Robin H

Here are some ways in which the world has gotten better.

So the minimum wage just went up and the government is very proud of itself. Here is what they are not telling you. Your wage goes up. Your tax goes up. Your National Insurance goes up. HMRC takes its cut before you see a penny of that £1,500. Now your employer is paying more for every single person on their books. They are not absorbing that. Nobody absorbs that. So prices go up. The coffee you buy on the way to work costs more. The lunch you grab costs more. The haircut costs more. All of it costs more because the people serving you are now on higher wages too, and their employers did exactly the same thing. So you got a pay rise, and everything got more expensive at the same time. Almost like it cancelled out. If they actually wanted workers to keep more money they would cut their tax. That's it. That's the whole idea. But that would mean the government collecting less. So instead they raise the minimum wage, taking a cut on the way in and benefit from the price rises on the way out through VAT, and call it a historic day for working people.

Here’s Ed Conway completely destroying Ed Miliband’s net zero zealotry in banning new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea.

@LloydCymru Plaid's First 100 days published today is just as bad ....

This is a painful read. Almost every promise is to launch a new plan, form a new quango or continue things that were already in place. Anything that isn’t in one of those categories is too vague to be meaningful, contains weightless buzzwords or is just “making a case” or “exploring” ideas. A sad demonstration of the way Wales has been governed for the last 27 years, and something we need to move away from if we are to get anywhere as a nation. I don’t have much faith.

@crankycircuits @MikeSouthWestUK OK, but how difficult do you find it to charge your phone? It must be very worrying that it doesn't have enough charge for 2 weeks

@MikeSouthWestUK The massive problem with EVs is I can fill my car fuel tank in 3 minutes for a range of around 600 miles. That’s it. That’s why EVs simply make no sense to me.

🤦‍♂️ A car account telling us now is the time to buy EVs 😂 Hey, I (my wife) was close to buying one as her work was literally throwing them at their employees But it was still a “no thank you”

@MikeSouthWestUK But .. why? Come on, instead of just shouting at the internet. You're apparently a professor and a doctor. Give us your rational and nuanced reasons. And that will be fine. It's not mandatory to buy an EV but there are, in some people's opinion, good reasons to have one

"So you want the UK to join the EU?" "Yes" "So you want to give up the Pound and accept the Euro" "No" "So you want to join the Schengen area and allow completely open borders" "No" "So you want to be part of the EU Migration Pact, another 100k illegal migrants to the UK a year" "No" "So you want to re-introduce the testing of cosmetics onto animals, required by EU law" "No" "So you want to re-introduce live exports of animals for fattening or slaughter" "No" "So you want to give control of UK fishing waters and quotas back to the EU" "No" "So you want to reverse the protections of UK marine birds like puffins, who were endangered due to EU overfishing of the main food source" "No" "So you want to give up the better trade relationship the UK now has with the USA, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Singapore, and countless other countries" "No" "Well it sounds like you don't want to join the EU then"

It’s a lengthy but this is magnificent from @Geoffrey_cox on the importance of jury trials. A true orator among giggling simpletons

Much of the frustration with attempts to push the Welsh language stems from them being concentrated on parts of Wales that are historically English speaking. If campaigners focused efforts on preserving the language in Welsh speaking heartlands, like Ceredigion and North West Wales, instead of discriminating against non-Welsh speakers in places where the language is not spoken, there would be far more support. We would back it, for sure. It’s time to accept Welsh culture does not take one form. People in Cardiff and South Wales have a very different idea of what it means to be Welsh than Welsh speakers in Gwynedd. Plaid Cymru think they have a monopoly on Welshness. They don’t. Plaid’s attempts to impose their culture on other parts of Wales, over prioritising preserving it in places where it is prevalent, turn many people off. In fact, they actively neglect the latter. Our exposé highlighting a taxpayer funded Welsh speaking nursery in Bangor, at which small children were put in hijabs, is a good example. No Plaid politicians spoke out. In fact, through their adherence to ideological progressive liberalism, Plaid are actively complicit. It’s important people know.

The top 0.1% in the UK pay more income tax than the entire bottom 50% combined. And that was kind of working - until many of the top 0.1% decided to leave.

