Strimmer Smith

Some very lovely news on Mr Rocky. He has been accepted in by his new pack of dogs in the retirement village. I’m so proud of him. He is positively thriving… (1/5) 🧵

The Guardian says that the National Cyber Security Centre is not aware of any report from me about my phone being hacked by Russians. It's absolutely infuriating how these 'journalists' keep checking for facts and evidence! Why can't they just take my word for it like GB News?

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.

Just some little "Cakes" in the retirement village to welcome Mr Rocky. Love seeing the senior dogs this happy ♥️

@BBCPolitics What “measures?” 🤷‍♂️ They, as in the Reform Government, are going to have to independently monitor and time-keep every business in the country. What other “measures” will validate actual time-keeping?

“If you take on extra hours, you should never pay income tax” Reform UK’s Treasury Spokesperson Robert Jenrick defends his party’s plan to end taxation on most overtime pay and says they will take measures to stop the system being “gamed” #BBCLauraK bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

Look, it's perfectly simple. I wasn't going to become an MP, then I was given £5 million and I coincidentally decided to run for Parliament. I then bought a house for £1.4m cash after saying I was "skint" and my girlfriend bought a house for £885,000 with money she didn't have and which I originally said I had bought. The gift was totally unconditional, as well as being for security and then it was a reward for Brexit. Nobody should have known about it, but the Russians hacked my phone, according to 'counter-espionage experts' who don't exist. See?

Nigel Farage is complaining about foreign millionaires donating huge sums of money to far right populists who then use it online to spread hatred and division in our politics to affect the outcome of elections. Paging alanis morissette ..

The government will act to protect young people online. Our consultation on what those changes should includes closes on Tuesday, but we have already given ministers the legal powers to change the law quickly.

Labour promised to recruit 8,500 more mental health workers Labour has delivered on that promise three years early

When he came in 2 months ago I called him George Clooney because I told him one day he’d look like a movie star. Today is that day… (1/6) 🧵

While it makes for a good headline, this is a terrible policy for several reasons. 1. It would create a 'cliff edge' at £75,000, which means many people going from earning £75k to £76k would get hit by a tax bill that's bigger than their raise. This will hugely deter people from earning more. 2. It would be exceptionally easy to game to facilitate tax avoidance. Nothing would stop unscrupulous employers and and employees agreeing that the regular pay is very low, but an hour of overtime is paid (say) 100x ordinary wages. All of a sudden, the whole wage is tax-free. 3. It would be unfair between professions where hours are contracted and those it's not. The professional services sector, for example, rarely pays overtime. This would incentivise those professions to move to clock-punching: forcing professions to change their culture to suit government. 4. By targeting hours, it gives a tax break to work that takes longer. But we should be incentivising higher wages through higher productivity, not lower wages on longer hours. 5. Self-employed people and people who work multiple jobs wouldn't benefit from this. For absolutely no reason whatsoever. Just cut taxes generally. Don't dream up schemes that make our tax system even more complicated and even more distortionary just to get a quick headline.

@ronnytodgers @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives But fundamentally… You agree that in terms of UK sanctions against all Russian oil imports….. Since last week, the UK hasn’t relinquished or eased any sanctions. We just haven’t immediately applied all of these new ones as some would like? So we can have holidays. 🤷‍♂️

@strimmer01 @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives The license gives an assurance that any importers will get 4 months notice before changes. Ie Chris can say next week ‘and finally it’s banned’, whilst allowing the jet fuel in all summer. Yes we did import it, and there has been a lot of pressure to stop. This isn’t stopping.

This government’s easing of oil sanctions on Russia is supporting Putin’s ability to wage war on Ukraine. Disgraceful.

@ronnytodgers @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives Data released by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air CREA cross-reference Feedstock Tracking (% of Russian Urals crude being delivered via sea to specific 3rd-country mega-refineries) & Shipment Destinations (tankers leaving those refineries & unloading at UK ports)

@strimmer01 @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives Without a commercial vortexa subscription how can you say that? And the write ups quoting vortexa say very little if any since the eu ban landed.

@SaulStaniforth @GyllKing Essentially, if you don’t clock in or record the hours you’re working (which I’ve never ever done) then this policy can’t and won’t apply to you. Mind you, there’s some obvious scams that can be used that will benefit employers & employees alike but will hit tax income hugely.

Jenrick: "..those people who are doing a 40hrs/week & then choosing to do extra hours to look after their family.. those people can do those hours without paying any money to the tax man" Why not address the fact that people working 40hrs/week can't look after their families?

@gregbagwell HOW does Farage categorically know that “Moscow hacked his phone?” I’d like to see his evidence for this. Surely, he must have some in order to make this claim. 🤷‍♂️ Or is he conflating “Moscow” with “the Guardian” somehow?

3/ And what do the hackers gain from this release? If they are Kremlin agents then this seems a bit of a waste to me. Far better to keep the information and use it when Farage has real influence or power. I can’t see a single reason why they would release it now. Ideas anyone?

A whole month to think up a story and this was what they came up with? Is this the political equivalent of the dog eat my homework. Firstly, it doesn’t change the facts of the matter as Farage still hasn’t explained what the money is for and what he did with it. 🧵1/5

Here’s just one detail from @thenerve_news #HarborneReceipts timeline. On the *exact same day* Christopher Harborne gives Reform £3m, Nigel Farage says Reform will lift cap on stablecoin ownership. Where does Christopher Harborne’s money come from, you ask? Stablecoins!

@ronnytodgers @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives As noted in Hansard, 20 May 2026, the Govt issued a waiver solely because the volume of aviation fuel entering the UK market is so substantial that enforcing an immediate, total cutoff during the current Strait of Hormuz energy crisis would trigger domestic fuel shortages.

@ronnytodgers @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives ✅UK Government pragmatism & good sense, delaying the start date of SOME NEW & ADDITIONAL sanctions, particularly as alternatives sources are unavailable (the Strait of Hormuz is closed), ensures aviation fuel supply and British holidaymakers can take their holidays this year. 👍

@ronnytodgers @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives And “the license does is explicitly allow that trade for at least 4 months” This 3rd party loophole has always been allowed. It’s never been sanctioned nor illegal to import from these 3rd party countries since 2022. UK has imported £1.8Billion of these products since 2022.

@ronnytodgers @RhonddaBryant @MelJStride @Conservatives Not true. Loophole imports have definitely happened this year. However, there has been a temporary drop-off starting in April caused by Ukrainian drone strikes knocking out Russian domestic refining capacity. Russia had to shift its own oil allocations as a result.