for JRF finds being a private landlord has been one of the best investment options available to individuals.

@LabourGrowth But… you never mention that to pay for this you need pension reform and social care reform. So this is just well written words. When you advocate scrapping the triple lock, and stop obliging councils to pay for care costs but use people’s assets instead then get back to me.

This is for the people who do the work. The nurses doing double shifts. The teachers who stay late. The plumbers, the carers, the small builders, the people running shops. The graduates trying to build a life. The founders who chose to build something here. Britain has stopped being a country that backs them. Over 40 years of political choices Britain has built an economy where owning things pays better than building them. Holding scarce land. Holding protected market positions. Holding the right credentials. Holding the right postcode. Gaming process. Capturing public money meant for someone else. These have become safer routes to reward than working, investing, teaching, caring, manufacturing or taking productive risk. This isn't a conspiracy. It's the predictable result of a state that has lost the ability to build, decide, enforce and shape markets in the public interest. The planning system rations land. The energy system rations power. Capital fails to scale British firms. Regulation protects incumbents and crushes challengers. Tax falls hard on work and lightly on position. Government compensates people for the costs this creates. But in rationed markets, that compensation is often captured by the same scarcity that made it necessary. Public money flows through broken systems and strengthens the very interests that broke them. Fiscal space shrinks. The state becomes more cautious, less capable, more dependent on the processes that created the failure. The loop tightens. An Honest Day is a new economic settlement for Britain. The shift required is from a distributive state to a capable one. Support people now. Reform the scarcity that makes support necessary. Reward action, not position. Read it now labourgrowth.co.uk

My latest paper, for @the_tpa, on how local government is being bankrupted by Westminster's increasingly Enron-like efforts to keep parts of the welfare state off the books, was published this weekend. taxpayersalliance.com/the-statutory-…

This was the moment Exeter City’s backup KEEPER scored a 96th minute equaliser to get a point against 5th place Stockport County… Absolute SCENES 👏🤣🤣🤣

Increasingly, the claim 'we voted for Brexit' is misleading, at best. Take my son & elder daughter, 27 & 24, they didn't get a vote in the 2016 Referendum. Their gran & grandad did, but as is the way with these things, they are both dead. How many more years to be asked again?

Forced to carry on with a broken back…. Whipped over the line for the win… welcome to the chav fest that is the Grand fucking National. RIP Gold Dancer

@TheRealJamieKay Yes but it’s not to pay for roads etc is it? It’s to pay the monstrous cost of an ageing populations triple lock pensions and NHS. They are piling taxes on everything-business, workers, sales taxes-just to fill this ever gaping hole-because we won’t pay via wealth/inheritace tax.

£300 a year just for driving 10,000 miles. Pay-per-mile tax from 2028. Drive to work? Pay. Visit family? Pay. Live outside a big city? Pay more. Another “targeted” policy that hits ordinary people hardest.

@Landeur I really do think that scrapping National Insurance and rolling it into income tax would be a good start too. Stops the ‘paid in’ illusion of a pot. Then give people multiple employment contribution options. Make work the answer.

Means-test pensions at £1,000,000 assets and remove the triple lock. Tie pension increases to inflation only. This is perfectly reasonable, but if you dare to suggest it then people will comment suggesting you should be sent to Ukraine and die in a trench.

Left unchecked, the Triple Lock will consume the entire known universe, it is an unsustainable transfer of wealth from people in work to the retired. It has to stop. thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…

@LabourTogether @Helen_Barnard Until you tell everyone what % tax of property value you propose (and how you will calculate property value) then this is just well meaning words. Is it 0.1% or 4% etc ?

NEW REPORT: We're calling for a 'big bang' reform of local government finance. Nationalise the funding of adult social care and replace council tax and stamp duty with a proportional property tax 🧵

@123db_GEEK @Bikery1966 As as easily as you carry 3…

@Bikery1966 How do you carry two dogs on a bicycle?

Large SUVs are not family cars and they certainly don’t belong on city streets being used for ridiculously short journeys better served by walking or cycling.

I spent last few weeks speaking to breweries on the Bermondsey Beer Mile for @_TheLondoner about the chaos each Saturday when they're descended on by hordes of coked up Home Counties lads. Expect insane tales of vomit, pelted cakes and tampon artworks. the-londoner.co.uk/chaos-on-the-b…

@PNH_Hotelier @StAustellBrew @Keir_Starmer @RachelReevesMP @UKLabour Have you seen the St Austell leased & tenanted price list? I’d dare any St Austell BDM to publish one publicly…

Sad to see that four pubs under the @StAustellBrew umbrella have closed in Cornwall. They were all leased & tenanted so I hope that they will reopen. All in good locations and it just shows even more the harm that @Keir_Starmer @RachelReevesMP @UKLabour have done to our industry.

@LaraInCornwall It’s hugely frustrating. But it’s also the consequences bill arriving for the triple lock, social care, and Covid. They should tax wealth, but they promised not to tax work, so they are taxing businesses and lifestyles.

Not even parody. If she can tax it - she will, damn the consequences.

Supermarket beers are in full crisis mode. ABVs are through the floor for tax purposes, glucose syrup, flavourings, and fermentation agents are being added everywhere. Nearly all foreign beers are now brewed in the UK. Completely different stuff to five years ago.

it really is Pure Starmer to have a by all accounts quite successful visit to China and then immediately find yourself stepping on the Mandelson Rake that your in-house Wormtongue already had you step on last year

UK paying highest wine taxes in Europe thanks to alcohol duty rise. But no-one is benefitting Treasury coffers are down and businesses are struggling. No more tax hikes 🛑 telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…

@AlexReilley1 @theLOUNGERS Handsome exterior, really like that.

Our first opening of 2026 has landed! Pietro Lounge has opened in Ludlow and is our 267th Lounge (& 307th overall site). Pietro is located in the former Oakman pub The George on Ludlow’s historic Castle Square. @theLOUNGERS #lovelounging