@MarcherReborn @GuidoFawkes And the one policy that he mentions is one he didn't want to do and was forced into doing ..... the guy will say anything

@GuidoFawkes I think he genuinely believes this too. “We have stopped the Russians at the Oder and our new wonder weapons will drive them back”

Starmer this morning attempts to reassure No10 staff he won't resign: “In just a few months, we start the work of lifting half a million children out of poverty. A massive thing to do in this country because that means that lives will be changed. For decades to come, children who otherwise wouldn't have fair chance and fair opportunity. Poverty holds children back like nothing else on earth. And so getting rid of child poverty opens up opportunities for so many. We must prove that politics can be a force for good. I believe it can. I believe it is. We go forward from here. We go with confidence as we continue changing the country.”

@CamillaTominey Andrew Neil schooling Rayner on CGT please watch to the end. Better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and dispel all doubt especially on national TV. No she absolutely should not be parachuted into No 10.

Nonetheless you’re happy @Keir_Starmer to pass a bill through Parliament making it easier to prosecute our veterans…

This is brilliant. Grant UK gilts 100% exemption from IHT and as everyone in the UK piles into them the cost of borrowing drops, reducing debt interest payments by many multiples of the amount saved in inheritance tax. Exceptional idea.

@Sam_Dumitriu Err Isn't it £111k per home?

@EFTA4UK @GeorgeTrefgarne @grok what are the advantages and disadvantages to joining efta rather than the eu customs union

Don’t make us point to the chart again?

Is there any Labour MP who is not claiming they were always against taxing family farms? What a shame that only 1 @MCSavours had the courage to vote against. Such hypocrisy!

There's a line in a democracy that, once crossed, changes everything: when elections cease to be an obligation and become a variable. That line has now been crossed in Britain, and it's the state's own elections watchdog saying so. The Electoral Commission has been explicit: Labour's justification for delaying local elections is not legitimate. Not unwise. Not clumsy. Illegitimate. Extending mandates damages public confidence, undermines local legitimacy, and creates a clear conflict of interest by letting councils decide how long they can avoid voters. In any functioning democracy, that would end the matter. Here, the government presses on regardless. That's the scandal. This is no longer a party political dispute or a row between Reform and Labour. The referee has intervened and said the game is being rigged, and the players have decided to ignore the whistle. When a government continues with election delays after being told by the independent authority charged with protecting electoral integrity that its reasoning does not hold, the issue stops being reform and becomes power protecting itself. The language Labour uses is revealing. Elections are framed as an inconvenience. Voters are framed as an administrative burden. Democracy is reduced to a cost-saving exercise, something to be postponed if the spreadsheets look untidy or the reorganisation plans are mid-flow. Ministers speak of "capacity constraints" as if the right to vote is a luxury item that must wait until the filing cabinets are rearranged. In a democracy, administration exists to serve elections. Elections do not exist to suit administration. The conflict of interest identified by the Electoral Commission should alarm anyone who still believes in democratic norms. Councils are being asked whether they would like to delay the moment they must answer to voters. That's not consultation. It's self-dealing. No serious system allows those in power to decide how long they may remain there without consent. Yet this is now presented as a "locally led approach," as though outsourcing democratic suspension makes it virtuous. Worse still is the uncertainty. Candidates have been selected. Campaigns have begun. Money has been spent. And with months to go before polling day, the government is still dangling the possibility of cancellation. The watchdog describes this uncertainty as unprecedented. That word matters. Democracies rely on predictability. Once elections become provisional, subject to last-minute ministerial approval, the entire process is degraded. When challenged, ministers retreat into condescension. Chris Bryant waves away concerns as conspiracy and insists that "ordinary people" would think elections are "a bit daft." This is a familiar trick: speak for the public while denying them a voice. Redefine democratic rights as common-sense nuisances that sensible adults should stop fussing over. It's the rhetoric of managed democracy, where participation is tolerated only when it produces the correct outcome. None of this is happening in isolation. Mayoral elections have already been postponed. Now council elections are being pushed back again. The pattern is clear. When the polls turn hostile, the timetable moves. When voters become unpredictable, the vote is delayed. Governments confident in their mandate do not need to buy time. They face the electorate and take their chances. Labour is not doing that because it knows what the numbers say. The danger is not just that millions of people may be denied a vote next year. It's the precedent now being set. Once a government learns it can delay elections after the watchdog objects, after campaigns have begun and candidates are in place, the principle is broken. Elections become conditional. Democracy becomes something you are granted when those in power feel safe enough to allow it. "Chris Bryant waves away concerns as conspiracy and insists that "ordinary people" would think elections are "a bit daft.""

@iainmartin1 @montie What a thread