simon ort

Wes Streeting has this morning set out his tax plans - specifically bringing capital gains tax into line with income tax He says that the current system is unfair because it penalises work Higher or additional rate taxpayers will pay 24% on gains in the current financial year. Streeting said that the rates should mirror income tax bands - so 40% for higher rate taxpayers and 45% for additional rate taxpayers He says that the approach could raise £12billion a year Streeting said: “A member of my family is a cleaner in Lancashire. She pays a higher tax rate on her salary than her landlord pays for the growing value of the home she lives in. She slogs her guts out, he puts in far less effort, yet the state rewards him more than her. And we wonder why people are angry. “The system is penalising work. It’s not fair and it’s bad for our economy. We need a wealth tax that works. A pound made from simply owning assets should not be taxed less than a pound made from a hard day's work. We can do it in a way that is pro-growth, pro-entrepreneur and pro-work.”

Despite this, anti-immigrant sentiment has increased. Proof that it's a manufactured political issue.

We've had 60 years of 'terrifying global warming' Some say its 'humanity's greatest ever problem!' So let's check real data over 60 years: 1. The world is greener. I like green 2. Humanity is better-fed. That's good 3. Humanity is longer-lived. That's good too 4. We are all safer from 'climate'. That's great All good things! So what is the problem with global warming? I can't see it. Where is it? What is it? Show me!

A viewer from Makerfield emailed this to me today. He received this letter from Hope Not Hate through his door, and they appear to be actively campaigning for Andy Burnham and the Labour Party.

A solar farm just opened where a beef farm used to be. This is a real sentence about a real place. In Lincolnshire, near Glentworth, on land that grew British food for six hundred years. 1,214 hectares of grazing pasture and cropland, the size of Heathrow Airport, now under panels for the next forty years. It is called Tillbridge Solar. It was approved in October 2025. The locals were against it. The local council was overruled by central government. The farmer who used to graze cattle on that land will not be grazing cattle on that land in your lifetime. Down the road, Springwell Solar got the nod the same month. 1,280 hectares. The largest in the country. Same story. Beef and arable, gone. This is happening everywhere. CPRE found that 59% of England's biggest solar farms are on productive farmland. In one Lincolnshire district, 7% of the land is now solar panels. Three solar farms, Sutton Bridge, Goosehall, and Black Peak, are built entirely on the highest grade of agricultural land we have. Now here is the part nobody mentions at the dinner party. The roofs of the warehouses on the A1 are empty. The supermarket distribution centres are empty. The Amazon sheds, the MoD car parks, the industrial estates outside every town in England, all empty. CPRE's own numbers show that putting panels on the roofs we already have would meet the entire 2035 solar target on its own. The panels are not going on the roofs. The panels are going on Lincolnshire because leasing one field from one farmer is easy, and leasing a thousand roofs from a thousand owners is hard. The shortcut is the pasture. You will not be told to stop eating beef. You will simply find that the farm that produced it is now a power station, and the beef in the supermarket has come from Kansas, and it costs more, and the cow is no longer in the field, because the field is no longer a field. Cover the roofs. Leave the pasture.

At the General Election we pledged to bring down net migration. Following reforms in our Immigration White Paper last Spring, it has now fallen 82% from the peak under the Tories. We promised a fair, controlled and managed migration system, and that is what we are delivering.